So everything that happened with Miguel Angel took place on Wednesday. Thursday night was a whole other night of God moving. We are working with two different churches, and I am involved more with the other church (not the one we are camped out at, where the miracle with Miguel happened). Our team is working with a man named Noe, a tiny man with an incredible heart for God. His passion oozes out of him every time he speaks or smiles. Our team is helping him to get his church off the ground as they have only been meeting for two months in his front yard. It does not look like a church by our normal standards, but it is where The Church meets. I was set to speak, all in spanish mind you, in front of everyone. I was a little uneasy about it, but I knew that God had put me in that role and that He was going to be doing the changing of hearts and not me. Now I am going to segway that with another story.
James and I went out from our encampment the first day we were staying there to buy some sheets for sleeping. We came across this little family operated store and began talking to the family. They are a very sweet family and so nice. They wanted to know everything about why we were there, (they dont see very many white people here). So we told them and they thought that was nice, and that was about it. But I kept walking by their shop every day, I would stop by each time to say hello and to chat. I met their son Carlos, an 18 year old young man who loves sports. So we came back on Wednesday to take him to play futbol with us at the stadium. He brought two of his friends and we all ended up playin an intense game of basketball against some locals, (the futbol fields were all full). We worked a bunch of old ladies who thought they could take us, and then we got shown up by a team who clearly were the cream of the crop of the area. But we got a good work out and had a lot of fun. So we were developing a good friendship with Carlos and his buddies.
Thursday I stopped by once again to the fabric store to tell Carlos that he should stop by our service we were going to have, he said that he would try.
So back to thursday night. Noe had it set up that he wanted to show a Christian movie and then have a reflection on it, myself leading the reflection. As the movie was projected on the side of his house, nieghbors and people passing by stopped to see what was going on. People filled his front yard, curious to see the attraction. I sat and watched the movie intently so that I could know what was happening to talk about it. It ended up having nothing to do with what I had prepared talking about, so I had to throw all that out the window. By the way, it was the cheesiest 1980´s movie dubbed into spanish you had ever seen. It was basically a copy of Its a Wonderful Life, Christian style. A young man wishes he had never accepted Christ into his life because it was ruining his social life. And before you know it, he living a ¨what if¨sort of life. It was so cheesy, and I thought for sure that no one here would be able to relate to a suburbia american boy going through puberty nervous about his voice cracking when they dont even have working toilletes down here. Then to top it off, you have someone who barely speaks spanish leading the talk afterwards. Well it was the perfect time for God to show up. I presented the gospel to everyone and invited people to come up to pray. Out of the dark front yard comes this young teenager, Carlos, wanting to accept Christ into his life. He followed my poor directions to the church, heard the Word, and accepted Christ into his life right there! I was blown away that God could get past this uber cheesy movie and my bad spanish to change peoples life. It certainly wasn´t a work of my convincing anybody with my wit of tongue. If God can use that right there, He can use anybody to do anything. I am continually blow away by what God is doing down here. We have hardly even been down here and God is breaking down strongholds and changing peoples lives. Praise God for using me and getting past all the surface level stuff, He is the one who changes people!
