The other day most of our group and Dani, our host, all went to a small church in the mountains to help a pastor named Stephen. He is a 73 year old native Panamanian pastor who has started several churches and disciple men to pastor them. We visited his current church to help fix their metal roof that had been torn down by a violent storm. Of course we were the ‘professional’ construction workers coming to save the day!
Everyone who knows me well, knows a few things about me that have not changed much over the years. First, that I’m really cool and funny. Secondly, that I’m not very handy and kind of clumsy when it comes to construction/mechanic type of stuff.
We had to cut metal beams with an electric hand-saw in order to re-support the roof. Somehow I got volunteered to be the one using the sketchy hand-saw (not the same quality as American I’m sure). I was warned that it was extremely dangerous and often times if you do not cut at the right angle the saw can fly off and cause serious damage. After hearing a comforting story about an accident, I was nice and scared so I took a moment to ask Jesus for help.
“Jesus please protect me, I feel like I’m not even qualified to do this but I will try, please don’t let this saw hit me”.
Now with the Lord on my side I was ready to conquer all the metal in the world! I began to cut the first beam in the correct spot. What I did not realize is that I had the saw facing the wrong way, so instead of the sparks going downward, they were flying up in my face and burning me. But there were girls around so I didn’t stop, thinking maybe that’s just what you have to deal with in metal construction? Just as I got in a rhythm and almost finished cutting all of the way through, the blade hit a rough spot and broke off from the saw and flew backward! I jumped out of the way, but it went into the ground missing my leg… Praise the Lord.
I turned around and everyone’s face was that scary shock of like ‘wow, that was close’. Just about that time, a construction worker who was working on a house adjacent to us came by and started getting on to me for how wrong I was doing it. I was very humble and eager for him to teach me/take over the project so I did not die. He did not speak any English, but I know enough Spanish to realize he was telling me something like “get out of the way white boy, watch and I’ll show you how to do it”.
For the next 30 minutes my new friend Osman continued to cut all of the remaining metal. Afterward our host tried to pay him but he rejected the money, he then asked him if we went to church. Osman had not been to church and had never heard of Jesus. For the next 15 minutes we shared the Gospel (mainly Dani, he’s the baller in this story I’m just a role player) and explained who Jesus is. Dani connected Osman with Stephen the pastor of the church we were working on. I pray that the seed of the Gospel was planted firmly and will grow inside of Osman’s heart.
Not only did God protect me by having a veteran construction worker come save me, but Osman was able to hear the Gospel, and that was more important than building any roof.
