So today, a group of us were assigned to women’s ministry. We weren’t given a whole lot of detail, just to help with whatever the women were doing. So in the morning, they were working in the kitchen, so we were working in the kitchen, too. 4 of the girls were assigned to cleaning and bleaching the floors, and the other 2 of us were cleaning pots. Both of us were kind of intimidated and wanted the pots to be as clean as possible because we wanted to make sure we were working to their standard. So we each cleaned our pots spotless for about a half an hour and then the woman who was in charge of the kitchen called over to us and said “You know you have 10 more pots to clean, right?” And we were only supposed to be there for a couple more hours! So we learned really quickly how to balance cleanliness with speed.
Then after lunch, we did a bible study with the women on Proverbs 10. It was with all the same women who were in the kitchen minus the woman who was in charge. In the program, they do daily bible studies, so all we really planned was to share which passages spoke to us and some guided questions to ask.
As we were going through the passage ourselves, we were having some trouble picking it apart. The chapter mostly talks about wisdom in speech, and we just had a hard time relating to it. Then, when the women came in, we asked them their thoughts on the passage and they just laid so much truth on us. They talked about how God sees the hearts of those who are honest, and how what we speak is what is in our heart, so we must be careful that what we speak is of God because if it is not, we still have some work to do to make God the center of our desires. They also said that in this passage, as in most of proverbs it compares 2 people; a person acting in the flesh and a person acting in the spirit, and that we should strive to act more in the spirit and let God guide our actions, rather than letting our limited knowledge in the flesh dictate our actions.
These women were so willing to listen and contribute to the discussion that we were just in awe of how well they understood scripture. We thought we were going to be teaching the lesson, when in fact, they taught us a whole lot more than we taught them.
We ended our time together by drawing pictures of how God sees us, and they were no less profound. For some of them, they referred to other passages in scripture to talk about their identity in Christ. One woman talked about Proverbs 30:25 which says “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer”, and spoke about how she feels like an ant. Even though she is small and weak, she still works diligently and is able to provide for herself and her family through her faith. Another woman referred to Matthew 5:13-16 by drawing a table with a lamp on it, saying that God sees her as a light on a table in a dark room, shining for all to see.
I have honestly never really studied Proverbs before today, but getting to see and hear the depth of wisdom these women had from studying it every day inspired me to try and spend more time digging into these simple truths.
The ministry that is happening here in Medellin is truly amazing, and we’ve barely even begun our work here! If God could do this in 2 days, imagine what He will do in the rest of this month!
