Sunday January 26, 2014
Today has been a bit trying for me. It’s Sunday, our day off and I have been with my team and a few others 24/7. Let me be the first to say that living in community is hard, but that’s apart of what I signed up for when I said yes to God about when I chose to come on the World Race.
I am tried, my body hurts, I was sick for a few days this past week, and I along with everyone else are constantly hungry. Hmmm probably how most of the world feels everyday. A bit of a far cry from how I feel at home. We took and hour and a half bus into Tegucigalpa this morning and were dropped off at the mall. We all hoped for a good internet connection and food that would satisfy us, if only for a few hours. We got the food, but the internet was hit and miss almost all day. I was frustrated.
There I sat 3:30pm, one hour before we were to get on the bus to head back to La Ermita. I was furiously trying to upload a video I had made about out ministry in Honduras over the past few weeks. Nope it just wasn’t going to happen. I was at a little table by myself behind a Dunkin Donuts stand. There were two extra chairs at my table where the other girls I was with were sitting before the moved to the wall to charge their phones. As I sat there, I looked up for a moment and there starring back at me was the face of an older gentleman. His eyes begged the question of, “May I sit at your table?”. I moved my stuff and motioned for him to sit with me. He sat and were exchanged our Spanish hellos and good days. He asked me in English, which was a bit broken but still excellent for what I had heard thus far, if I spoke English. There it was, the real connection I had been looking for all day.
If I take you back through my days here in Honduras, I have nothing grand to tell you. No crazy God stories or anything like the others teams have had. God what are you doing, where are you, use me, I want more of you . . . these were my thoughts and I was starting to feel like my time might have been better spent at home. Discouragement was setting in, until Pedro (Peter) sat down at my table,
We continued to talk about where I was from, if I was in school, what I had studied, where I had worked. I found out the same about him, he was 71, a retired doctor who had learned English in school and during his 2 years in New York. About 5 minutes into our conversation, Kelly, one of my squad mates joined Peter and I. She and I asked him questions back and forth to learn more about him. It was interesting and the conversation was getting good. He asked us why we were here in his country and we explained the World Race and what we were doing, this lead us to ask him if he was religious or believed in God. He said no, he was agnostic, he had studied religions before and really didn’t like the rules or guidelines that they required.
PERFECT!
Isn’t that the beauty of the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ?! That he doesn’t require anything of us except that we love his and love others in return!
We had an immediate in and got bold enough to begin to share the love of Christ with this man. Kelly and I were telling this man about Jesus, our love, our Savior. He didn’t get offended or walk away as we spoke; he sat back and listened asking more questions, as he needed. We explained that Jesus requires nothing from us. We told him that we as humans get to bring our dirty lives, our sins, our mistakes, and our failures to his tale, not to be judged, but to be loved because he died for us. Kelly and I each in our own words explained a bit about our pasts and the peace and freedom we now had because of our relationship with Jesus.
Even though Pedro did not received Jesus in that moment, Kelly and I were able to pray for him and ask the Holy Spirit to begin to reveal the love of Christ in this mans life. I believe more than anything we planted seeds in his life and pray that one day someone else will get to reap that harvest of a new life. I walked away refreshed by the fact that God had just sent this man my way, how was I to minister to him? When God calls we answer, in the midst of discouragement, we ask them to come and sit at our table.
I am learning about hearing Gods voice when he speaks to me and today I am thankful that I was bold enough to listen. I put my image aside for an hour despite the people at the tables next to me starring and allowed my words to speak to a man who is so redeemable. I am learning bold love!
