So I preached for the first time basically on Sunday night! Mexico didn’t count for many reason!
So there I was, standing up in front of a few hundred people and sharing what God had burdened on my heart to impart to these people. Not surprisingly, the message was on guilt. On Saturday night when we were asked to organize a service for the next day I felt like I should do something and I thought that maybe it was time to truly preach but I didn’t say anything. So when no one came up to preach by Sunday morning, the morning of the service, I said that I would be happy too.
Let me give you a little picture of how life looked before, during and after this Sunday service. Our group traveling together has been referred to as a Wholly Mammoth, it takes a long time for anything to happen. So to get from Pana, Guatemala to Nicaragua indirectly took 4 days and then 3 days there and then a ridiculous day to get to Lima, Peru. We had basically no sleep and then had an intense race day and I’m sure everyone knows the outcome… YETI won and we, as the rightful winners, want to especially thank our amazing taxi drivers for their daring spirits to weave through traffic at lightning speeds!!
The next day, Saturday, was orientation day to get a feel for our ministry here and also it’s when I started to feel gross. That’s when the snot hit the fan! I had a huge headache and toothache and the sermon that night (a man screaming without a translator for 2 hours), as well as the crazy worship (pounding drums!!) didn’t help at all, the service ran for 3 ½ hours and I went home and crashed in bed, along with everyone else, we had been run into the ground with no downtime and it was really taking a toll on the entire team.
That night was brut! I woke up a bunch of times and I had a fever, every time I awoke it was in a huge puddle of sweat, I am serious, there were puddles… but I did feel a lot better Sunday morning and decided that I would preach that night.
Sunday was filled with getting the sermon together and practicing. And then the service started. Our team lead worship and had different people share parts of their testimonies as encouragement, then it was my turn. I had an amazing translator, Amelia, and she definitely got my points across very well. Like I said, I didn’t feel nervous at all. Praise God that I felt good all day and during my sermon.
After the sermon I made a call for salvation, I had not planned on this but the pastor had asked me to earlier, so I did. There is no way that this was me, this could only be God cause 6 or 7 people accepted Christ that night after a sermon that was not towards non-believers! I thank God for using His Holy Spirit in huge ways here. Then I opened the floor up to anyone who wanted to pray with the World Race people, we wanted to bless them and cover them in prayer so the front was full and God worked in big ways through my team members as well.
After this the second I sat down I felt the headache come on again and the toothache too. I didn’t finish my dinner (that’s crazy in itself) and I had basically the same sleep as the night before. But don’t worry, I found out that the malaria meds that I have can be used for upper respiratory infections if taken twice a day so now that I have started that I am feeling much better (pretty sure I have a sinus infection.)
All I want to say about this place is the people are so ready to hear the gospel and although sometimes it feels fake and that they just want to accept Jesus so we get out of their houses most of the time they are truly interested in who Jesus is. I thank Jesus every day that He has brought us here to work alongside this church to plant another church in a neighbouring community so that when we are gone they can truly follow up, this is true discipleship. PRAISE GOD!!
