As we pulled up to the high school where we were going to be getting our first opportunity to be part of a Youth For Christ event here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, a flash of color among the navy and white uniforms caught one of my teammates eyes.
“Lila, that girl has red hair!”
I looked across the drive way and sure enough, there was a red head, standing amongst a group of middle school aged girls. As we climbed out of the pickup truck, unloading guitars, speakers and backpacks, there was a rustle of excitement from the group of girls. They began to point at me, staring at my hair and then gesturing back to their friend. After a few moments of me awkwardly watching them watch me, they realized that I was very aware of their staring and whispering. A couple shy smiles later and the red head, her lips and teeth stained an equally vivid red by the lollypop she was sucking on, lifted up her braid and pointed to it as she raised her eyebrows in a question.
It is crazy how many words can be spoken in a person simply lifting her eyebrows. It was an invitation to come over, a hope that the college aged gringa would think that this was an acceptable, cool way to invite her over and underneath it all a desire to be loved on.
After a deep breath (middle school girls can be terrifying. I have personally experienced being one:) I walked over to this group of precious girls and struck up a conversation. We learned each other’s names and ages, with lots of mispronunciation, misunderstanding and even more giggles. Following this was a series of rapid fire questions. What did I like to do? What was my favorite movie? What was my favorite music? Was I married? Did I have a boyfriend? As we stumbled through these questions, giggling when I accidently said that I liked Justin Beiber ALOT rather than saying that I liked his music, it dawned on me that these girls wanted me to like them, to approve of them, to see them as equals.
I wasn’t able to share the Gospel with them, but because I simply took the time to listen and love on them they came and stood front row to hear me play guitar and then they had the opportunity to hear the testimony of a former gang member and have the Gospel shared with them all in Spanish.
I was afraid to go speak to them, remembering the horrors of middle school rejection. I was uncomfortable speaking to them because my Spanish is so bad and surely they would just get frustrated. I was too tired to go speak to them, because I meet so many new people every day, asking names and ages trying to see each individual, but praise God that the Gospel isn’t about me. It’s about Jesus and He overcame every one of those things in a single second, propelling me over to what turned out to be one of the sweetest times of ministry yet.
My redheaded friend and I:)
My beautiful group of new friends. In case you were wondering, they also like Justin Beiber (both him as well as his music), hamburgers, a variety of pets and in general math is not their favorite.
This was the second group that we did the program for. basically, we intro with my guitar/singing, tell the kids what Youth For Christ is, one of the guys share their testimonies and then our host Aben, shares the Gospel. Afterwards we pray with kids, share prophetic/encouraging words and just hangout.
Singing “Ever Be” mashed up with “Lose my Soul”. All of these pictures were taken by Fabio, one of the guys who works for Youth For Christ. He is a huge blessing, walking everywhere we go and spending the night up at the site we are staying at to make sure we are safe. He is also a super creative and wonderful photographer.
The view from our window at night:) Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
