I like the letter e. I use it a
lot. Did I think it would completely change my perspective on how God works?
Not. A. Chance.
Fast forward to training camp –
individual lives were changed and our teams had been made. My team is awesome
and soon I’ll fill you guys in on my team members. Friday rolled around and it
was “Ministry Day”. This is the part where I’m thinking, “Don’t make me do
this, don’t make me go talk to strangers on the street. I’m not good at this…”
Every time I think this, I should just know that God is going to rock my world.
Every time I feel incapable, He pulls through.
We learned that we were going to
head into a part of town called Little Mexico on Friday afternoon to do
ministry. What exactly were we going to do? God knew. We didn’t. So, we spent
part of the morning praying as a team, asking God to show us where to go and
who to talk to. Seemingly random images popped in our heads. We wrote them
down. A man in a black hat. People with umbrellas walking down the street. A
little girl. Flowers. A corner building by a dark alley. The letter e.
Hmmm, okay God, I don’t get it.
But oh well, here we go. So we drove over to Little Mexico and started walking
down the street. Almost right away, we notice a man in a black hat sitting at a
taco stand.
Teammate: I want some tacos.
Other teammate: Good cover, let’s
go over there.
So we walk over to the taco stand
and strike up a conversation with this man. We asked which tacos were the best.
We asked his name. We asked where he was from and what he was doing here. And
come to find out, his mom lives here and she’s sick and he moved to take care
of her. So we prayed for him and his mom and that he could soon go home.
Alright, God, that was pretty
cool. I didn’t say much in the conversation; some of my teammates took the
lead. But I still walked away trusting God a little more.
We kept walking. We walked past a
guy who was on the phone and when we were five paces past him, we realized that
his hat had the letter e on the front. So what did we do? Two of my teammates
turned around and chased this guy down the street. They talked for a few
minutes and asked what he was doing. Turns out, he was headed to the local
tattoo parlor we had already passed. Cool, maybe we’ll stop in there later on
our way back to the car. The guy seemed real nice. We walked some more, talked
to a few more people, prayed together and decided to head back and stop in at
the tattoo parlor.
We looked around, saw the guy from
earlier and struck up a conversation with the tattoo artist sitting at the
front desk. He was drawing a tattoo but continued talking to whoever walked up
to the desk. I was talking to him when my teammate Christine walked up and
started talking about a book she’d recently read about the connection between
creativity and spirituality. And all of sudden, I could see this guy get real
interested in what she was saying. So before we both knew it, this guy is
telling us that he has a little faith but he’s questioning whether or not you
can be sure about going to heaven. “OH MY GOODNESS!” I’m thinking. This is crazy.
This is unexpected. And I have no clue how to say everything I want to say to
this guy.
So God stepped in, plain and
simple. He gave us the words. He led my team leader over to share the gospel
story with us to this man and another teammate came over and shared some
scripture with this guy. We prayed with him before we left and made sure to
give him a phone number so that he could get in contact with someone who could
continue to answer his questions.
I walked out of that tattoo parlor
thinking in a completely different way. God can use whatever he wants to lead
us to people who are searching. It can even be as simple as the letter e.
I
always glanced over the letter e. I NEVER considered that it could change my
perspective on how God works, much less maybe change someone’s life. But God is
just that good, and just that big and just that incredible.
