Her name was Ede, the woman who changed my race!
Week one of the race I was struggling with the language barrier with the people we were working with in Lima, Peru. All I wanted was to be able to communicate in order to build relationships. Before the race I had all these expectations of building deep, meaningful relationships with the people I come into contact with. However, my attitude changed within one week!
There was a day where I gave up and I felt myself distance myself. We were going house to house to invite women to a women’s meeting later that evening where one of us would share our testimony. I was challenged by other teammates to be the one to go up to some of the houses to invite them in Spanish. I tried a couple of times but just ultimately failed. I felt frustrated with myself to the point of defeat. For the rest of the day all I could think about was how I will ever be able to speak truth into anyone’s life with this huge gap between us.
I couldn’t take the blinders off my eyes and I began to sit in defeat. The opportunities were right in front of me but I wouldn’t allow myself to see them because I was so focused on the fact that I needed a translator at the heels of my feet all the time.
The morning after the women’s meeting, I had some quiet time with the Lord. I was pleading him to break barriers that day. I asked him to take me out of this defeated attitude and into a hopeful one. The morning went about per usual; ate breakfast, prepared for the day, then hopped on a bus to Ventanilla. What I didn’t realize was this wasn’t going to be a normal bus ride, that this bus ride would change me.
I found a seat to sit in at the back of the bus, all nice and snuggled between bunches of people. The moment I sat down, I look over to my left only to notice an older Peruvian woman reading her bible. I sat there for a second thinking about what I should do. Either I could ignore it and go on with my day or I can take this opportunity to speak with her about Jesus. As I was processing this, I heard the Lord speak to me,
“Here’s the opportunity you were looking for!”
My first response was
”uhhhhh how?”
Well, sitting right next was a squad mate who knew some Spanish. So I asked her how to say, “do you know Jesus?” in Spanish. For a couple minutes I practice saying the question in Spanish.
When I felt confident enough, I turned to my little friend next to me and asked her. She looks up from her bible with eyes just full of pure joy and peace. She answers “SÍ” followed by pointing to her heart. She then goes off in super fast Spanish with lots of hand gestures for about 5 minutes. I sat there nodding my head not knowing what to do since I didn’t think through what would happen after my little Spanish question. However, sitting there listening to her go on and on in Spanish I noticed her facial expression. She was so excited and happy to be sharing whatever it was she was sharing. She had a light in her eyes that just showed off the fire that was inside of her for the Lord. Without me knowing one of our translators was sitting just two seats away, he jumps in and starts translating what she was saying, She was telling us how majestic God is and when she looks out at His creation she is in awe of His beauty. She was also saying how she wants to be more diligent about reading God’s word since that is where life is. We ended up finding out that she was reading the book of Acts. She began talking about Paul’s journeys and his teachings. Then our conversation ended due to movements on the bus where we ended up in a new seat. After a few minutes she said goodbye to us and walked off the bus. During the rest of our bus ride I decided to start reading through Acts. I came across this verse that brought me peace…
“ Then what looked like flames of tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.”
Acts 2: 3-4
My issue wasn’t the language barrier; my issue was that I didn’t see God big enough to break down those walls. The Lord is above the barriers between people. I realized that I was using the language issue as an excuse instead of making the effort to be vulnerable with people and allowing God to handle the rest.
