Some Testimonies.

A couple of really cool things happened in our last few days in Esmeraldas. The first one was when we partner with the youth group to do a door-to-door evangelism in one of youth group leader’s neighborhoods. We split up in teams and decided we’d spend one hour just going around telling people about the love or God. I was in a group with two other girls, one was a girl from our team who’s first language was Portuguese and the other was an 18 year old girl from the youth group who was on the shy side and didn’t say anything. However some how in the hour we spent evangelizing we had 4 people come to the Lord. The first was a women that as soon as we knocked on her door invited us into her house where she accepted Christ as her savior and was in tears as we prayed for her children who were wrapped up in drug and alcohol addictions. The second house we went to there were 3 kids and it seemed like the oldest (I think she was 15) was taking cared of her 2 younger brothers. The older of the two boys said that he’d been to church once and liked what he’d heard but the two others had never heard about Jesus before. I don’t exactly remember what Leticia and I said in our rough Spanish’s but they all accepted Jesus as their savior and we were even able to give them their first Bible. A verse I received in my quiet time a couple days after this confirms what a miracle this was.

Ephesians 2:8-10
“For it is by grace you have been saved, though faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared us in advance to do.”

There is no way that we did that on our own, it was a perfect example of us just doing our part and the Holy Spirit doing the rest. Another testimony happened the day before we returned to Quito. Our social service worker liaison from MIES took the team out to a “Parrillada” which my Lonely Planet phrasebook describes as “mixed grill – huge slabs of grilled meat prepared over hot coals served with spicy sauces and vegetables”. It was the best meal I’d eaten in four months. After dinner she (and her daughter) came to church with us. Now the daughter of the our liaison had been flirting with me for the last two weeks and instead of blowing it I just used it as an opportunity to become friends and share Jesus with her; this girl is gorgeous, and sure enough she comes to our last hang out together dressed to kill. She’d come to dinner wearing high heels, skinny jeans and a backless top with massive cleavage that she was filling out with a push-up bra; when I saw her sitting in one of the back rows of the church texting through worship I almost didn’t sit next to her. But there was no reason that I shouldn’t, we’d become friends in our 2 weeks together and I’d I hadn’t done anything with her that I was uncomfortable with our whole team knowing about. I started telling her that worship times were difficult for me as well because I didn’t understand any of the words and I showed her this list I’d made with a bunch of my friend’s names on it. I told her that when they played a song that I didn’t know I’d pull this list out and start interceding for everyone on it one at a time. Then I pulled out a pen and asked her if she’d write her name at the bottom of the list. As the service continued she wrote me a little going away letter while I worshiped and prayed for other people on the youth group. Later I told her that I thought that God brought our YWAM team to her and her family for a reason and asked her if she wanted to pray with some of the girls on our team and she said yes. After the service the girls on our team told me that she’d accepted Jesus, and when I saw her fixing all her make-up she cried off she told me that she also thought God had brought our team to her. I think God was trying to show me how He doesn’t want us to missionary-date, just be a missionary.

Well, we’re back in Quito and we’re all living together again in a church. We took a 6 hour bus ride from Esmeraldas at 1:00AM and got stopped by police on the way here and the whole bus had to be searched (for drugs or something I don’t know). After my pat down we got back on the bus and we arrived in Quito at about 7:30AM. Groggy and sleep-deprived we found ourselves lugging our backpacks up a steep sidewalk for about a quarter mile before our new church chaperon tell us he doesn’t have a ride for us and that we’re going to have to walk to the bus station with all our bags and it’s who knows how many miles away. We’d had a full day before are red-eye bus ride and the last thing anyone wanted to do was walk any distance with all of our heavy packs. But just as we were accepting the fact that this was our reality our chaperon flags down what I think was school bus. The driver actually stops and with his big empty bus volunteers to drive us all to our destination for free (it was either free or 6 dollars, it couldn’t make out the conversation very well) and 15 minutes later we were at the church.

Unlike the previous month, the next two weeks promise to be very organized with a daily schedule of things to do. God’s been reminding me He’s with me in cool little ways here. While I was working on my Psalms book four little kids from the church came up to me and were asking me a bunch of questions in Spanish. I didn’t understand all of them but I was able to answer most of them. After three of them got bored with me I kept talking with the oldest one (I think he was 9). He told me that he wants to learn English but he’s not very good at it in school. I told him that I knew how he felt and that most of the time I didn’t think I was ever going to learn Spanish and he said “But you can speak Spanish, you’re talking to me right now” and when he said that it kind of cut right into me in a way that I know it was totally the Holy Spirit encouraging me. Also after praying for motivation to exercise more ( because I’m gaining weight on this outreach as a result of everything being served in either extremely large quantities, or cooked with massive amounts of oil) and God’s be faithful in motivating me to wake up early every morning without fail to go running.

Something I believe the Lord’s been teaching me is that I need to admit that I’m weak in different areas so that He can be strong for me. When I’ve admitted I can’t seem to figure out Spanish on my own and that I need His help He’s been faithful to help me learn more and more (I’ve only been here 3 and half months and I’m talking to people) and during one of my runs I was praising God that somehow, even after the long day I’d had before, somehow I was awake at 7AM running up and down the street in front of the church. I felt like I had a mini-“revelation” that it could be like this for every area of my life, not just Spanish comprehension and exercising, but in everything I need to admit that I NEED God’s help and he’ll be freed up to help me stronger than I could ever be on just my own effort.