This past week God did some pretty cool things. Not that He isn’t always doing pretty cool things, but this week it was abundantly clear that He was the one doing them, and not anyone else. Just looking back over the past 7 days His hand is overwhelmingly clear in everything that happened.
Let me explain. This week several other M’s who are serving in Mexico right now came to stay in our sweet little village, and they led a training on translating and recording Bible stories in an indigenous language. Not only were they here to teach us how to record stories, but they were also teaching the local people who came to help us how to evangelize using simple Bible stories, and how valuable it is to memorize these stories.
Planning for this training was a surprisingly stressful time for me and Candace. We spent several weeks before this one trying to plan out the details: we were looking for a place big enough for all of us to meet, trying to find ways to feed 30ish people twice a day, and most of all, searching for people who could take off time from their work and their busy lives to come and translate stories.
Well, Monday was the first day of the training. We got official permission to use our church building on Sunday. We found someone to cook lunch for us on Sunday. Unfortunately, we were still lacking any firm commitment from anyone to help us. When Monday arrived, our fears were confirmed. No one from our village came to help. (Thankfully, our teammates were able to find 4 people who they drove up the mountain to our village, so we were still able to get a bit of work done.) We also had some miscommunication about lunch, so half of the group had already walked away when someone arrived delivering food for us, and we had to go and collect all of the people to come back and eat.
Here is where the really cool stuff starts to happen. Just as everyone is finishing up lunch and getting ready to leave (don’t forget, lunch was delayed because of the mixup), a young couple from our church here in the village showed up to see how things went that day. They were shocked to realize that not a single person from our village had gone to help. So that night, when most of us were getting ready for bed, we heard a knock on the door. There was the young couple, as well as another lady, come to tell us that we should wait for them in the morning, because they were definitely going to be there!
So the next morning, there we were with 4 people from our village, and the group from the other village had nearly doubled in size! Well, the group from our village had a slow start, struggling to understand what the goal was, and although the day’s work ended well, we weren’t really sure if they would be coming back.
The next day, we had 12 people from our village, and only 1 of them had been there the day before! The 1 who came back was one who had struggled a lot the day before, but as we all sat down to try and explain the process to everyone else who was new, he took the lead in explaining it, and we just sat back to watch God at work. He got it! He was explaining things in a way that they completely understood the goal of what we were doing, the value in it. He had caught the vision, and he was passionately explaining to all of the others how they could do this work, and how it could be used to share the Gospel with the people here! It was difficult to keep from laughing out loud for joy at seeing how God was opening the doors for us to do this type of work here.
Well, the team finished the training, and they all packed up and went back to their homes. But the really exciting part is that the people here don’t want to stop working on stories! Minutes after we wrapped up everything for the week, they were asking us when they could do it again. At church on Sunday they were telling others who didn’t participate about how excited they were to do this kind of project, and they have already told us many times that they would love to meet for several hours every week to work on stories.
I am telling you, this is what it looks like when God is at work. It is my prayer that He will continue to work in the hearts of people here, and that it won’t be long until we see more people here coming to know the Lord as they learn more about Him through stories told in their heart language.
