Difficulties
The trip was very draining for me. Each day had different terrors which gnawed at me. I was terrified of knocking on strangers’ doors and telling them the gospel. I did not have much of a choice though—I was supposed to be modelling this to the Bolivians, so regardless of how inept I thought I was, I had to do it. After I got a feeling for what peoples’ reactions were going to be, and I had a better idea of how the conversation was going to go, I felt more comfortable, although I never got to the point where I enjoyed it. I was also scared of discipleship—I had a few pages of introductory Bible studies in Spanish, but not a real clear idea of the larger goals. And we were responsible for the content of three evening meetings.I think part of it was that I felt kind of tossed into the team lead role without a clear idea of what I was supposed to be doing. Fortunately, Richard Wong, from my church, gave me just-in-time training in the evenings when I sent out my prayer updates, but it would have been nice to get an idea of the high-level goals and values I was supposed to be working towards.
I was also a bit troubled by the way we shared the gospel. It generally worked best to use the evangecube, because the Bolivians were more familiar with it than the tract, and were more willing to present the gospel themselves. However, it bothered me that I never figured out a way to do it in such a way that I could be sure that they really understood a point. So we generally just said the whole thing and invited them to come to Christ at the end. I would have liked to have seen someone model a more interactive presentation to get ideas on how to talk someone through the gospel, while at the same time answering their questions along the way.