Seeing God at work

Brothers who accepted Christ on the first afternoon.

One of the things I wanted was to see God at work. After all, if God exists, and we are being a part of His work, we should see some evidence. I also come from a scientific background, being a physics major and all, so I tend to assume that God generally does not intervene, but had been coming to the conclusion that that was probably not a biblical view, so I wanted to practice an attitude of assuming God was at work, rather than my usual assuming that he was not.¹

Support

The first evidence of God’s work was with my support raising. Five years ago, when I went to Japan, I had difficulty raising 1/3 of my support. At the time I took it as possible evidence that going to Japan was more my idea than God’s. Since I am hoping that God calls me to be a missionary some time, if support raising went poorly this time, I would have to seriously consider if God wanted me to be a missionary. This time support raising was much better, and the only reason I was short was that I forgot to ask a number of my good friends outside my church. (Which I feel really bad about, because I would have liked them to have the opportunity to be a part of God work in Bolivia)  So I feel like God confirmed that I was following Him by going to Bolivia.

Andy

I learned about the second of God’s work later than it actually happened. George Guida, the North American team leader, had paired Andy and I up before he knew anything about us. I asked him about it, and he said that he was listening to God on who to put together, and God said to put Andy and I together. We got along really great, we have similar values, we enjoyed each other’s company, and we worked well together. I think I work well with extroverts (since I am a bit on the introverted side), and Andy’s strength with children definitely complimented my strength with adults. We had lots of children and lots of adults, and without the other I think we would have been less effective.

Lights at the evening meeting

Our first evening meeting got off to rather rocky start when no one showed up for half an hour (I had been warned that punctuality is not a Bolivian value), and then after a few church members showed up, the lights went out. Missionaries talk about spiritual attacks, and while I do not know for sure (later I read a book that suggests that rather than Satan being able to attack us, all he can do is what he did in Job: claim we will not follow God if he does not give or stops giving us what we want more than Him. God is desirous of weeding that out of us anyway, so he lets Satan take it away so that we can prove Satan wrong by seeking God anyway, simply because God is intrinsically worthy loving), this seemed as clear as anything. I was pretty sure that God wanted us to have the meeting to bring people closer to Him, so if the lights were preventing us from doing that, either it was God doing it, or Satan, and either way, I was pretty confident that asking God to work was a prayer that would be answered. The church members and my team had some brief Korean-style, everyone-pray-at-once prayer (I’ve never liked Korean-style prayer before, but it was then that I realized that it was kind of exciting being able to hear a bunch of people praying for the same thing that would advance God’s kingdom that you are praying for). Pastora Nayara called the city about the power, and we moved out to the entrance of the church on the sidewalk, which was lit by a street lamp, and started leading the kids in some children’s songs. Which, I am pretty sure, attracted more kids. After we filled up the sidewalk area, the lights came back on and we moved inside. Raul mentioned to us that Pastora Nayara expressed surprise that “they’ve never fixed it that quickly before.” It was pretty much just the church that had lost power, and I never saw anybody fix anything, so I doubt that it was the city who fixed the power...

Ky filming us

Rafael

Rafael and his wife were the first non-Christians that we talked to on the first day, and as I have already mentioned, I really did not think that they had really committed to following Christ (plus I had my doubts that simply sharing the Gospel was really going to work, since none of my friends had ever turned to Christ as a result of being told the Gospel). So I was quite surprised when he told us the next day that he had stayed far from God because he knew that if he followed God, he would have to turn the other cheek, just like the missionary he saw, and he did not think he could do that. His honesty was endearing, and it also strongly suggested that he really had turned to God. So I saw that whether people turned to God really had nothing to do with us. I did not give a wonderously compelling presentation; if anything it was probably hard to listen to, since it was translated. I had no idea that Rafael was already clear on what God wanted, and I had no idea that his heart had changed and all he needed was to be asked. I did not even know that anything had happened until the next day. And then, we grew to love this couple, and of all the people we talked with, I see a great opportunity for the church to love them by bringing the church to them. Yet had it been me, I would have written them off.

Ky’s timing

Another work of God was the timing of when Ky came to work with our team. Ky was a retired fireman, had been on many e3 trips, and was full of wisdom and love for the people. His role was to spend a day with each team and film us. He did not need a lot of footage, though, so most of the time he was a third team member. I did not know when he was going to join us, although I had a vague idea that he might join us one of the days. The day that he came was the first day that Pastora Nayara came out with us, so she was able to see Ky model sharing with people at a much more mature level than either Andy or I, who had never even had anyone model it for us. It was a good time for me, because he could model the kinds of things that are useful to talk about for new Christians at an evening meeting. It was also good timing for the new Christians, because the only adults that became Christians came on the evening that he spoke. Of all the days that he could have come, I think the one he came was the most effective for God’s kingdom.