Misty is slowly recuperating and has no problems with her heart. Thank you so much for all your prayers, and please thank Him for His answer!
Prayer Necessities for the Skimmers:
Please pray that our team would be unified and would learn to love one another as they should. Each of the girls has been under major spiritual attack, to the point where some were considering leaving the team. Pray that our girls would be clothed in their spiritual armor (Eph. 6:14-18) and that they would remember that "the one who is in [them] is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 Jn. 4:4).
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know (Bonus for the Readers):
During our training, the main thing we focused on learning was what the church should be like. Biblically speaking, the church has absolutely nothing to do with a building and everything to do with loving and caring for one another. In the book of Acts, the church met daily in the temple courts, and they broke bread together and ate together in their homes (2:46). But the Bible never says they "went to church." They WERE the church, regardless of where they met.
The Bible refers to the church as the body, with Jesus as its head. Each part of the body is equally necessary and important, and God has given each part its gift to be used for the benefit of the entire body (1 Cor. 12:12-27). Without one another, we cannot be prepared for service and cannot be built up to unity and maturity in the faith (Eph. 4:11-13).
I got to see in a whole new way just how this whole "body life" thing works during my training. One of the trainees, a young American named Elaine (pictured to the right), had come to Peru to go through the training, then was planning to return home to the States afterward. She is the sister of one of the Xtreme Team missionaries and had been thinking God might be calling her to the mission field, so her sister suggested that she go through this three months of training with us.
Well, Elaine struggled during her time in the jungle. She was covered in bug bites, she knew barely three words of Spanish and, unlike the rest of us, she hadn't made a two-year or longer commitment through the IMB. So, after two weeks in the jungle followed by two weeks in one of the indigenous communities, she was ready to call it quits.
At that time, we had come out of the jungle to participate in a week-long team meeting. Elaine had already decided to return to the States after the meeting, but she agreed to let the body (the rest of us who had gone through training with her) seek the will of God on her behalf and to submit to what they heard from the LORD.
As the new women's team leaders, Leah and I were asked to lead this process, even though it was completely new for us, too. Seriously, in our individualistic American society, how often are you seeking the will of God for your brother? Even more, how often are you willing to listen and obey when your brother hears a word from the LORD for you? I know I wasn't. I remember telling people, "God doesn't reveal His will for your life to me." But that mentality is completely anti-Scriptural. God called Paul and Barnabas as missionaries not through them as individuals, but through the church at Antioch (Acts 13:1-3). And we are told that, through "speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the Head, that is, Christ" (Eph. 4:15).
So we began to seek the LORD on Elaine's behalf and, at our first meeting, a couple of people shared what they sensed God saying. One had a word from 1 Corinthians and another had a passage from Deuteronomy, and a consensus was forming that Elaine should stay to complete the training.
However, she was not happy with that word. As each person shared, tears flowed down her face and, though we reassured that we loved her and wanted only the best for her, it seemed pretty obvious to all of us that she would leave, regardless of what we said.
Those of us who still had not received a definite word from the LORD fasted and prayed for the rest of the evening. I had been begging that He would show me something clearly in His Word because that is how He always speaks most definitively to me.
The next morning, I awoke early to read my Bible and pray. My normal daily reading was in Ruth, and I had already resigned myself to the fact that I would have to read elsewhere. What could God possibly say on this situation through the book of Ruth? Heh, the LORD delights to confound our human "wisdom," I think. :)
There, in Ruth 2:11-12, I found my word from the word about Elaine:
"You left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."
When we met again - this time without Elaine, to avoid tainting the LORD's word with our emotional reactions - the entire group was in agreement: She should stay, and all of us had Scripture to prove it. But, from her reaction the night before, we knew she would not like our answer. So we began to pray for her and, out of the blue, I suggested we pray specifically. And Amy did just that, asking the Father that He speak to Elaine through us and that He give her the peace she needed, even during the Lord's Supper, which we were to have that night. I listened to her prayer but had no faith that the LORD would answer it. I just expected Elaine to go home.
We called her in and told her how the LORD had spoken to each of us and, as expected, her response was tears. We gathered around to pray for her, then went out to have the Lord's Supper.
During that time, our hearts were sad, but we knew we had been obedient. As we passed the cup, each person had the chance to speak if they so desired. All was done in Spanish, but each person shared different stories of struggles - sicknesses, physical beatings at the hands of non-believers, wrongful incarceration - and how God had sustained them during those times.
As the time drew to a close, Elaine asked to share a word. She spoke about how she struggled in the jungle with bug bites and loneliness and how she just wanted to go home to be with her family. She told of how we had sought the LORD on her behalf and had determined that she should stay but how she planned to go home anyway. But then, during the Lord's Supper, she had listened to one brother speak of how the LORD had sustained him during his misery with mosquito bites in the jungle. In that very moment, the LORD had given her the peace she needed. She was going to stay!
Oh, how we rejoiced! Obedience is a beautiful thing that brings the LORD much honor and glory. And He grew our faith as we saw how He answered our prayers, even when they had no faith behind them (well, mine didn't, anyway).
Oh, and one more thing: Elaine understands no Spanish. Her sister came over to translate the testimony of the young man with the mosquito bites. It was the only thing she translated all night.
"Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom." (Ps. 145:3)
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