We had a great Thanksgiving with my parents and then a sweet time of fellowship with friends in Sucre over Christmas. I'm so grateful for time with friends and family in these last few months of my time on the mission field!
Prayer Necessities:
1. Please lift up the new church in Salvatierra and ask that God would continue to mature them and that they would be filled with His Spirit. They are learning to study His Word and to pray and share their faith with others, so please pray that they would be faithful to listen to and obey Him.
2. Continue to pray for the Quechua churches in the communities of Ayuma and Taramarca, asking that God would work through them to bring many others to faith in Him.
3. Please ask for God's wisdom for Leah and me as we disciple this new church in Salvatierra. We feel an enormous sense of responsibility, as we only have a few months remaining with them, and we need to know how to prioritize the teachings they need to hear.
Inquiring Minds Wanna Know:
Salvatierra is a quaint jungle community with around 200 occupants, including children. (This is a picture of the Catholic church's building there.) The people are friendly, and many of them at least understand Spanish, even if they can't speak it very well. This is a definite improvement from the Quechua villages, where we have to communicate in Quechua if we want to communicate at all. Here in Salvatierra, we can disciple our new church in Spanish, and they translate the stories into Guarayo, their heart language, which is nice because they have to learn the story at least well enough to translate it for their friends.
The church is made up of four believers: Mariluz and her husband Humberto, Mariluz' best friend Adela, and Humberto's younger brother Benjamin. In the picture here, Mariluz and Humberto are in the center on the back row, Benjamin is just to the right of Humberto, and Adela is in the back row, third person from the left.
We have nightly meetings that are available to anyone who wants to participate. Our main goal is to disciple the new believers, but we haven't abandoned the idea of evangelism. There are different participants each night, but the four believers are always faithful to come. In the meetings each night, we teach a story, sing songs in Spanish and/or Guarayo, pray, and just enjoy each others' company.
We have also started having afternoon meetings with just the believers. Because the Guarayo are more literate than the Quechua, we can do some things differently than we ever would have in Ayuma or Taramarca. In those meetings, we sometimes study God's Word together. Mariluz and Adela both have Bibles, and they will read it aloud for Benjamin, who is mentally challenged and can't read. (Humberto was out of town when we started doing this, so we are hopeful he will participate with us on this next visit.) We then discuss the passage together to see what we can glean from it. Sometimes we pray together; other days we go out to spend time with non-believers, with the goal of sharing the Gospel with them. Leah and I are hopeful that this kind of hands-on discipleship will bear fruit in the lives of these baby Christians.
Our latest trip was a bit of a challenge. I got sick in the middle of it, and we had to return to Santa Cruz for a few days as I recovered. Once we got back to the village, we only had a couple of days left, and it was Leah's turn to teach a story at our nightly meeting. Her teaching involved this section of Scripture:
"Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Won’t he rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'" (Luke 17:7-10)
We got into a good discussion about that passage, as Mariluz talked about how it seemed kind of wrong of the master to not let the servant eat when he had just come in from working so hard in the field. To tell you the truth, I too have always thought about that passage as being kind of unfair. I mean, if the master is good, wouldn't he just tell the servant down and eat first?
Well, there's a real simple answer to that question. No.
See, the servant's (or slave's, to be more accurate in the translation) job is to serve the master, not vice versa. The slave's only responsibility is to do what the master tells him to do.
That evening, I thought a lot about that in relation to myself. Truth is, I sometimes look at myself and think I'm offering the Lord a lot. I mean, I had just come back from being sick and, instead of just scrapping the remainder of the trip, I had decided to go ahead and come back out to finish a few more stories. I had been thinking that I was a pretty good servant.
The next day, I got the chance to think about all of that even more. There are two rivers between Salvatierra and Urubicha, a bigger town on the main highway a little over 10 miles away. During rainy season, those two rivers get too big to cross in a vehicle, so we have to leave our truck in Urubicha and hike the 10 miles to Salvatierra with backpacks containing the food and gear we'll need to survive in the village. We have to leave the same way.
So, on that Sunday morning, Leah and I got up and loaded our packs onto our backs and took off for Urubicha. We left around 6:15 in the morning, and arrived at the river just outside Urubicha at about 10:45. By that time, it was unbelievably hot, and the last 90 minutes or so of the hike has no shade. There was only the sun beating down on us. Even Riley would walk a few feet and look for shade just off the path, wait on us to catch up with her, then repeat the process. By the time we got to our truck, we couldn't wait to get in, crank up the air conditioning, and head for Santa Cruz.
But we had left our truck at the house of one of the believers in Urubicha. And he wanted us to come in to participate in the last part of the church service.
Now I'll just be honest: The very last thing in the world I wanted to do was go into a hot building and listen to them talk in a language I couldn't understand. I was just angry. Why couldn't this guy understand that we had just walked forever in the blazing hot sun and just wanted to go home?
But then I thought about the fact that I'm just an unworthy slave. Sure, I had just been plowing, but I needed to continue to serve my Master. And, when all of that was done, I could still only say, "I have only done my duty."
Because the Truth is that my Master, incredibly, has served me. Though I am anything but deserving, He continually gives me food and drink, good health, constant encouragement and, best of all, salvation that allows me to know Him. He set the example for me in how to be a servant. Why should I think I should be praised because of what I have done?
I wish I could say that I've completely learned this lesson and now just serve others without ever complaining. I didn't even do that well with this lesson on that day with the church in Urubicha. But the Lord continues to teach me and, with His help, I'll eventually get this.
I'm just an unworthy servant; I have only done my duty.
Check out the huge hairy spider I found in my tennis shoe during our trip!
