Chichos

Every Monday morning at 9:00am, Chicho (owner of the Peruvian $ store here in Tarma) has a meeting with all of his employees, and he has invited us to come each week to open the meeting with a short devotional. This is an incredible opportunity, not only to share the things of God with these girls, but to begin establishing an atmosphere of trust with them. This morning I was given the opportunity to share part of my testimony with these girls, since I had not yet shared much about myself. I had spent a good deal of time last week preparing what I would say, and practicing so that I wouldn’t just read off of my notes. It was interesting to wake up this morning and find that, I wasn’t nervous to say what I had prepared, but I was nervous to simply speak, knowing that I would have to reference my notes from time to time, and realizing that I will most likely make many mistakes with my Spanish. But my prayer for the morning was that God would send his Spirit to move through my words and that His will would be accomplished by our short time with these girls.
So we arrived and I began by telling the girls how I came to accept Christ as my savior, and about my first experience in another culture. I told them about the first time that I had prayed out to God in faith that he would respond, for a boy I had met in Mexico to know Christ, and shared with them 1 John 5:14 which says:

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.”

I then explained how God touched me with this test of faith, and explained how this was the start of my growing desire to share my faith and my life in missions. I explained the reason that I am here in Peru, and encouraged them to come to us with questions they may have, or desires to know Christ better or his word.
Overall I felt that the time went well, we really only have about 15-20 min. but I felt like I was able to share a bit of my heart, even in the midst of making some grammatical mistakes. My prayer is that what I said connected with one or two hearts in that room, and that God would allow me to begin developing a few more intentional relationships with the girls. I know that I still have a lot to learn, and maybe they can help me with that. I’m excited to see where this leads, and I hope that God will continue to work through my inabilities to bring glory and honor to Him.