If you were wondering why I haven’t written any blogs recently, it is because I just spent two weeks in Brazil. The mission trip was really tough and challenging but really rewarding. Out of all the countries I’ve been to, Brazil was the toughest in which to minister. The people there had really closed hearts and there was a huge sense of pride. However, God is still God and He can do anything. We still saw lots of people give their life to Jesus and saw God do lots of other cool things.
There were some days that it was tough to have faith that peoples’ lives would be changed. There were days where I wondered if I was really making an impact on the people of Brazil. One day I was talking to a guy whose whole right side of his body was affected by a disease. When I told him that God could heal him and asked if I could pray for him, he respond, “I’m OK with the way I am, I don’t want to be healed.” Stuff like that breaks my heart. People were so lost and they didn’t care.
On our last ministry day, we were having our quiet time and Amós came up to me and asked if he could talk with me. Amós was a guy from the church we were working with. He spoke English and helped us as a translator on many of our ministry days. He looked like he had something serious to talk about, so I told him it was fine. I thought he might want prayer for something, or to talk about how he was being more bold for God (because he was really shy when we got there). I never would have expected what he was about to say; it caught me totally off guard.
Amós started to tell me he had learned about leadership from me over the trip. Some of you may be thinking, “Why are you shocked he would say that?” I was shocked because I wasn’t technically a leader on the trip, and we had not had any conversations about leadership. Amós told me that watching my interactions with our team taught him a lot about how to be a leader. He told me that the way I led but was still a lot of fun had helped him out so much. I honestly didn’t really know how to respond to him. I was blown away. But that wasn’t all he had to say, he was getting ready to drop the bomb on me. Amós proceeded to tell me that through watching me and the team, God had shown him what he was called to do. What!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?! At this point I was doing everything I could to hold back tears. We finished the conversation talking about how we could stay in touch and continue to encourage each other.
When Amós walked away I put my sunglasses on, let a couple tears squeeze out, and started praying. God reminded me about my second trip to Ecuador when a pastor prophesied over me and told me, “God will use you to change the youth of the world.” God seemed to be telling me, “I told you.” I had spent the past couple weeks wondering what kind of impact I would leave on the country of Brazil. Never in my mind did I think I was having that much of an impact. I was able to lead a lot of people to the Lord. I was able to pray for people and see them healed. But the thing that will stand out to me for the rest of my life is the conversation I had with Amós.
I left Brazil with a renewed sense of purpose and a reignited passion. Matthew 5:16 says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” In Brazil my actions spoke a lot louder than my words (trust me, I was terrible at speaking Portuguese). I was completely blown away that God had used me in this way without me even knowing it. I was humbled and reminded that God is so much bigger than what I can see. I was reminded that it really has nothing to do with me, but rather it has everything to do with what God can do through me. I was reminded that God is going to use me to change the world.
until next time…