Thursday, March 13, 2014

Day 5: "Of Course, You Know This Means War..."

Today's theme was the Spirit's power...

This morning, some conversation revealed that we had a few people having weird dreams last night. Weird in a spiritual attack sense, not in a Joel 2:28 sense. That, along with some other occurences, led us to feel that our group needed to pray for strength and shift into a more deliberate wartime mindset... I love that spiritual attacks actually only serve to remind us what's going on and encourage us to press further into the power and protection of God.

For those who were wondering: Yes, I did quote Groucho Marx in reference to spiritual war. No, I'm not sorry.

Heather and I started together today, hoping to run into Isaac (see day 3). Feeling a bit disconnected, we opted to use the first 30 minutes or so of our evangelism time to spend time with God. One of the things prayed for was that someone would approach us, someone we could both talk to. After we prayed, we started walking and within 3 minutes we heard, "Hey, do you guys go to Texas A&M?" (in English). So that was how we met Mixtli, a guy who had spent some time living in Dallas before returning to Querétaro for school. He said he was looking into a lot of religions, seeking truth and that he would love to talk with us after his class about what we believed. While he was in class, we walked over to the other side of campus and stopped to talk with a girl who said she did not have much time to talk and did not speak English very well. We talked to her briefly and then prayed for her and left. As we walked away, Heather felt we should leave a copy of the gospel with her, so we walked back to see if she was there still. She was... de hecho, she was sitting there with tears streaming down her cheeks as she explained that being prayed for was exactly what she needed at that moment (! way to go, God). We took some more time to tell her how much God loved her, go briefly through the gospel and invite her to come experience a community where she could have a spiritual family... (Please pray that she will be able to come to our meet-the-church event on Saturday)... We met back up with Mixtli and share the gospel, though he was less receptive (and a little less friendly) than we had hoped. It was a good conversation though and we were able to plant some good seeds.

We had lunch at ITESM (essentially, the Tec de Monterrey, but in Querétaro), got a campus tour and went to talk with people. Chris and I met our first Mexican Buddhist (as did Justin and Ana) and had a really good talk with a guy named Mario (though I don't think that we will see the fruit from that one). I found a tennis ball on our tour. He now has a sharpie smiley-face and is on my dresser.

We got some logistics done at the hotel (making our follow-up list for the Aguilars (this was frustrating for me, heh)). Afterwards, we headed to their house for some dinner and fellowship (this was beautiful and encouraging). I've loved watching Justin very casually, yet deliberately provide discipleship for David during our times at the house. Tonight he (along with Rodger) encouraged and challenged him to think on spiritual gifts and what that's all about.

An encouragement (per a late-night conversation in a mini-van): we are called to be story-tellers; to bear witness to 1) the greatest story ever lived out (i.e. the gospel) and 2) the miniaturized, individual stories of what God does for us. Everything from salvitic testimonies to stories of encouragement unlooked-for give glory to God. If God does something in your life, tell people; else you are robbing him of the glory due his name. Our lives stand as living monuments to the work of God, but monuments without explanation lose their meaning. Nobody knows why Stonehenge is there; it's cool, but ultimately meaningless apart from its mysteriousness. I don't want my life to be a mystery; I want everyone who thinks about me to think about Jesus, everyone who looks at me to see Jesus, everyone who talks about me to mention Jesus (Breastplate of St. Patrick, anybody?). Is there anything in life more worth striving for?

Pray that our last day of campus evangelism (Thursday) will go well, that we can meet back up with our previous solid contacts and make some new ones. Pray for physical and spiritual protection for our team and the Aguilar family...


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