Seeing God at work...

Wow, these last couple weeks God has opened so many doors for His gospel to be proclaimed and it has been so amazing to see Him work through the power of the gospel!

These last couple of weeks God has really put it on my heart to go deeper with the girls that I have been building relationships with here and begin to disciple them. For the last about month and a half I have been working in the medium girls houses (girls generally from 9-14--64 of them, with older helper girls ages 15-19--12 of them). I have been spending most of my time with the older helper girls (high schoolers/colieganas) and have felt a great desire to spend one-on-one time with them to begin to disciple them individually. So far it's been such a blessing to see God open these girls hearts to me and speak gospel truth into their lives. Most of them have so much pain in their past. Please pray for me that I would know when to just listen and when to speak and when called to speak that I would speak words that lead them closer to the Lord.

Though I'm really excited about discipling the older girls, some of the most amazing and surprising things God has been doing has been in the hearts of the medium girls. God has been opening such unexpected doors with girls that I least expected, with girls that I have gotten really frustrated and angry with, who are some of the worst behaved girls. Let me share a couple stories...

One girl, who is 15 has been totally unpredictable with her behavior. I work with her (and a group of other fairly difficult girls) cleaning up after dinner. She has been stubborn, angry and disobedient many times. One day, she hit her 8 year old sister very hard in the face right in front of me. When I saw this, I became more angry than I have been in a very long time, I could barely control it. I reprimanded her more firmly and intensely than I think I ever have to anyone before. She did not respond well to me to say the least. In many ways I felt like I blew my chances with her. But MIRACULOUSLY a couple days later she approached me to apologize and seek my counsel. What?! I thought she of all people would probably hate me and never turn to me to confide in me. But by God's grace just a few days later we were sitting together talking about her life, her struggles and about the gospel. And now I'm starting to disciple her. God is so good. I am so thankful that His working in people's hearts is not dependent on me.

Another girl, who is 14 (another after dinner clean-up girl) similarly tried to hide from me two days in a row and who I've had a frustrating experience with, ended up asking me out of the blue how does a person change. This led to an awesome conversation about the gospel and genuine heart change coming from understanding our sin, what Jesus has done on the cross and the forgiveness and love of the Lord. Which then led to spending time with her one-on-one and talking about her heart-breaking past. I'm also starting to disciple her. I am so glad that God chooses to work whether or not I have faith that He will and in the hearts of those who I struggle to have hope for change. How dimly, how humanly I see things, oh that I could have God's eyes and not these eyes that I have that are so blind.

God has also been teaching me so much about how to preach and show the gospel to younger girls. I've had two really cool experiences recently....

The first situation was with a girl who is about 10 years old. She can behave pretty badly, getting into fights often with other girls. One night, she hit another girl which made the girl her cry. So I pulled her aside. My first inclination always is to operate out of my flesh, to get frustrated, to lose patience, to reprimand harshly, to punish...but God has been showing me lately His way and has been giving me the power to follow it. So I sat down with her and began to talk with her. She was super defensive, angry and closed at first. She said she didn't believe in God (which I knew was most likely a lie, as a way to defend herself) and that she didn't think hitting people was wrong. But I kept talking with her, I told her the gospel, I talked about sin, about the punishment for sin, and I talked about God's forgiveness through Jesus Christ. As I talked she began to cry. The power of the gospel was breaking through her hardened heart, it was breaking down her walls, it was beckoning her. I spent almost 45 minutes preaching the gospel to her over and over as she cried and fought the lies of Satan. She eventually admitted that what she did was wrong, and that she wanted God's forgiveness. At first she couldn't bring herself to ask God for forgiveness so I let her go back to her room. About 5 minutes later though she called me to her room because she wanted to talk. Her face was shy but softened. So we went outside, as soon as we sat down she said she wanted to ask for God's forgiveness. So we prayed together asking God to forgive her. It was so beautiful. So beautiful to see God's Spirit work so sweetly in her life.

Today...what a day! This morning I was totally wiped out, I haven't been getting much sleep. And what  is the first thing I find when I get to the medium girls yard? One of our most independent girls who behaves quite badly a lot of the time, totally unwilling to do her morning chores. It would have been easy to just say to get frustrated and say well you are going to be punished for this now shape up and do your work or I'll call another leader here to come reprimand you and make you work. But perhaps I didn't have the energy to get upset or perhaps because God is teaching me His way, I sat down next to her and began to share the gospel with her. Just like the other girl, she was very defensive and stubborn
at first. She also said she didn't believe in God again as a defense mechanism but then it turned into she wanted to go to hell because that's what she believed she deserved. In response to that I simply said well yes she does deserve that, but so do we all, so do I. As I continued to preach the gospel, she eventually admitted that she wanted to ask for God's forgiveness. I then found out that she has never accepted Christ before. After explaining again what it means to accept Christ, to believe in the gospel, she said that she believed that and wanted to accept Christ. So we ended up praying together for her to accept Christ! It was so cool, I would never have thought that that would be how the conversation would end! God is so good.

One last story...later in the day several other medium girls found out that this girl accepted Christ, which then led to a somewhat snowball effect of several other girls wanting to talk with me about God. Word also has been going around about me meeting with the older girls, so each day more are asking me when they can talk with me about God. I can't disciple 76 girls alone, yet I long for each to hear and understand the true gospel, the gospel of grace that saves sinners not the gospel of good works which saves no one. So tonight I went over the the medium girls house to talk with some of the girls who had asked. I went into their bedroom and happened to ask out of about 10 of them how many had accepted Christ, only one raised her hand. I was not expecting this. So I ended up spending over an hour with them explaining the gospel, reading verses from the Bible, drawing pictures and answering questions. It was so cool to correct their works-based notions of being a Christian and accepting Jesus with the true gospel of grace. I know there can be such mixed motivations for them, I don't want them to "accept Christ" superficially just because it's the "cool" thing to do, because the other girls are doing it. I tried to explain clearly what it means to know you are a sinner, to know you need forgiveness, to repent of your sin, to embrace the forgiveness and love of God. I so desire for them to be saved, to be genuinely saved, and to live by the power of the gospel. I asked them to pray tonight, to ask God to show them their sin, to pray about all that I talked with them about. Please please pray that God would truly work in their hearts, that it indeed would be Him drawing them, that they would understand the gospel and be saved by grace through faith. 

Please pray that God would lead me in all things, that He would give me the words to say and the wisdom in how to disciple these girls but most of all that His Spirit would transform lives by the supernatural power of the gospel. 

Thank you for all your prayers, I know without a doubt that they carry me through each day and are opening up the floodgates of heaven in this place.  

some prayer requests...

Life is so busy and crazy here...I have soo much to update on, and the list of things to share just keeps growing everyday but again I find myself without the time to write much of it down but I do want to send out a couple quick prayer requests....I'm going on a retreat tomorrow with our discipleship group high schoolers. The topic of the retreat is inner healing (confessing sin, forgiveness etc). Please pray that God would move powerfully in these young people's lives. Me and my friend Elizabeth (another volunteer) will be leading one of the small groups tomorrow, please pray that God enables us to understand the Spanish of the students we'll be working with so that we can understand their stories, their hearts. Please also pray that God would give us wisdom in how to come alongside them and speak truth into their lives.

Also please pray for the older girls and medium girls in the house that I'm working in here. God's been opening up some really awesome doors lately to speak gospel truth, to disciple girls, and to learn to love like God loves in the midst of really frustrating and difficult situations (I hope to have some time to share some of these stories soon). Pray that God would transform these girls lives with His love and that His Holy Spirit would equip me with the love, the wisdom and all I need to do what He is calling me to do.

Please pray that God would reign in this place and that the gospel, the true gospel would transform lives. Please pray that God would give me the strength, wisdom and love I need each day. I'm being stretched in so many ways here, and I know that I can't survive without God leading me and equipping me every moment.