A battle to love, Pieces of my heart, Longing for a home…

I haven’t written in a long time and there is a lot to update on but for now I just want to share something that has been on my heart for a while now, and was brought to the surface again today. It’s hard to put into words but I’m going to try.

Today I got back from visiting Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos for the third time since being here (the first orphanage I ever visited, where Diego lives). By the time I got back my heart felt quite heavy and my body tired and slightly nauseous. Going to NPH is always quite emotional for me because of the weight that place has in my life. I often don’t know how to sort through all I feel. So I got back to Emmanuel and went for a run, my go-to for when my emotions feel too heavy and confusing. A few minutes into my run, once I got into the woods and had reached the top of the first hill I broke down crying.

…There’s a battle in my heart to live, to long, to love, to risk losing, to believe, to trust, to open my heart…but it hurts, it physically hurts. I wanted to vomit today on my run. I often feel that every fiber of my heart is fighting to protect itself, to close itself off, because I have loved and lost, and the sadness, the loneliness feels unbearable at times. My whole time being here at Emmanuel I’ve been fighting this battle to truly love. To let people in, let them get to me, get to my heart, to that vulnerable place where I can’t protect myself anymore, where I truly love them. It’s rooted in fear. Fear that my heart will break when I leave, that I can’t handle my heart breaking another time. How many times Lord, I ask, will I love, find a home with someone and then it be stripped away? How many people will I come to deeply love and then have to leave? Or have to leave for a period of time and miss out on parts of their lives, miss out on walking beside them? 

When I look at Diego, I grieve the four years I missed out on, the rest of his childhood. I miss the little boy that I loved. He is now growing into a young man, and I still love him, but how do I express it? How do I get to know him again? How do I express to him how much I long for him to truly know God? Or how much I want to have a relationship with him again, to know his heart? How do I not run away in fear? Or when I look at my high school girls, and they tell me of the abuse they’ve experienced and their current struggles, how do I let myself break for them, and beg the Lord for their salvation and freedom and not run away, protecting my heart from the pain of truly loving them? How do I be present in every hug, in every smile, in each moment I have with my medium girls or my students, and not protect my heart through being busy and rushing from one thing to the next?

Pieces of my heart are in so many places, all over the world, and now in three different orphanages in Honduras yet…no place is truly home. I long for a home. I long to be somewhere that I love, that I believe in, where I feel called to, with people I love, to be fully present, to be fully open to love and be loved. Because I don’t truly feel at home here at Emmanuel or called to be here long term, this drives my heart to self-protection, to distance my heart. Quite aware of this my prayer for months now has been that God would open me, let the children into my heart, that I would love them despite my fears. And slowly but surely he has been reopening my heart.

But today I felt the weight again of this battle and in tears I cried out to God, Where do I belong? 

His soft reply was, In my arms.

He is my only true home.

I will forever be restless until I find my rest in Him. Because of the blood of Christ, I belong. Because of the blood of Christ, I have a home that can never be taken away from me. Because of the blood of Christ, I am loved, not just a general love but a specific, individual love that speaks, you matter to me, I have not forgotten you, you are mine. Only when I am safe in His arms can I risk loving others.

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.

Oh How He loves…

Thank you all who prayed for my safety today and my time with Diego. We had a great day :) I was able to spend time with Diego and two other boys that I also got to know 5 years ago—Erick and Denis. Two other volunteers came with me. They showed us around the orphanage (Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos), which is on a huge plot of land. They have their own chickens, cows, rabbits, and fruit and vegetable fields. It was just great to spend time with them, talking, laughing, listening to music and playing a bit of soccer. All three are really fun and sweet boys. I still can’t believe how big they are now though; 5 years ago they were all between 10-12 years old and half my size! I’m hoping to visit them somewhat regularly since they live only an hour away and it’s really easy to get there.

Erick, me, Diego and Denis :) 

 Diego “tricked” me into an eating a hot chile contest, where he ended up swallowing the chile whole and I ended up chewing it and having a mouth that was on fire. I’ve never eaten something so hot in my entire life. They boys got a total kick out of it. Haha.

with Denis

with Erick

with Diego

After I got back to Emmanuel this evening, as I was spending time with the Lord I was completely overcome by how much He loves me. As I wrote in my last post, He’s been pressing into me His promise that He will never forget me, and today was a breaking point for me. Not only does God love me enough to come and die on the cross for me, which alone completely seals His infinite love for me, but He chooses, He delights to pour out His love on me in so many beautiful ways that are shaped just for me. My time with Diego and these boys 5 years ago was one of the most intense, life-changing and heart-wrenching experiences I’ve ever had. It’s an experience that touches one of the deepest parts of my heart. I didn’t deserve that experience in the first place, and so the fact that God would bring me back after 5 years to live so close to Diego, to be able to see him and these other boys again totally breaks me. I can’t put into words how cherished and loved I feel by this gift from the Lord. I serve a God who indeed is good beyond words, who cares so infinitely about our hearts, who delights in us His creation, and who loves to give us good gifts that we don’t deserve. Tonight He has filled me with such joy as I drink in His in comprehendible love. In moments like this when His love is so visible, so tangible, so overwhelming I ask myself how many times and in how many ways does He need to show me that He truly does LOVE me for me to trust Him? When I experience His love so powerfully like this, the only possible response is to joyfully and fully surrender to Him. How beautiful the times when surrender is so easy because His love is made so incredibly evident, so irresistibly true. So today I delight in the truth that I am His beloved lily that He has redeemed to love and serve Him. 

Never Forgotten

...I formed you; you are my servant;

O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.

Isaiah 44: 21

You will not be forgotten by me. This has been God’s message to me these last couple weeks as I have been dwelling on His promises in Isaiah 40-50. He has been reminding me of this promise through His word, through many different blessings, through opening doors for me to serve Him, as well as God meeting me with His presence in the midst of times of sadness and fear. God has been reminding me again and again that He loves me, that He loves ME, Amy Schuman, who He has created with the passions, dreams, hopes and gifts that He has given to me. Every time He opens a specific door and gives me a blessing that is shaped just for me, I am amazed at not only how well He knows my heart but also how much He cares about the way He has created me. He has created me to serve Him in ways particular to the way He has created me. When I think about this I get so excited and feel so incredibly blessed.

Some sweet blessings in the last couple weeks….

Library project: Since I am going to be the reading teacher and spending large chunks of my day in the Elementary school library I’ve decided to “spruce-up” the library a tad ;) At first it looked like just a storage room for books. With some help from other volunteers and some visiting teams we’ve rearranged the bookcases, reorganized the books and moved a new table in. We still have quite a bit of work to do, I want to catalog all the books in the library (another volunteer is taking this part of the project) and decorate the library with rugs, pillows and paintings so that my reading groups will be in a place that is colorful, comfortable and encourages reading. Another volunteer here is an amazing seamstress so she is helping a ton with this. I’m also hoping to open up the library on the weekends so that the kids can come in and read. They have very few chances to read for fun here because they don’t have books in the kids’ houses (they don’t tend to treat books well). I’m really excited about this project and excited that others have gotten involved too. This coming week I will start testing the 5^th grade on their reading with a test I have created. Please pray that the library would be a blessing to the children here and that God would enable me to test the children well.

Discipulado: Discipleship Program. I mentioned to another volunteer about my passion for discipleship/talking with young women about God and this past week I was invited to help out with the discipleship program here! I’m really excited to get involved and connect with the older girls!

Dancing: I recently got permission to start teaching dance here for the older girls in the medium girls house that I am helping out in. There are about 12 older girls that are the leaders in the medium girls house. I’ve loved getting to know them, and dance is another way to have fun with them, get to know them and talk with them about God. We had our first lesson today. Please pray that this would be a blessing to them and that God would grow our relationships.

Bible Study: The other volunteer in the medium girls house who is in her late 20s and has been a missionary since her late teens recently asked me to pray about helping her start a Bible study for the older girls in our house. I would absolutely love to do this, please pray that God would guide us in this. Please pray that God would show us ways to reach out to the girls in our house, to love and serve them. Pray that they might come to trust us and let us into their lives so that we might speak the truth into their lives and love them more deeply.

Visiting Diego: Tomorrow I will be going back to the first orphanage that I ever volunteered at, which is here in Honduras about an hour away. There is one boy (Diego) there that made a huge impact on me 5 years ago, who I was able to see last summer and will be seeing tomorrow. Please pray that God would bless our time together and that I would get there and back safely.

Friends: I have been praying that God would provide some friends here that I could have true fellowship with. At first I wasn’t praying much about it, just waiting but recently I’ve felt much more the need for friends here to turn to. So last week I started praying more about it, that God would lead me to who He wants me to open up to and give me wisdom regarding this. He’s answered that prayer quite quickly. There are two girls that I’ve seen God put into my path and drawing me to. One, is the other volunteer in the medium girls house with me, she is originally from Peru and has a huge heart for the Lord, for discipleship and missions. She’s been a great encouragement to me. She recently got her 5 year Honduran residency (she’s started praying that I will stay longer than 8 months). The other is the volunteer who was with me when the little boy accepted Christ. She also is getting her 5 year Honduran residency. She’s coming with me to Diego’s orphanage tomorrow and we’ve been chosen to go to a conference in Tegucigalpa this coming week on how to care better for people with disabilities (paid for by Emmanuel). She’s started up a special education class for kids that aren’t in school right now. We’re both really excited about this conference.

God has been blessing me so much here so far. He has opened so many doors and provided for me. He’s continued to remind me that He has not forgotten me, and that He promises that He will never forget me, that He has created me, created me to serve Him in ways that He has especially designed me to, ways that make my heart come alive.

Please pray for all these opportunities, that God would give me wisdom and guide me and that I would wait patiently on Him in all things.

A party in heaven and on earth :)

Here is a picture of the little party we had tonight to celebrate this boy's salvation :) The other volunteer (who was with me this morning) and I bought him some fun treats in town today. He was really excited :) Was also really special praying with him tonight before he went to bed, was so sweet to hear him pray.

Here is also another picture of us yesterday on Easter Sunday (some girls straightened my hair the night before with an clothes iron haha). 

A new brother in Christ today :)

The boy I have been working with accepted Christ as his Savior this morning! Another volunteer and I went through the gospel with him this morning, reading to him several Bible verses and drawing the picture of us separated from God and Jesus being the bridge to knowing God. He understood what we were sharing and wanted to pray to receive God's forgiveness and the salvation of his soul. I feel so blessed to have witnessed God's power to save the soul of this precious boy. I rejoice with such overflowing joy knowing that when I get to heaven this boy will be there too, able to walk and perfectly healed from all that he has had to endure in this life. And I rejoice knowing that he can experience the love of God and the freedom of God not only in heaven but here and now on this earth. What a great and good God we serve. All of heaven is celebrating right now the adoption of a new child of God today! Come and rejoice with us :)