Norma is from Ecuador. She traveled to Spain many years ago. She is a member of our church in Almeria. When we first came to Spain, she told me how she had felt called to do missions. She wanted to become involved with the work in Roquetas with the African immigrants. She decided to start a class for the African ladies to learn Spanish and some sewing skills. For the first class she had one student. For the second class she had two students. For the third class she had four students. For the fourth class she had eight students. She realized very quickly the need for these ladies to learn to read and write. After a year of Norma’s dedicated work, there are now twelve African ladies who have never been to school, who can read and write. Norma also helps the ladies fill out paperwork to receive food from the Spanish food bank. We give out vegetables, clothes, baby strollers, baby beds and other equipment. The ladies in “ladies class” have also received reading glasses. They are learning to cook Spanish food. Last week they learned how to make Spaghetti carbonera. The week before that they learned how to make American chocolate chip cookies. Norma tells me the story of the day soon after she had arrived in Spain. She was sitting in a bank and praying about her desire to be a missionary. She prayed, “Use me, use me, use me or let me die.” Then she says, “Then I died to myself, and he used me. He is using me with these African women.” Norma is very open in sharing the gospel with the ladies from ladies class. Please pray for her as she continues to allow the Lord to use her. Please pray for the African ladies that they would become interested in having a personal relationship with the Lord through Jesus.
Just be dead
I was doing a missions week at a college during our off field assignment (formally known as furlough.) During one panel session, a student asked, “What do we need to do to prepare for mission work?” Different missionaries on the panel gave different answers. I said that we need to be obedient in everything. The gentlemen next to me paused for a while, and then he said, “You just need to be dead.”
Later during the conference I caught up to this gentleman to thank him for his words. He helped me remember that I just need to be dead; dead to myself. If we are dead to ourselves and alive in Christ, then often all of the little insecurities or things that bother us in life are not as important as simply living life for Christ.
Luke 9:23-24: "Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.'"
Reconcilers!
Second Annual Missions Conference in Spain
Samuel Escobar, missions Professor in Spain, spoke on the 1st of May, 2011, at the second annual missions conference in Spain. He spoke on “Las Iglesias y su mission en el mundo,” (churches and their mission in the world.) He spoke on how we need to “learn to see the world with the eyes of God. 2 Corinthians 5:16-21: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Are we continuing to be reconcilers for God?
Do we see the world as Jesus did? Matthew 9: 35-38, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’ “
Are we continuing to “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest field?” Are we continuing to pray, give, and go for the harvest, for the reconciliation of His world unto Him?
