So I sat down to write this blog and I couldn’t think of one thing to talk about. I wanted to write this hugely spiritual thing. I wanted to write something that would convert the masses, something that would inspire people and change lives. I wanted to tell an awesome tale of action and adventure. That would bring you to tears and somehow make your walk with the Lord better. I wanted to uncover some hidden secret that would make people live differently.
Then I realized I was just being vainglorious. So I’m just gonna tell a story instead…
My team was dropped off in Colonia India just south of Matamoros. Its one of the poorer colonias in the area. We were left with a bag containing three oranges and five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and told we’d be picked up in eight hours. My first thought was “ok so what will we do for eight hours? None of us know enough Spanish to go “convert the masses”, as if we could do that anyway, were starving, and we only had five hours of sleep last night.”
So we just start walking down the road. We see a little convenient store off in the distance and start heading over there. In Mexico there are two kinds of convenient stores, the kind like you find everywhere in America, or the kind that are located in the front room of someone’s house with vastly inadequate selection. That’s not to say that I care to much about massive selections its just nice sometimes to have more to choose from than coke and water. Fortunately enough this store was of the former type.
We walk inside and realize none of us have any money. So much for quenching our hunger. We start to head back down the road and we see this guy briskly walking towards us. He walked up and put his hand out to greet us and said, “hello” in perfect English. Most people in this close proximity to the states speak a little English but its mostly cursory greetings or basic phrases, so obviously we didn’t really think anything of it. We went back to Spanish and asked him how he was. He said good in English.
The next thing he said stunned all of us. Again in perfect English he said, “You guys are missionaries and I’m gonna translate for you all day.” And he did translate for us all day. My team speaks the least amount of Spanish out of all the groups, and God provided the crap out of us with a translator. We were able to pray with numerous families and he introduced us to some people and the day was totally awesome. The end 😀
Corinthians 12:9 your power is made perfect in my weakness.
