I'm sure most of you remember but just in case some don't, in LST we refer to the people we are meeting with as "readers".
They are the reason we are doing this work. Actually, the reason we are doing it is because we felt led by God to do it, but the readers are the recipients of our work.
The situation in Panama has been very different than we were used to or expected. Most of the readers at our current site are beginning college students at the university. They are very young and some are a bit lacking in maturity. The way that affects us is that they often miss our sessions and don't contact us to let us know they aren't coming. Another problem that presents is that many of them have a pretty low level of English. This makes it difficult to conduct the sessions in the way we were trained to do. But one thing we have learned over the last year is flexibility. Since we meet on a university campus, many of them just see this as another class and view us as "professors". In addition to that, we had to take so many readers from the previous teams that we can only meet with most of them once a week. So, developing relationships are difficult. We are trying to adjust our expectations and work with the situation as it is. The North American missionaries here in Panama tell everyone that visits that the best way to get along here is to have no expectations. We are working on that, but it is definitely contrary to our nature.
Now, back to the real reason I'm writing this blog. On Monday I had one of those reading sessions that makes all the trouble worth it. This particular reader is a university student, but not at our university. She takes an hour bus ride to get to our sessions. She always contacts me if she can't make it. She is a bright spot in my week because she has enough English to have real conversations with and she seems to really value our time together. In a session several weeks ago we read about Jesus' baptism. She told me that she has not been baptized. She knows this is important for her to do, but she isn't ready yet. Her grandmother is always pressuring her to be baptized and she doesn't want to do it for that reason or to be acceptable to a religious organization. She said that when she is baptized she wants to do it for the right reasons. I really respect that and encouraged her to continue to seek God's purpose for her in this area. This week we read about the time Jesus used the illustration of the foundation of a house and compared that to obeying his teachings. When I asked about her "house" she said she thinks part of it has a good foundation and part doesn't. She knows that she doesn't obey Jesus completely. I know you are all hoping that I will now say that she said she wanted to be baptized. Well, sorry. You will be disappointed. She isn't there yet. She left the reading session with a hunger to continue to learn more about Jesus' teachings and a desire to grow in her obedience. I am trusting God to guide her to the point of realizing that the part that is missing just might be baptism. She has enough people pressuring her to do it and I don't want to add to that. I just want to help her realize how much she needs Jesus. She needs to obey him because of her own desire and not to please me or any other person. I truly believe she will be baptized one day, but I accept that it may happen long after I am gone and I may never even know about it. But, it is God's work to add to His number. My work is in the fields. Planting some seeds and watering others.
I pray that we can all see our role in the Kingdom work as clearly as the apostle Paul saw his.
"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow."
~1Corinthians 3:6
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