Thoughts About Readers

We have been continuing our work at the high school, the place where our congregation meets on Sundays. We have some very dedicated students there and enjoy the time we get to be with them. We have some students that are Christians and know a lot about the bible and they seem encouraged by our time together. Other students consider themselves "religious" but it is obvious that they aren't very familiar with the bible. It is good to see the power of God's Word work on them. A few of the students are searching, they know about Jesus, but they don't believe. The variety is a good illustration of the parable of the soils that Jesus tells in Luke 8:4-15. We read this story in Lesson 11 of our workbooks. It is interesting to think that most Christians at different times in our lives have been all of the soils. We must give attention, every day, to our soil to become and remain good ground.

In addition to our work at the high school, we meet with some other readers. These are adults and we have been meeting with them continual since we started our work in Panama City. As we see the end of our time in Panama approaching, we are focusing on spending as much time with them as we can. When you make friends with people that live in another country, it makes the possibility of never being together again greater. We all know that there is no guarantee of future time with other people, but sometimes we forget that and take for granted the time we have with people because we always think we have more time. The reality of the uncertainty of our time together hits home as we spend our last minutes with friends that live in another country that we have no set plans to return to. So, we are trying to take the opportunity to enjoy this time with our friends and not be greedy for more.

Luke 12:30b and 31
Your father knows that you need those things. The thing you should want is God's kingdom.

GREG'S BLOG

Greg has written a new blog giving an update about our work and he has a link to some pictures.
Click here to see Greg's blog

The Latest

We are in the midst of big changes in our Panama project and we wanted you to know what is going on.

As you should know, we have been working at a university, UDELAS since March. The semester is ending there and the students are now taking final exams. Most of our readers are UDELAS students and they are have many the end of the semester pressures, so it is difficult for them to continue with our reading sessions. We ended our project there on Friday. During our 4 months at the university we had reading sessions with about 45 different people, many of them were with us the whole time. We also got to work with two other LST teams at that location. There are a few of those readers that we will continue to meet with. Some ongoing through July and August and others that we will reschedule in August.

Now, I'm sure you are curious what's next for us. Today we spent the day at a local high school organizing our next project. It is the high school where our church meets on Sundays. We will spend the next three weeks meeting with students from that school during the day and then at night we will try to meet with some of our current readers. We spent today at the school organizing the schedule and meeting the students. Tomorrow we hope to begin reading sessions. Although we don't usually prefer to work with high schoolers, we know that this will be a great project. These are great students who are very excited about practicing their English and we hope to get them excited about Jesus, too. Another reason this is an exciting project is the impact it will have on the congregation we worship with. They really want to reach out to the community of the school and this is one way to do that. Greg and I are so glad to do something to bless this church that has been so good to us!

LESSON 13

I used to dread Lesson 13 in the LST workbook. I would just try to get through it as fast as I could and hope that my readers would just kind of overlook it and move on.
As I read over those two sentences, I realize, that doesn't sound very good. That's not the attitude of someone who likes to read the Gospels and talk about Jesus. But when I tell you what scriptures this lesson covers, maybe you will understand and forgive me. Lesson 13 is Luke 19:28-36, in English we refer to this occurrence in Jesus' life as "The Transfiguration". This is when Jesus and Peter, John and James go up on a mountain to pray and Moses and Elijah came to visit. Now let's be honest, this piece of scripture can be hard to understand in an "easy to read" translation of the Bible in your own language. Why are two "ghosts or angels" meeting up to chat with Jesus? Why is Peter wanting to put up tents (yes, our LST version says "tents", which makes the discussion even harder) for these three guys? Why does God interrupt Peter when he is talking? Is he angry at Peter? What does it mean, "Peter did not know what he was saying"?
Well, reading the same passages of scripture over and over for 10 months provides many blessings. Mainly, the blessing of new insights that the Holy Spirit will provide as you continue to re-read those passages. It is true that the Bible is the "Living Word". I know it is alive, because I continue to encounter that "Life" in my heart and I see that "Life" in the hearts of many of my readers.

Of the truths I have learned about this particular passage, two stay on my mind and cause me a great feeling of AWE. First is the realization that I don't need to know the answer to all the "Why?" questions to know that God had a definite purpose in this event. He wanted everyone to know and understand that Jesus is his son and he wants all people to obey only Jesus. (It was important for the Jews to let go of their obedience to Moses' and Elijah's teachings, and that couldn't have been an easy message for them to take in, they had been doing that for generations.) The second truth comes to me from the end of the lesson. The scriptures say, "And for a long time after that they told no one about what they had seen." A great question to ask my LST readers is, "Why didn't they talk about this to other people?" This question makes for good, easy conversation but it also gives me an opportunity to share my faith, because many months ago the Holy Spirit taught me a truth through this question. My answer is that although we don't know exactly why they didn't tell anyone, I think that maybe they were overwhelmed by the presence of God. In other places in the Bible when people encounter God they are overcome by strong emotions and reactions, fear being one. These guys have just heard the voice of God, I'm sure that was stunning. Maybe they just needed to process that encounter internally for a while. Although I have never heard the audible voice of God, when I encounter Him in my heart, I am overwhelmed, I don't know how to process it and I usually can't share the experience with anyone, at least for a while. Telling this makes me think of the song "I Can Only Imagine". I don't know how I will respond to the presence of God, will I stand and sing and shout for joy or will I fall to my knees unable to speak?

I can truthfully say, I no longer dread Lesson 13. I love the chills I get as I share this with my readers. I love the unanswered questions, they are evidence of faith. And best of all, I love the fact that many readers say, "I'm going to go home and read this in Spanish to try and understand it better." That is the power of the "Living Word"!

Here is a link to Youtube, if you want to listen to Mercy Me singing "I Can Only Imagine".

Encouragement

Today we had a great surprise, we received a card of encouragement from the ladies of Greg's childhood church, Hermitage Church of Christ. It means so much to us to know that we are remembered and prayed for by people at home. We feel so loved by their act!
Ladies of the Hermitage Church of Christ in Hermitage, PA we offer our heartfelt thanks to you. God willing we will be with you for a visit sometime this fall.

READERS

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

Pictures

Greg has put together a slide show that gives an idea of what our life in Panama looks like.
Click here to see it. It's called LST in Panama City.