This week, our team visited some local high schools in honor of One Nation One Day. Seeing as how Honduras is referred to as “the fatherless nation" and my team knew stories of how I could relate, I felt led to share the testimony of how God has shown Himself to be my father and what it means to be His daughter. I was super nervous at the idea of talking in front of a classroom full of Honduran teens, let alone doing it twice. In Spanish. So I got Kalynn (a fluent teammate) to translate for me the first time, but something felt off. I felt like a robot being translated by another robot (no offense, Kaylnn!). So before having to do it a second time, I quickly jotted some bullet-point translations during our 15 min. break and ran them by Kalynn. I was trusting in my own ability to communicate well and thus have an effective message; as long as everything was planned out and I knew what to say, I felt secure.
During the second class, I fumbled a bit but still managed to hit all the main points and make enough sense. Before I even asked if anyone had comments/questions, a girl in the front-row (out of a class of 30!) raised her hand and asked ¿Cómo conociste a Jesús? (How did you meet Jesus?) Wait, ¡¿qué?! This girl is asking me to share the story of how I met Jesus… I didn’t prepare any translation for that! I wrestled in my thoughts for a bit (which manifested itself as a blank stare, open-mouthed “uhhh…" at the girl): Should I ask Kalynn to translate for me, do I tell the girl to talk with me after class, or do I just try to talk …? God responded: Just speak. So, in my broken Spanish, I shared the story of how I came to know and follow Jesus to the entire class. The more I talked aloud and recalled what God did in my life, the more excited and animated I became. What I thought/hoped would be a short 30 sec. testimony turned into a 5 min. rant about how God changed my view of Him from a list of rules to an intimate, loving father. All of a sudden, I didn’t care about my faulty conjugations/accent/tenses anymore — I was talking about the man I love! The man, Jesus, who chased me down until I knew just how much He loved me and who continues to spoil and romance me at every turn.
When I finished, the girl was teary-eyed and responded that she had been brought up in the church her entire life, but never knew what it meant to have a personal relationship with Jesus. She thanked me, saying that I was a gift from God and that my story was something she really needed to hear. I walked away, amazed and honored that God would use me to bless that little girl through my weakness.
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
