Aug 24, 2011 | Travel
The VIDA staff did a series of devotions based on Luke 4:18-19. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Naomi did the first one on Sunday morning. It was powerful.
When Jesus started His ministry, He began with words that pronounced blessings to the poor in spirit. ” Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven… Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:3,5.
The reason why we minister to those in need is not because we are so rich and they are poor. The Laodecian church is also poor and blind and naked, except that it doesn’t realize its desperate condition.
We minister because we need to realize that we are poor in spirit. I need to realize that I am poor in spirit and that the kingdom of heaven is for me too. I need to learn meekness, to be like Jesus.
Naomi read a powerful passage from Testimonies for the Church Volume 6, under the chapter titled “The Church’s Need.”
While the world needs sympathy, while it needs the prayers and assistance of God’s people, while it needs to see Christ in the lives of His followers, the people of God are equally in need of opportunities that draw out their sympathies, give efficiency to their prayers, and develop in them a character like that of the divine pattern.
It is to provide these opportunities that God has placed among us the poor, the unfortunate, the sick, and the suffering. They are Christ’s legacy to His church, and they are to be cared for as He would care for them. In this way God takes away the dross and purifies the gold, giving us that culture of heart and character which we need.
The Lord could carry forward His work without our co-operation. He is not dependent on us for our money, our time, or our labor. But the church is very precious in His sight. It is the case which contains His jewels, the fold which encloses His flock, and He longs to see it without spot or blemish or any such thing. He yearns after it with unspeakable love. This is why He has given us opportunities to work for Him, and He accepts our labors as tokens of our love and loyalty.
In placing among us the poor and the suffering, the Lord is testing us to reveal to us what is in our hearts… The culture of the mind and heart is more easily accomplished when we feel such tender sympathy for others that we bestow our benefits and privileges to relieve their necessities. Getting and holding all that we can for ourselves tends to poverty of soul.
The purpose of mission trips is character development. Not that the poor needs us and that’s it. We need them for the purification of our character.
So then, what about God’s work and hastening His coming? It turns out that our character development does hasten Christ’s coming as well.
“When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.” Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own. Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 69.
Christ calls us to His work so we can experience His joy and His pain, that our hearts would beat the same beat as His.
God could have reached His object in saving sinners without our aid; but in order for us to develop a character like Christ’s, we must share in His work. In order to enter into His joy,—the joy of seeing souls redeemed by His sacrifice,—we must participate in His labors for their redemption. Desire of Ages, p. 142.
Aug 24, 2011 | Travel
During Sabbath lunch, I got to chat with Manuela Fankhauser, a full time missionary with VIDA from Switzerland. She’s in charge of the bilingual kindergarten there, named Campos Blancos. I told her that I had engineering background and she told me that there were a lot of engineers in VIDA, including Jose and Monica. I, being biased, got excited.
Since we arrived early at the La Ermita church, I got to talk with both of them before the evening meeting. Jose studied industrial engineering. I asked if he found engineering useful in ministry and he said yes, since it involved a lot of management.
Monica Muy also studied industrial engineering. She is a beautiful young woman whose smile and energy are contagious. She works with the not-so-small groups at the La Ermita church. She used to work at ExxonMobil in Guatemala and was ascending the corporate ladder. In fact, she did very well that they would still take her back. But when the call to ministry came, she left that world behind and moved forward in faith. She spent a year with David Gates’ ministry in the Bolivian Amazon. Through a series of providential events, she ended up this year with VIDA.
I asked her how her previous experiences affected her ministry now. She said that no experience was wasted with God and she could use the skills she had gained for God’s work. And now that they were trying to establish an industry for VIDA to be fully self-supporting, she was excited to apply her engineering knowledge to help establish a tamarind juice plant.
“When I think of industry, I think of food.”
VIDA Internacional is a pretty awesome organization. Check out their YouTube channel too. God has been providing them with properties via miracles after miracles, including a tamarind plantation whose harvest is of interest to commercial companies in Honduras. They want to build a jugo de tamarindo plant, which will make them a fully self-supporting ministry.
Establishing an industry for God’s work. I just love that concept. And yes, engineers can be missionaries too.
Aug 24, 2011 | Travel
The church in El Suyatal is a humble non-building made from thin metal sheets. But it’s not the structure that makes up a church. On this Sabbath, church service was held under a tent set up on a plaza/cemented area in town, where the evangelistic meetings had been taking place each night. You could feel the joy under that tent as people praised God for answered prayers that week.
El Suyatal Church
Tent
Next to the tent was the backyard of a house. There was a pig sty there. I had never worshiped next to a pig before.
Erick’s sermon spoke to me in a very special way. Erick Montenegro is the evangelism coordinator for VIDA. He was a systems engineer, turned snowboarding instructor, turned missionary (by the way, I loved how there were so many engineers in VIDA). Although I didn’t get to see him preach night after night in El Suyatal for the evangelistic series, I saw his heart for God’s work during the morning prayer sessions we had each day.
Erick would pray that God would show him and everyone in VIDA what His grand plan for evangelism is for El Suyatal and the neighboring towns. He wanted to follow God’s plans and not devised his own. He prayed that God would show the things that hinder them from seeing God’s vision and for the courage to remove them.
I think Erick shared from his heart in his sermon. He spoke on Matthew 13:31-32 which says,
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
It takes faith to see beyond the humble beginnings of God’s kingdom. Sometimes we get frustrated as we see many other things in the world progress faster. But we need to believe that the seed will indeed be the greatest among herbs.
He shared how he was starting to get discouraged because the efforts done in El Suyatal seemed to bear no fruit. Studies after studies, meetings after meetings, and still some people wavered in their decisions to follow God. Then he shared how Melissa from GYC Intermission told him last night that she wanted to be baptized today. It was an encouragement from God to him, assuring him that his labor was not in vain. It wasn’t what he expected, but the Word of God still moved.
When they called Melissa for the baptismal vows, Alex, another GYC Intermission-er, also joined her up front to be baptized. He had expressed his desire to be baptized to Gio and was planning to be baptized in New York, but Gio encouraged to not delay.
From where I was sitting, the story was about God encouraging his workers. It was like I saw God telling Erick, “I know your struggles and burdens. Your labor is not in vain.” Those whom He has called to do His work are brought nearest to Him.
“Seemeth it but a small thing unto you, that the God of Israel hath separated you from the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to himself to do the service of the tabernacle of the LORD, and to stand before the congregation to minister unto them?” Numbers 16:9
In seeing God’s encouragement for Erick, I was encouraged. God too was speaking to me that He knew my burdens and my labor was not in vain. And I felt the sweetness of the Lord encircling His laborers.
I felt like walking back by myself after church but that was generally not recommended. So I kind of walked with people. I needed to talk to God.
Witnessing someone(s) making a death commitment to Christ is always a tremendous blessing. Melissa and Alex were baptized after church in the creek next to Buena Vista. Three other people also decided to be baptized in a future date.
During the night prayer, I shared the blessing I received during the sermon and read 1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” That was mostly for Erick.
He told me afterwards about why he had been praying for the ‘master plan’ in the mornings. Thus far, he felt that the efforts had been a patchwork. He wanted to see the big picture, to see as God sees. He told me if I wanted to help, to pray for that too. And I’ve been praying that God would honor his desire ever since.
