It's Thursday morning and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on my first day of the conference with my group after a good night's sleep and some processing time with the team.
My group comes from a small community two days journey down the Rio Coco to PC. They came by foot and by boat staying in people's homes along the way. I started in the morning with five men:
I was immediately impressed by their warmth and friendliness. As we started with a time to get to know each other I realized that I was in a very special group that represented all stages of spiritual maturity. Juan wasn't a follower of Jesus, Santos was a new follower of 2 months and the other three men were more mature followers of a decade or more.
Also I was blessed with a wonderful translator who was very fluent in Mosquito, Spanish and English made a very difficult and problematic communication process so much easier (it was still hard, nonetheless).
In the morning until noon we laid the groundwork for discipleship and I felt we made good progress in getting to know each other although I sensed that the group was reluctant to reveal very much about themselves.
After lunch we dove into some of the most difficult part of the conference where we presented and discussed the various stages of spiritual growth (what we refer to as the "Wheel" because it is represented as circle diagram). I could tell that my group, which after lunch was reduced by two - Santos and Juan, was beginning to experience a bit of fatigue and info overload. Also, teaching Socraticly through questions is not an established skill for me so as the afternoon progressed I slipped more and more into a "talking head". Not good, in fact, when Marty came by to see how I was doing I immediately got defensive and without him saying anything I blurted out "I'm doing too much teaching but I don't know how else to do this". Oh boy...
The plain fact of the matter is that we are working across a gulf of language, culture, education and experience and we need to depend moment by moment, word by word and question by question on the Holy Spirit. And through this we learn in a fresh new way the truth that in our weakness we are strong.
So as I begin a new day I look forward to the Lord to work through my weakness - "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord".
Thank you for all your prayers, we need them!
My group comes from a small community two days journey down the Rio Coco to PC. They came by foot and by boat staying in people's homes along the way. I started in the morning with five men:
Antonio the head pastor of a church of 30 members, his two faithful leaders Gorge and Thomas, a young man named Santos and a man who drove the boat named Juan.All but the younger man who is 18 had large families of 8 to 13 children with ages ranging from 2 to 29. They are farmers raising food to feed their families.
I was immediately impressed by their warmth and friendliness. As we started with a time to get to know each other I realized that I was in a very special group that represented all stages of spiritual maturity. Juan wasn't a follower of Jesus, Santos was a new follower of 2 months and the other three men were more mature followers of a decade or more.
Also I was blessed with a wonderful translator who was very fluent in Mosquito, Spanish and English made a very difficult and problematic communication process so much easier (it was still hard, nonetheless).
In the morning until noon we laid the groundwork for discipleship and I felt we made good progress in getting to know each other although I sensed that the group was reluctant to reveal very much about themselves.
After lunch we dove into some of the most difficult part of the conference where we presented and discussed the various stages of spiritual growth (what we refer to as the "Wheel" because it is represented as circle diagram). I could tell that my group, which after lunch was reduced by two - Santos and Juan, was beginning to experience a bit of fatigue and info overload. Also, teaching Socraticly through questions is not an established skill for me so as the afternoon progressed I slipped more and more into a "talking head". Not good, in fact, when Marty came by to see how I was doing I immediately got defensive and without him saying anything I blurted out "I'm doing too much teaching but I don't know how else to do this". Oh boy...
The plain fact of the matter is that we are working across a gulf of language, culture, education and experience and we need to depend moment by moment, word by word and question by question on the Holy Spirit. And through this we learn in a fresh new way the truth that in our weakness we are strong.
So as I begin a new day I look forward to the Lord to work through my weakness - "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord".
Thank you for all your prayers, we need them!
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