| Ministered in spanish? |
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| GOD is great. Today He allowed me to minister to a man IN SPANISH for more than 40 minutes!!! If you don't know my wife is hispanic (salvadoreina) and my son is half mexican. Most of my life I have had the pleasure to be around hispanics due to where I grew up (East San Jose, Norcal.) I just thought it was an amazing encounter this afternoon because although I can understand 95% of what a person says to me in spanish, I do not speak it as well as I would like and did not have the courage to butcher the language as I thought I would. But this man, who's name is Greg (gregorio) approached me as I entered my car headed out to run some errands. He was selling strawberries, my favorite fruit, by the flat for twenty-dollars. Well he spoke to me in broken spanglish so I replied to him with my best broken spanglish but it was just enough to give him the impression that I spoke the language well enough to have a conversation or at least attempt to make the transaction in spanish. As he began to try to convince me to part with 16 bucks for all those giant, perfect-red, yummy looking strawberries he began to ask questions not pertaining to those berries. I just so happened to get dressed as most guys do on occasion by grabbing the shirt I wanted to wear today from the dirty clothes hamper and walking out the door, but the shirt I wanted to wear so bad that I would drag out from the middle of the pile was my green VBF shirt from serving in march or whatever it was called.... I don't know how much that shirt factored into my day being so blessed but I sure felt covered in it!! Back to greg though, I explained to him the reason I even attempt to speak spanish is because my wife is from El Salvador and speaks spanish at home regularly. So he asked how many kids I had and I replied "uno" which caused him to ask "Por que tu no tienen mas ninos?" which roughly translates to " how come you dont have anymore children with your wife?" I explained the best I could which was "Por que El Senior decen que esperar" which to me meant, "GOD is telling us to wait." Backlog... my wife and I have been trying to concieve for pretty much the entire time we have been together because we dont do anything to prevent a child from being concieved. We have sought a specialist's help and still no answers and no baby... But anywho, Greg asked me if we were "Christians" and I replied "Si" of course, followed by " Y usted? Van al iglesia" which implied " And you sir, do you go to church?" and he said "No, but I love GOD with all my heart" (sorry, no spanish translation." He said he didn't go for lots of reasons but most importantly to him was because churches were "legalistic" in his eyes and he began to list some of the things he didn't like about churches these days. I agreed with him on some points that I have seen for myself in other churches my wife and I attended before GOD pointed us to VBF... I then expressed that I knew of a great spanish-speaking church, which in my opinion is the best of its kind "the Bakersfields Iglesia De Hispana" on Bernard near Walmart. I told him somehow with my bad spanish that the pastor there, David Stepp, is the same pastor whom married my wife and I at our ceremony at the coast before we discovered Valley. He knew of the church and Pastor Stepp and became visibly excited as I spoke of that church! He then expressed that he had attended there before and was pleased with that church. So by this time I had been sitting in my car with the engine running and strawberries sitting under my nose on the window sill for about 20 minutes and I said sure, " Yo quero comprarlo estos freshas" which I wanted to mean "I want to buy some of those strawberries!" All I had was a few 20 dollar bills and he said he didn't have change. He was willing to let me take the strawberries with me until I returned to pay him. So originally I told him "orita vengo" or "I'll come right back" so that I could go get change. He said he would wait but my spirit said to "Do More" and at just that moment and I instead invited him to ride with me in my car to get his money. He said "Si" and hopped in the car and off we went to the my first errand which was the bank to get money anyways and pay my wireless bill. So we chatted more on the way. He then asked what my "suegro's" or "father-in-laws" name was, wondering if he might know him. I replied and he once again got excited! "Yo me conosco!" he said which I took to mean " I know of him, they lead a great bible study at that church. They are also deacons and helped me and my family!" So under normal circumstances im very private and not forthcoming with nuggets of information about myself or my family unless I know you but this was obviously the spirit of the Lord here and we just chatted about how good of a family I married into and how happy I am to be loved by my wife's family to. So we returned to my street where I dropped him and the 10 dollars!!! off and he said to me "Have a blessed day!" Know this, I said ALL of these things on here to preserve the memory of GOD's hugeness in my life today and I shared it with you all because I feel I should share GOD's works with anybody interested in reading or listening. Often times we dwell on the bad situations we are going through and forget the good. So who knows, maybe one day I will need to read this again to be reminded how glorious a life we can have if we choose to follow GOD and love his Son. I'm not even gonna try to tell you about the woman I ran into at the bank, then at Darrells mini storage as I paid my bill then again at FoodMaxx! The exact same asian lady who would eventually say to me "Have a Blessed day!" at the supermarket!!!!! Nor will I tell you about how when my son and I exited our car in the parking lot of the supermarket, there was a lady wearing her green VBF shirt too, who was noticed by another lady walking to her own car and said to me "I like that shirt, that lady over there has one on too!" WHAT A CRAZY LOVING DAY!!!!!!!! I love you father GOD and thank you for your Son's sacrifice...... AMEN! |
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