Encouraged

That is the word that sums up how I am feeling at this moment. Since I am quite pregnant my emotions have been playing around with me a lot lately and I have one moment felt encouraged and the next, discouraged..but looking back over these past few days and seeing everything that God is doing around us is a definite reason to be encouraged!

This past week I was so nervous as I had a lot of things to plan for and did not feel prepared to do so. I sought God, cried out to Him, put my weaknesses and fears before Him and He, once again, brought me through it all,ichis Glory, and not my own. Last week Jorge asked me if I would preach in the church on Sunday, and I agreed, knowing that this is something that he would like me to do at least once a month, so as to encourage the ladies in the church to get more involved in ministry and to see that God can also use women in the ministry. But I was so nervous as not only did I have to plan for that sermon, but I also had to think about the English class that we were starting on Tuesday and then our ladies meeting which we were starting off on Wednesday. On top of all that, I had also been having a lot of pain in my lower abdomen throughout last week, and was a bit worried about what that was all about. But really, the LORD gave me His Grace and taught me a lot about how I need to come back to the basics of trusting in Him to put the words in my mouth when I need them, and to seek Him first, above all else. I read a book that was given to me by our Pastors wife and a good friend of mine, Mary Coyne, before I left Canada called, ¨Breaking the Mold¨( I can´t remember the author´s name right now and I´m two lazy to go downstairs and look, lol). But she said something that really made me think. She speaks about our duty as Christians, how we are ALL called to serve God and ALL called to the ¨ministry¨. She made a comment about how it is funny how some Christians say they are called to ¨full-time ministry¨, and then she says ¨aren´t we all??¨ She then goes on to say how as Pastor´s wives, we shouldn´t look at everything that we have to do and say, ¨oh, I have to do that because I am the Pastor´s wife..¨ she says ¨no, you have to do it because you are a Christian and God has called us all to serve Him.¨ This may be something that is not all that new to some people, but for me, it really made me think.

So I gave my sermon on Sunday and spoke on Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 and spoke about prayer and the importance of knowing when to be silent before the LORD. Then last night (Tuesday) we had our first English class and had 27 people come! We were really excited about that, especially as 12 of them are relatives of church members and are not actually attending the church themselves, so we are hoping to be able to get to know them better and share Christ with them. The classes went great, Jorge gave a great introduction and then we taught the ABC´s and some numbers. Jorge and I had a lot of fun translating back and fourth as we want the students to hear english as much as they can. It is exciting for us to see the people excited and encouraged about learning, especially because normally if someone wanted to study english they have to pay a lot of money to take a course, and to know that we are helping these people who would normally never get the chance to do this...it´s pretty neat. We have said that the only thing that they have to pay for is for the photocopying of the book, which comes to about 8 dollars, but a few people, we have found, don´t even have that much...so we have told them that whatever they can give is fine and we will see how we can cover the rest. The people here have so little but their hearts are so big, and they are thankful for what we are doing..so for me, that is reward enough.
This afternoon I also had the ladies meeting at the church and though few came, we had a really good time, so I am glad about that. There were only 6 of us, but that is to be expected as we changed the day and time from when they have had it for a long time...so it will take some ladies time to get used to that. But either way it went really well and I am thankful that the LORD is doing great things among us. I must go now as I have been writing while uploading pictures onto facebook (YEAH!) and now I need to get ready for our guests that are coming over tonight...will write again soon.