This Stuff Actually Works

Our first week of training was about how to teach and work with oral-dependent and oral-preference learners. The second week was about "Main Things." My mzungu partner the second week was a missionary from Nairobi named Jerry. Our second practical assignment was to go and pray for lost people in front of lost people. Basically go to someone, talk to him, get to know him some, and then pray for him. Pray for their salvation along with whatever else yes, but don't share the gospel. So we headed out to do just that. Steven took us to a nearby farm because some of the people in Tigoni were getting tired of talking to missionaries over and over again.

We met a woman there named Sarah. At first she did not want to talk to us. Then Steven told her that we just wanted to get to know her. Now she was interested. We sat down and talked to her, learned about her job situation and her daughter, learned that she regularly attended an Anglican church but was not saved and knew it. After a while we asked if we could pray for her, she said yes, so we prayed. When we were leaving she was so happy that we had come and just taken some time to talk to her that she begged us to come back.

So, the next day we came back. And how fitting: the practical assignment for the next day was to share our testimonies and to share the gospel using Creation 2 Christ, which is basically like theRedemptive History Christmas Story but continuing on to the resurrection of Christ. When we got there she was just getting ready to go home so I offered to walk with her. After all, no sense in making her stay around when we could just as easily talk walking as sitting. Eventually we got around to talking about how you never know where God is going to take you. I told her that I was a good example: I never went to church growing up, and now I'm a missionary. Transition into testimony...CHECK! I went on to share my testimony and asked her if anything like that had happened to her. There was a part of the story she identified with, but she said no, that she was not saved.

I asked her why (as we were approaching her home), and essentially it was because she was afraid to be authentic. She had a ten year old daughter, and when her daughter was one year old the father left her. He had another family that Sarah did not know about and he decided to go back to them (unfortunately anything but uncommon here). She became depressed and lonely and sought her refuge in alcohol, and she has continued as a lonely alcoholic ever since. This kept her from coming to Christ because she had seen many people who claimed to be saved but continued to just bask in sin and she did not want to be one of those people; she wanted to be authentic, and she knew that she couldn't stop drinking.

God then worked through us to show her that she needed to trust that when she came to saving faith Christ would work in her to overcome her sin, that she would not have to leave alcoholism on her own power. Somehow the Creation 2 Christ came up as a very helpful and viable to explain and out it went (CHECK!) I had used it before but it hadn't ever come out so well, and the whole time God was working on her so hard that she was almost crying. She wanted to come to salvation so badly and yet she was so afraid that she would persist in her sin. She kept coming so close to saying "Yes I want to be saved" and yet always right before she would say it she'd hesitate. One time she actually even said she wanted to get saved and then after I explained what that meant she stepped back again.

After about and hour and a half to two hours of Jerry and Steven and I talking with her and (when not the one talking) praying for her she finally decided to trust that Christ would overcome her sin if she got saved! God had been working on her heart through circumstance and witness and her daughter (who was saved and prayed for her mother every day) and our words and finally he broke down the last barrier and another sheep came home. So what if we were seriously late getting back (one of the great things about being in a part of the world where time is just a guideline: everyone understands if you're late because you were doing something important). Neither of us had ever shared with someone who wanted salvation so badly but wouldn't give in, and finally, by God's grace, she came to profess saving faith. What an incredible day it was.