Being Useful

Sometimes I feel a little weird about parts of my life.  Like I'm looking at them through a glass.  Or on TV.  I kind of felt that way today.  We've been coming to Nicaragua for a couple years now, and so being here isn't odd.  It feels like home.  Like normal.  It's always felt that way because South American culture is just part of who I am.  But today Shea was speaking to 400 women that are recently come out of prostitution, and I translated for her.  When I say I translated, can I just tell you that I literally just sat here trying to remember how to say that in English.  My brain is on Spanish autopilot.

(BTW, this has nothing to do with anything, but I'm sitting on the kitchen counter in our inn, because there is a massive cockroach on the floor staring at me, but the internet connects better here than in the rooms.  That roach is about to meet it's maker, and I'm not convinced that my Jesus made them.  I think they come from the other place.)

Anyway, so the worship today was really good.  And it helped me to focus.  Center.  Pray.  When we were introduced, and were standing up at the front with 400 faces looking at us, turns out the microphones weren't working cuz we'd lost power.  For those of you that know me, you know that "loud" or "easily makes herself heard in a crowded room", are not things that describe this girl.  So Shea and I begin to shout it out, and Huzzah!!  The microphones start working.  God blessed Shea with a great message on the trap of shame, and how God wants to free us from the guilt in our past so that we look forward and to him, and not backward and to sin.  God blessed me with only two times that I had to be creative in explaining because I couldn't remember the right word.

Here's the part that blows my mind.  God gives us gifts to be useful. Never in one hundred million years would I have thought in my youth that one day I'd be useful to communicate to prostitutes and ex prostitutes about the love of Jesus.  That is pretty darn cool.  I am pretty darn blessed.

And lemme tell you.  Worshiping God with women who have been rescued from abuse and despair and addiction is an amazing and powerful thing.  How great is our God.

How GREAT is our God.