Change of Plans - Day 3

This morning began bright and early with Brian and Debi joining Eduardo on his 6:00am radio show. He broadcasts a show every weekday where he shares the gospel and teaches through the Bible to 80,000 listeners. Later in the morning we met at the church to visit a few of the families that had not attended in awhile (because it was during the day, we only had a few families at home that we could meet with). We met with one man and his three teenage children, and his son David came to the service in the evening. We also talked with more people around the church and shared the gospel.

During the evening service we were able to share a few songs and lead worship together with some of the guys from the church, Mallory and Ben shared testimonies, I preached, and Steve and Ben prayed for the church. After the service we treated the church to pizza and enjoyed the opportunity to fellowship with the people.

Brian and I talked at length with Eduardo and Eleazer, one of the deacons in the church responsible for evangelism, about the condition of the church. The church has been without a pastor for four years, and disunity is a very big problem, with several families vying for control over the direction of the church. Pray for unity among the people and that God would provide a godly pastor among the three candidates they are considering.

Today our devotion was from Mark 7:1-23 looking at the difference between following man's traditions vs. God's commands. As it relates to missions, we have several things that are "traditions" of how to plan for and accomplish missions, but when it comes down to it, we are commanded to preach the gospel and make disciples. The gospel must clearly communicated so that it can be heard and relationships must be formed in order to foster growth, but methodology is secondary. We have been seeing God move us to a dependence on Him instead of our plans and a realization that the most effective means of sharing the gospel may not be the one we were planning for, but instead the one for which God was preparing us all along.