Me and Emma told our translator, Lidany, as we were walking through the community one day, that he should take us to a salon for ministry.
Later that week, on Thursday morning, my team found ourselves sitting in a salon with a young girl our age.
First, I want to tell you how we got to this place.
We had been in this community before. We had planned to go back to hang out with a woman we had already met before. We texted her the day before telling her we would be stopping by, and she said “Okay! Anytime after 9 is good.”
That morning our team noticed the pastor was taking our group in the opposite direction of her home. Lidany explained our situation and turned the whole group towards where we needed to go.
We arrived at her house and no one was home. After standing there awkwardly for awhile, Lidany said, “Well, we made everyone come here for nothing”.
He started turning around but last minute said “actually let’s go this way” We walked down the road for a few minutes and that’s when we found ourselves sitting in a salon.
As soon as we entered the salon, the Lord told me I was going to share my story. I was just waiting for the right time.
We started out asking our typical “get to know you” questions as we usually do when we first enter a home. We found out she grew up around a missionary family, and had just recently moved to this area.
When asked if she was a Christian, she replied with “No, because I can’t follow all of the rules.”
After she said that, my teammate paused in the middle of talking and said that she felt someone needed to share her testimony.
That is when I was able to share what the Lord had put on my heart. One thing led to another and the Holy Spirit was just leading the entire conversation. He kept giving words to share and things to say. The girl in this salon was so engaged in this conversation. She kept looking for more. More stories of the Lord showing up in our lives. More questions about who God is. We shared with her everything we could.
At the end of it we asked her what she thought about all of it, and she explained that we had changed her whole perspective. She was able to understand who God is and his true character. That he doesn’t call us to follow rules, but a relationship with Him. He will eventually change our desires to align with His, but we don’t have to wait for that because He wants to walk us through that. He will come meet you, right where you are.
“Everyone in the Dominican needs to hear what you just told me. People here believe in God, but don’t have enough knowledge about who He actually is”.
That’s when it hit me. There are so many people who really do not know who God actually is. His true character. The gospel is so simple, and that can be hard to understand. How cool is that!? And why aren’t we sharing that more often?!
I truly believe that this girl is going to change her community.
“There are too many coincidences for it not to be God,” she said.
Before we left, I got to share all of the things that led up to this moment. She told us that she wasn’t supposed to be working today and that usually the salon is so busy. Not a single person showed up while we were there.
We jumped up and down for joy, literally, because of how God is so good & so cool. We were not even supposed to be there that morning. We were supposed to be sitting with the friend we made month one, but He loved this girl so much that He sent us to her. He wanted her to know His true character and did everything He could to do that. That is how much he loves. Wow.
