I've been praying for unity in our team, and I thought the shared experience of the church service would bring us together, but it turns out that the church service would bring out in me what God would be working out through me that week and since then.
The preacher was Pentecostal and preached on Jesus and the lame man who was carried through the roof by his four friends, aka "Jeffrey." He acted it out as he spoke, sweating profusely from his rotator cuffs of all things. He was more demonstrative than any American I'd ever seen--and he was American, a Louisiana native who spoke in English through a translator to the rest of the church. Imagine a tall, broad-shouldered, white Cajun, preaching in an old Black Church style to Carribbean/Latinos and a smattering of gringos from Georgia.
I must say, my Baptist background pre-disposed me against Pentecostal worship services in general--I grew up thinking they were disorderly and distracting, eliciting emotional experiences that yield no substantial change. But no, if you understand this church's instance, it was more like attending a symphony than a cacophony. Even the people "slain in the spirit" were orderly about it. I'm not kidding. Not a single person was there grubbing for attention by putting on a show. The lady shaking maracas and the lady blowing the ram's horn shofar and the lady waving banners all were in a colorful unison.
The sermon drew from the story of Jeffrey and his friends the traits needed to be a miracle worker where you are now. This was especially relevant to us, because we had come a very long way to offer a miraculous gift to people in this country--the Word of God and the water from the well we were to dig.
All the traits are bound in love--they are all connected in love and all stem from the love of God:
1. see the need--you have to look for the needs of those around you and look to meet those needs
2. compassion--just seeing that someone needs something does them no good, compassion compels us to act on their behalf.
3. unity--one man couldn't have carried Jeffrey to Jesus. Each of the four had to be on mission together to get it done.
4. faith--they could have picked up that blanket by the corners every day for the rest of their lives and Jeffrey never get to walk again. They had to have faith that Jesus would do something about it that no one else could.
5. action--they could have all agreed and believed that getting Jeffrey to Jesus would be the best thing for him, but if they never acted on it, it would have sat there.
6. perseverance--the friends got to the house and couldn't even get close for how many people were crowding around. To approach took perseverance--they didn't walk away with Jeffrey, or put him down and say "sorry, buddy, can't get in, it's too full already. Better luck next time."
7. desperation--they just HAD to get Jeffrey to Jesus, so much that they drug him up to the roof and clawed through the mud and thatch until they made a hole big enough to lower him through to Jesus.
I loved watching the pastor's face at the end when he acted out Jesus, teaching in the house, as He hears the scratching on the roof, He knows exactly what's happening, and He's grinning from ear to ear in pride to see the faith of those four friends bringing Jeffrey to an encounter with Him. In the end, Jeffrey had to demonstrate his own faith in actually getting up and walking for the first time in his life, but it was their faith, the faith of the four friends, that brought him to encounter Jesus.
At the end of the service, I felt the need to step forward for prayer and commissioning, though I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. The preacher, when my turn in the line came, asked me to put my hands up to symbolize my surrender to God, and prayed in agreement with me. I asked God for compassion, because I felt none. The admission alone was worth the embarrassment of being the only person in my team to leave the pew. So the pastor prayed with me and reminded me to continually surrender to God, and I walked back to my seat as quietly as I came.
It was not emotional, I rarely get emotional about anything, but I knew I had to ask God for His compassion, because without it I would be living a lie before the people we were there to help. I also knew that, when we got back from Honduras, my husband and I would be going to live with and minister to an apartment complex full of adults with severe disabilities, and without the compassion of God, I would not be able to make it in that environment.
When the service was over and we left, I saw the old lady in our pew differently. She had trouble walking, so I took her arm and walked with her until we got outside and someone took her home. I realized about halfway through that I never would have done that normally--she could make it on her own, and there were plenty of people to help. But it was the beginning of a quiet compassion stirring. God was truly answering our prayer. God was growing my faith.
As for our group unity, which David and I had been praying for, we finally saw it blossom that night. We gathered together in the hotel lobby, shared about our day, about what we were hoping God would do this week, and how we came to be at the same church. Since we were from such a massive church, spanning 3 services in 4 locations and counting, most of us had only met the team leader before the trip. The unity of mission and prayer together finally brought us to a place of unity.
That's probably what I loved most about the Honduran mission team--praise and prayer that fed a childlike faith with no limits.
