I (Tiffany) teach the children’s Sunday school every Sunday along with another one of the missionaries we live with (Tanya). My heart is to see children’s lives transformed by the love and word of God shown during the Sunday school class. One Sunday, I was teaching about salvation to the children. This particular week, we had about 5 children from another village. These children don’t speak any English. We’ve had as many as 3 different translators in Sunday school, depending on who shows up and what language(s) they speak. This day we had some children there who only speak Jao, the local language here in Lichinga. After teaching about the love and salvation that Jesus Christ brings to us when we accept Him as Lord and Savior of our lives, I asked the children to bow their heads so that we could pray. I told the children to begin praying in their own language while I prayed over them in English (I said all of this through 2 translators-from English to Chichewa, from Chichewa to Jao). I asked them if there was anyone present who didn’t know Jesus as Savior yet who was ready to give their life to Jesus. No one responded after a few minutes, but I decided to continue praying with the children. After a few more minutes, I began to pray that the Holy Spirit would move on anyone who hadn’t accepted Jesus but felt it in their heart that they wanted to know Him that day. I prayed in English that the Holy Spirit would begin to speak to that person and have them raise their hand to receive Jesus. Right after I finished praying that prayer in English, with no translator, one young boy who only speaks and understands Jao, raised his hand. When I asked through one of my translators what he wanted, he responded that he wanted to accept Jesus as His Savior! I said, “Praise the Lord!” and asked my Jao translator (one of the kids in Sunday school) to help me lead him to Jesus by praying for him in Jao. My translator, who doesn’t know Jao very well, wasn’t able to lead him to Christ. I was kind of stumped because I wanted to pray for him with his understanding of what he was doing, but my translator wasn’t confident that he could help with his limited Jao translation. I decided to just pray with him in English and ask the Holy Spirit to let him know what he was doing as I led him to Jesus. But during the delay and confusion over how he was to be led to the Lord, all of the children in the Sunday school class decided to lay hands on the boy and start praying for him very loudly-each in their own language. This kind of intimidated him and he pulled away while I was trying to quiet the other children down and pray with him alone. I was able to pray with him quickly before he got up and left the Sunday school class. I prayed that the Lord would deal with him and that he would really understand what had happened in Sunday school that day. I wasn’t really sure if he had given his life to the Lord or not because of the lack of translation. I asked Tyren and the other missionaries who frequent his village to try to follow up with him to find out if he had given his life to the Lord that day.
Well, it’s been probably three weeks since that Sunday now. Some of the missionaries went to his village last week and saw him. They asked him if he had ever received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He said “Yes!” He did understand after all what happened that day in Sunday school. God is faithful! I’ve been praying that God would send someone to him to disciple him and teach Him the things of the Lord. Tyren ministers a lot to the children in his village and I’ve been praying that he would show up to hear about the Lord when Tyren and other people who are teaching the word of God are there. I’ve also been praying that the Holy Spirit Himself would teach him and speak to him as He did that Sunday when he raised his hand to receive salvation.
Please keep our Sunday school in prayer as the Lord brings us more and more children who long to know God’s love and salvation. Pray that we not only have people who can translate for us, but that God would impart the knowledge of these languages to us so that we won’t always need to look for a translator! Two of the main languages that people speak here are Portuguese and Jao. It’s my desire to be able to speak and understand both! -Tiffany
No comments:
Post a Comment