This week is Evangelism Week!!!!!!!! Everyday in the evening around 4-6 pm we work with a group of young people from a Spanish Church named Aleman. They have been so gracious to let us tag along in their awesome outreach to the communities surrounding Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Although our Spanish is not the best, we have been working on something called "EvangeCube". It resembles an arrubix cube but instead of being insanely hard to figure out...it has arrows that show you how to unfold the clever little cube. On each face of the cube there is a picture, and each picture tells a part of the story of the Gospel. So in Spanish Classes (which ended last Friday! Unbelievable!) we practiced how to tell the story of our sins and the wonderous gift of Jesus in Spanish, along with memorizing criticial bible verses concerning the Gospel its self.
What was really neat was that last Friday before Evangelsim Week started, we had a pastor named "Lado" come and speak to us about evangelizing. In all honesty, I wasn't too excited about hearing him speak before he came, but by the time he was done, I truely had a heart on fire for telling the true meaning of the Gospel. He started off with the questions "What does the 'Gospel' mean?". And of course we all had our various answers...and he himself had a few. First he reassured Jesse that indeed, the literal meaning of the Gospel is, "The Good News". But when we talk about The Good News, what all does that include? He mentioned how many pastors often give the sermon of God's Love and how much he wants a relationship with us, but forget to fill in the blanks.
The blanks that christians often leave open when giving the message of life are the full entireity of the story of the Gospel. Pastor Lado then proceeded to explain solely what The Good News meant...
The truth that all have indeed fallen short of the glory of God through sin and that sin permanently seperates us from him and his Glory. But alas! The plan of redemption was put in place when God sent his only Son, Jesus, to the earth to be fully God and fully human in order to die on the cross and be the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world. When crucified on the cross, he rose three days later from the dead which is crucial in the story of the Gospel because it represents that he crucified the sins of the world but he himself lives eternally in return giving us the ability of eternal life with him!
Now since I explained Pastor Lado's whole speech, I want to get back to Evangelsim Week. Although we might not always have the right words, we have the words of redemption! This week has been challenging, but also exhilirating by resting in the fact that the holy spirit is working in the hearts of those who hear the true "Good News"!
