So Josh and I feel like we need to put this story out there...
Last Saturday, the two of us spent 6ish hours at a youth leadership conference at a church that was 3 hours away. It was an extremely rough day. We went with three people from the office, Leah, Tharun, and Jayba (our translator). Besides how intense the traveling was (Indian buses anyone?) the conference was extremely awkward for both of us. We sat up front facing the congregation and didn't have much idea of what was going on for most of the service. We felt uncomfortably like the two Americans that were just kind of there for show. We were asked to perform a song (it was hilariously bad) and then we both shared our testimonies. We both felt like our testimonies came out awkward and insincere. The three people from the office seemed to be going out of their way to fit us into the program just because we were there. We felt like we were taking away from what they had gone there to accomplish. We were also in a skit, which was actually a highlight and pretty fun - Josh had one line "NO", and my name was Dong-Ding, but we both felt completely uncomfortable and the main question running through our heads was "What are we doing for the Kingdom?"
This past week, both of us have had a hard time when we considered we might have to do it again this weekend. Neither of us wanted to go through another long, grueling day where we felt completely out of place. Sure enough, on Thursday we found out that we would be going to another conference this Saturday. We had spent some time earlier in the week talking through the events of last weekend and praying ourselves into a better attitude. On top of it all we were both asked to prepare 30-45 minute sermons - yikes! We went into today feeling pretty inadequate and praying that our attitudes would be different. We spent lots of time working on our sermons, but we were both feeling pretty low about them and were just praying that somehow God would use whatever we had come up with. Looking back it was a pretty good place to be in - we had absolutely no confidence in our own ability to get us through today and were praying our way through it.
Today, Josh and I had a great time at the conference. It was a fasting prayer meeting for IGL. We both gave our talks and we got to pray along with everyone else, because we were told what the people were praying for as they went. It was really great to be able to spend so much time praying with a church in India for IGL. We left feeling really thankful that God had changed our attitudes and given us another chance to participate in something. Despite our negativity, God was gracious and changed our hearts.
To top it off, on the way home we were asking Leah where we would be going for church tomorrow. She told us that the two of us will be going back to the church where we did the youth conference last weekend. We exchanged looks. She went on to mention that after our visit last weekend, a woman from that church came up to Leah and told her that as a result of hearing our testimonies she believed that there was one true God and had decided to start coming to church. We were stunned.
When we got back to campus we talked it over a bit. Even now its hard to believe. Our hearts were completely in the wrong place at that first meeting, yet God was still at work. How incredibly humbling. What a picture of God's mercy - despite our complete unworthiness God still chose to use us in a powerful way. We've definitely learned how dependent we are on the Lord through this experience. Also, that our lives truly aren't our own - He'll use us how He wants to use us despite our wandering hearts. Praise the LORD!
Hopefully this encourages you. God is good and works in mysterious ways.
meg and josh
