7/5/13 Josue about 30
When I started my daily witnessing goal about four years ago
I soon realized how frustrating language barriers can be, so I began learning
Spanish in order to share the Gospel with the many Latinos who live near me in
Chicago. It’s been a struggle, I think
especially as an older adult language learner, but I found that even though I
have a long way to go in learning the language, my good intentions are usually
enough to earn the respect and patience of the people in most of my Spanish-only
conversations. Not so with Josue, a
middle aged Mexican contractor I reached out to at Home Depot yesterday. Josue has many strange beliefs, beginning
with his rejection of the Bible as God’s word and a belief in the soul as
simply “energy” that continues on in a different form after we die. This leads him to believe that all things
have a “soul” - even inanimate objects
like rocks - since all contain energy. Rather than belief in God, Josue believes in “la
madre naturaleza” – Mother Nature – which to him is the sum total of all creation. In this way he has negated any belief in God
and, of course, any accountability to God by believing that we are all part of god
and god is part of us. I am used to
dealing with this sort of thinking with a logical progression of questions that
exposes the inherent contradictions of such beliefs, but Josue took advantage
of my halting Spanish to prevent me from following through with my line of
thinking. When I would pause to search
my memory banks for the right words, he would jump in to change the subject,
preventing me from making my point. My
rudimentary knowledge of Spanish is enough for the majority of my Spanish-only
conversations, but conversations like this one with Josue keep me pushing
forward toward my goal of fluency.
Please pray for me as I am studying hard and practicing to reach this
goal!
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