FRONT PAGE - here you will find the last 20 postings about recent conversations. Please pray for these people!

Praying for Fluency

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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