Night Monkeys and Showers

One thing I’ve learned after two years here in Puerto… you never know quite what to expect. This past Sunday evening, our house church started out well. We had three new visitors and one other teenager that had only been once before. One thing you should know…preparing for and teaching at house church each week stresses me out. I love it and hate it at the same time. I love it because I totally believe that it’s what God has called me to do and I love to share biblical truth with everyone that has come. I hate it because I have never liked public speaking and I always feel totally inadequate and under-prepared…no matter how prepared I am. On top of that, distractions really throw off my thought processes and tend to get me really flustered.

Anyway, the evening started out fine. We hung out for a while, shared food together, goofed around with the musical instruments and generally enjoyed each others company. TJ played a few worship songs and then we got into our bible study. Again we are working our way through Matthew. We are going through it chapter by chapter so that we don’t miss anything and so that we are able to talk about and study the events as they occurred. From the very beginning, I knew that this night was going to be a little different because when you are dealing with a small group setting, any changes in the people that are present changes the dynamics of the group. That being said, I started out by bringing everyone up to speed and setting the context for our study. The specific passage was the first 14 verses of the 22nd Chapter of Matthew, where Jesus tells the story of a king that invited specific people to the wedding of his son. When the people that were invited rejected the invitation, he sent his servants out to invite anyone that they came across. In some ways, this bible study was more technical than others we have done because there were so many things to explain and define to a group that was not familiar with many of the terms. Then, there’s the application of what we have learned.

Well, about ¾ of the way through the study, at one of the more critical parts, someone yells out, “I think I see a night monkey (which is an animal that looks like a giant bush baby, comes out at night and climbs from tree to tree)!” Everyone jumps out of their seats to see the night monkey which was right outside our living room, and there was totally chaos for the next ten minutes. I finally got everything back under control and we get back into the bible. Right as everyone is re-engaged, liquid starts pouring from the second floor through a crack in the floorboards right onto Jordan’s head. Turns out, one of our new puppies had snuck upstairs, hid in the corner and relieved herself. Jordan jumped up as the pee continued to flow.
Everyone started laughing and there was chaos for the second time in 15 minutes. We finally made it through but it was one of the roughest evenings (in some ways) that we have had in a while. The good thing is that God is working, people are learning and we are doing in less than ideal conditions (which has stretched me a lot more than them).

I am so self-critical. It’s amazing to me that they keep coming back, but they do and they are inviting their friends. We see changes in their lives as they are engaged in church by their own choosing and they love it. It is so cool to see God working in so many different ways, often in spite of our own feeble attempts. It has really shown me that what God wants is people that are willing to say yes… not people that have everything figured out or have the program perfected. In the end, we stand on the saving grace of Jesus Christ and his word. In these are the true power for salvation and change.