Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Testimonies (Marcelina, Martin, Ruben)

In church on Sunday, we have a time when people come forward to give a testimony. There is a couple from the village of Santa Fe, Luis and Mari, who started to go to the village of San Diego about a month ago to visit and preach the Gospel. For a long time, I went there every week to do Bible studies and visit the bretheren there. On Christmas day when our friends Roger and Hazel Reeh were with us, we went to visit Marcelina.
Marcelina is in her 70s, she doesn't exaclty know how old she is. She is part Cora Indian and her family doesn't visit her that often. She lives in a stick house with no bathroom, she can't walk because of arthritic pain in her knees, she can't see because of a bad case of cateracs, and it hurts her to move her arms around. One thing she does have going for her is that she loves Jesus. When we went to do Bible studies, near the end we would do them in her house because she couldn't go anywhere. Before doing them in her house, we would go to visit her and read the Bible to her. Her favorite book is Phillippians.

Luis and Mari went to visit her last week and she had a testimony of what God has done for her lately....

"I started to pray that God would send the Christian brothers here again to visit me. Two weeks later Esteban (Steve) came to visit me with some of his friends, and now you're here (speaking to Luis). When Esteban was here, they prayed for me and you know what? I can stand up and it doesn't hurt my legs! I can lay down and move my arms all around and it doesn't hurt! I can sit at my bed, look out the door and see who's walking by and recognize who it is!"

God is good. He cares for our every need and he cares for the little old ladies who are hurting in remote areas of the world! Thank you for your prayers!

Two more testimonies are from a couple of students in Arrayanes. I asked them to write out a testimony of how God is using them to share their faith with others...

Ruben's Testimony...

"In my life, I have experienced problems just like any other teenager, but with the Lord’s help, I have been able to continue in my Christian walk.

In the journey of my life, I have experienced wonderful things. I started playing in a worship band, but as I was playing I noticed that worship music didn’t attract the youth of the world. So then, when my brother Martin came back from Bible school in Oaxaca, he talked to me about putting together a Rap music band. We talked to the missionaries about it and they said to go ahead with it.

I’m really excited about this. We started with using the church’s instruments, but we felt like we needed more youth to be involved. So we asked God to provide youth that wouldn’t be embarrassed to play in front of people and little by little, the youth started to show up. Some are just beginning to learn about the Lord and others have known God’s Word for a while.

Before starting everything, we thought of a name for our band and we decided on “Fishers of Youth.” We decided on that name because it's about youth and they can know what a good life is with the Lord.

This is what we’re doing for humanity because Christ loves us and he is Real. We continue to praise God in the good times and the hard times. The guys in our band and their instruments are: Martin-bass; Ruben-voice; Jesus-drums; Gregorio-keyboard; Fredi-voice; and Lorenzo-voice.

By the way, we need instruments for our band.

Ruben Dario Garzon Solis"

Martin's Testimony...

"Hello, my name is Martin; I am about to tell you what God is doing in my life.

First of all, God has made me a man of faith. Also, God has been working in my life as I go to Mojocuautla (an Indian Village) where we are teaching Bible stories. Through these Bible stories, the people are learning about the ministry of Christ here on earth.

Another way in which God is working in my life is to continue with the vision that He gave me. God has a special plan for my life. We’re also forming a Rap band with 6 of our friends. Through this Rap band, some youth are making decisions to follow Christ. Other things we do to reach out to them are climbing mountains--that aren’t too high, going fishing, we go camping down at the river, and we go hunting. Everything I do, I do it with God’s purpose and through these activities, the youth who have recently given their life to Christ can have better fellowship with one another. So then, I will give you a testimony of what happened to six of us when we went hunting.

We went to the woods, while we were there, we waited for nightfall. Before we did anything, we prayed for God’s protection and provision over our lives. We didn’t have any firearms, the only thing we used were dogs. Suddenly, we found an armadillo and the dogs were able to find where he went into his hole. So there we were, digging and digging. The ground was really hard so we decided on a plan—to have one of us put his hand in the hole where the armadillo was. That is what we did, because we couldn’t get the armadillo out. So, one of us put his hand in the hole until he felt the armadillo. He was able to grab the armadillo’s head, but he also felt something farther inside the whole and said, “there must be four armadillos down here!” Someone else said, “well, all we need is two more because there’s six of us!” But the animal we thought was the armadillo inside the hole started to make a sound as if he were mad, we know the sound of an armadillo…buf, buf, buf. Some said it was the armadillo and that he was mad, one of us said, “that doesn’t sound like an armadillo, it sounds like a snake!”

We continued confident there was no problems and we put our hands in to get the armadillo and suddenly, just as one of us thought, a snake came out of the hole! We were all startled! We were able to kill the snake that spooked us and it measured about 6 foot in length and about 3 inches in diameter! God was watching over us!

This is all the testimony that I wanted to share with you about what God is doing in my life.

Thank you and may God bless you.

Your friend,
J. Martin Garzón Solís"

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