This was an email I sent home on the first Sabbath. I had preached 2 sermons at this point - Friday night and Sabbath morning - and was getting ready to preach the 3rd that evening.
Last night I was ready to catch the next flight home. Yesterday's technical difficulties were only the start of it (The "Jesus video" wouldn't work so I wasted precious practice time waiting for the new version of that then still didn't get it, and my slides got out of sync -- ha that probably doesn't mean much to you, does it? will explain...later). I went to my site Thurs night for dress rehearsal and very little was actually ready. They kept saying "tomorrow" (now a running joke here. do you have ___? ....tomorrow. Will there be ___? ...tomorrow.). So then tech issues, then eye issues. I put my contacts in. The right one was fine, but as soon as I put the left one in, my eye started burning and turned bright red. But I couldn't get it out. Then it stopped hurting as bad so I left it for awhile and tried to practice then thought, “No, I really need to get this out!” because my vision was all blurry in that eye. So thankfully I was able to get it out. So I took it out and tried to find out what was wrong with it. It might have had a small tear in it, I couldn't quite tell. So I thought "eh, I'll throw it away and put in a new one." So I threw it away and went to get a new one... and realized I left them all at home. Along with my glasses. So I left one contact in, in case I needed to see far; I didn't want to be totally blind. So that successfully gave me a migraine. And I kept getting shocked by my electrical stuff, it was bizarre. So I thought, "OK! Satan is working hard! That must mean God is up to something big here." So I was excited about the evening meeting. But then I got there and there was NO ONE there except about 40 kids, and they wanted me to do the kids' program, but I needed to set up my stuff to speak and there was no pastor, no translator, absolutely no adults except me and my driver. And then my projector wouldn't work. It just would NOT work. No matter what I did. I had never had that happen before. I worked on it for 10 min or more, and finally it just... started working. Awhile later our coordinator showed up to get it working, but by then it already was. So the whole evening went kind of like that - NOTHING went according to my plan. My translator read off my notes and off the screen instead of translating what I said. The whole thing felt like a huge flop. I was so disappointed. Others came back saying they "felt like Mark Finley!" and that their translators were awesome and the timing was great and it was powerful and people loved it... and at mine, they just sat and stared at me. I was SO discouraged. I mean, I don't need to be (insert name of amazing evangelist here) but I wanted to at least know that God was using me. Liesse asked me something like, "Have you felt God preaching through you?" and I DIDN'T and it was so discouraging -- I Prayed and prayed and prayed and studied my Bible and Messiah and asked God for His blessings over and over and over and asked Him to preach through me; and I didn't understand why it went so terribly. But maybe there's more that I can't see. Maybe to them it wasn't as terrible as I thought. A bunch of people came off the street to hear. I'm in a tent right by a busy road, and people crowded in from the road to hear. So, that was cool. My driver said his relatives were there (a young girl and her little brother were in the car with us -- the relatives the driver was talking about were the kids' parents) and that they're not yet Adventists, and they're hoping that they will become Adventists soon. And I found out only about 20 people at my site are Adventist. So that's really neat. I got kind of excited about that. So yeah, this morning was kind of the same -- nothing going according to MY plan, but then I realized these aren't my meetings anyway - they're God's. So maybe they're going according to His, and I just need to be okay with that. My translator was even worse this morning, but my driver was sitting in the front row, and he started tearing up during the sermon. So I guess God was working! So yeah, it's been a bit discouraging - I'm not one of those powerful preacher-y people, but I've found a lot of comfort in 1 Cor 1:23 - 2:5 as well as 2 Cor 12:9-10. And Ezekiel. The Ezekiel part was pretty cool - God was saying "look, I know I'm sending you to a rebellious people. I know your job will be tough. But your job is to be faithful to me whether they listen or not. It's not your responsibility whether or not they respond. You bring the message, the rest is in My hands. You're only the messenger - the choice is theirs. Whether they are faithful or unfaithful, you must still be faithful in bringing the message." And Utap might not be "a rebellious people" - but my driver was telling me that those people aren't interested in spiritual things, most are not Adventist, most don't really care and only come because of the incentives. But God says "you be faithful with the message I've given you, and whether they respond or not, you're still doing my work. You're still doing my will. You must still be faithful to me."
Continued prayers are muuuch appreciated. I'm going over the mountain to a "branch Sabbath school" pretty soon, so I better look over my sermon for tonight, since I don't know if I'll have time between that and tonight's meeting. Please pray that everything goes smoothly tonight. I think we'll have a lot of people tonight, and we'll be showing the "Jesus" video for the first time tonight ( was supposed to start last night, but... yeah…). And I still don't have the sound working, so that's a huge request. Because I think it could be a powerful draw, but only if people can actually hear it.
Love you and miss you. Keep the prayers and emails coming :)
Heidi
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