Perseverance
Perseverance is defined as: Steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, despite difficulties or obstacles.
This word is a key to working in the ministry field. By far one of the most important on my top five, and i bet most others would agree. Persevering is a part of life, even when we deal with small struggles; i.e. my struggle has been patching up a broken heart. But the struggle in this place has been and is fighting off the enemy. I must say it takes a lot out of person to fight alone, and i could not make it through without God.
We came home last night from the amazing pastors conference. It was another exciting experience of India for me. We arrived hot and sweaty from our long bus ride over, but we arrived to a wonderful oasis called T.W.R: Trans-world Radio’s retreeat center. Being in that place I felt a spiritual comfort, it was almost like being at home. The boys put their strength into the frustrating job of making a jail/cage (Andrew preached his lesson on how pastors can be caged in by their Fears, AMAZING) which was difficult in the heat, but they persevered onward. Then we rushed to get ready and dressed to meet all the pastors and their wives as they arrived. Another amazing experience for me, the people were so excited to see us, and to just touch our hands and have us bless them.
One of my favorite parts of this experiences were the peoples reactions to my lip ring, (I have a lip ring on my upper right lip, referred to as a Monroe) many people pointed to my lip ring and stared at it curiously, I found the best way to communicate its purpose was to point to it then my nose. Saying that a nose ring was like a lip ring. Pastor Caleb told me a hilarious story that his congregation thought that I had surgery on my jaw, and it was a screw holding it together. LOL (laugh out loud.) While the people were coming in I filmed them with Adam’s camera, many women hid their faces while the men were excited to get into my shots.
But I also loved the stories that the pastor’s would tell me of their lives: One man showed me these pictures of himself, on the front a picture of him doing work as a witch doctor, and on the other side pictures of him ministering to his congregation. He told me that he was a witch doctor for 15 years, then by the grace of God came to know Jesus, what a change! I love these stories and there were many more mouths more then happy to let me know of their journeys.
Then we went and had our lesson in the Philadelphia auditorium, worship in Tamil, then Andrew spoke on how as pastors they can get caged in their our fears, so true. It was amazing the way the pastors took to learning these things, they were so focused on catching everything they could.
I love the way that these people are so evangelistic, its so amazing and breath taking to me. Because back home in our congregation we are so quiet with our faith, and many are shy, here they shout it out: Praise the lord, hallelujah!!!! And when we go and read from our bibles the people almost fight over who gets to read out loud. Its so amazing to me, that their so bold and excited in their faith, I hope to take this home and spread it around. I think America needs to start stepping out of their comfortable religion. This trip is truly life changing.
God Bless,
Kate
