So, for those of you who don't know, I spent three weeks in Cuba this summer on a christian mission trip with an organisation called Latin Link who have a passion for spreading the gospel in Latin America and helping to develop the church out there.
Seeing as I haven't written in a bit I thought that, for those people who I haven't had enough time to explain what my Cuba experience was really like (that being most people!) or those of you interested, I would tell you what it was like and everything that we (and God) did out there.
In this first post though, I'm going to tell you about how I got there. I don't mean like, by plane, I mean how I came to going in the first place. It's quite a tale, and for those of you doubting how God can be active in a person's life, maybe this will give you a little bit of an idea.
Last year, my first year of university, I had to pick an outside course to give myself enough credits for the year. As my course includes year abroad I was encouraged to take a language. Seeing as I had done German at school up until standard grade (which I got a 1 in by the way!) I thought that it made sense just to pick it up again for my course- that's what would be easiest, right? So, I met with my Director of Studies and he put me down for studying German as my outside course. However, as things turned out, the university were only running a beginners course in the first semester which I was overqualified for. I literally turned up for the first class and the teacher said that if anyone had any previous experience in German that they should leave, right there and then. So I did. It would have been easy to just stay in the class and pretend I was learning all of this for the first time and I was just amazing at German but that would have been dishonest and I'm not a very good liar.
So, I looked at my other options. Elementary French wasn't running that semester, Introductory Italian clashed with my timetable. That left Spanish. I'd never really had much of an interest in Spanish before but it was the only European language that I had been left with and so I thought, why not. It was only for a semester until I could do intermediate German in semester 2, I just needed to pass it for the credits. So I emailed my DoS and I was put on the class list for Introductory Spanish.
So my journey began.
The way it had all happened, I just knew that God was doing one of His God-things and that I should be on the look-out! A few weeks passed and nothing significant happened until one evening at my small group. Small groups are organised by the uni Christian Union and are groups of Christians or anyone who's interested, who meet once a week to chat, study the bible and pray together. One of the leaders of my small group mentioned one evening that he and the CU president were looking at taking a team of people to Cuba for a mission trip and asked if we could pray about God showing them the way forward if there was to be one. They spoke Spanish in Cuba, right? I felt something inside me telling me this must be it, but I decided to hold back and pray about it.
A few more weeks later and my small group leader said that the trip was going ahead and told us if any of us were interested to let him know and he'd send out information and so I did. I looked over the information and as I read I only became more enthused. I spoke to my mum about it when I was home that weekend and she was really positive about it. In my heart, I knew I really wanted to go and that it was right, but I thought I'd better do the christian thing and pray about it some more.
The next Friday evening after I got back from CU I decided to have some me and God time, praying and then watching a christian biographical film that I love called Faith Like Potatoes. I spent a long time in prayer, speaking to God about a variety of different things, including asking for confirmation on whether He wanted me to go to Cuba or not. After praying I went to my laptop to find a copy of the film online seeing as I didn't have the DVD with me. I found a website with a large amount of different links and I just clicked on one at random. It was a good'un and loaded really quickly and I cosied myself into bed while the opening credits were playing. I looked at the screen and burst out laughing in amazement at what I saw. At the bottom of the screen were subtitles.
Spanish subtitles.
I knew this was God giving me the confirmation I had asked for. I was so excited; God had asked me to do something, something amazing! He was taking me to Cuba on a mission trip, something I had never even considered doing before! I emailed my small group leader right away and said that God wanted me to go; I was in! I then called my mum to let her know, but she said that she'd known as soon as I told her about it that I'd be going so it came as no surprise to her.
The next stage was then waiting for a meet-up with the female leader of the team. December came and then so did the Christmas holidays and still no-one had been in touch. I didn't think anything of it, assuming everyone had been as busy as I had been with the pre-Christmas exams.
Over Christmas I was with my grandparents who are missionaries in Phuket, Thailand for their 50th wedding anniversary. My cousins, who live as missionaries in China, were also there and it was a wonderful time as, due to us all being in different areas of the globe, it's not very often we are all together. I told my grandparents and aunt and uncle all about me going to Cuba and what we'd be doing and they were all really excited and enthusiastic for me. Before university started back up again, I emailed my DoS saying that I wanted to continue in Spanish and take the intermediate course that semester instead of moving to German as planned- I was going to need it!
I got home and returned to uni the third week in January. Halfway through the week I received a facebook message from my small group leader.
I wasn't on the team going to Cuba.
In the information they'd sent out it hadn't been explained how many people they were looking to have on the team and what male: female ratio they were looking for. Both he and the other leader had prayed very seriously about it but felt that I wasn't suited for this particular mission. He encouraged me to pursue my interest in mission, but perhaps somewhere more locally.
The world came to a halt around me. What was going on? I had felt so strongly that this was what God wanted for me, that He wanted me to go to Cuba. So why was this happening? I respected both of the team leaders as Christians and knew that they must have prayed a lot about their team, and I knew that God doesn't lie or lead us on. So that left me; I must have gotten it wrong somehow. How could I have been so convinced that God had spoken to me if it was really just me imagining things; what did this say about my ability to listen to God, my Heavenly Father?
So I did what any girl would do: I sat and cried for a while.
Then read the message again... and cried some more.
And a little bit more after that.
How was I going to tell everyone I wasn't going to Cuba anymore? My Mum, Grandparents and other relatives, all the people at church who my Mum had told. What would they think?
That Friday at CU was a special missions night with lots of different organisations speaking about the work they did in different countries and what type of people they were looking for to help out. I listened to them all, eager to hear something that would explain why this had happened and get rid of this confusion. But nothing did, speaker after speaker I listened and still felt no call to any of the projects.
I continued to pray and seek God's voice, having faith that something was going to come of this, this wasn't the end of something; it was going to be a beginning. I felt the Holy Spirit comfort and assure me and so I continued to pray and wait for something, anything to happen.
The weekend after that was the weekend-away with the student group from my church. It was a fantastic weekend with brilliant teaching from God's word and wonderful times of fellowship getting to know more of my brothers and sisters in Christ. Throughout the weekend during prayer times, I continued to ask people to pray for me, that I would be able to decipher what was God's voice and what was just my own will. I arrived back on the Sunday evening and called my Mum to tell her about the weekend. However, she had some interesting things to tell me too!
That very morning at my home church, the Scottish representative from Latin Link (the organisation the CU team were going to Cuba with) had been speaking. My Mum realised God was doing something and spoke to him afterwards and spoke briefly with him about my 'situation'. He'd been very enthusiastic and said that I should get in touch and he'd see what he could do.
At last, SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING!
God had listened to my prayers of anxiety and confusion, He had comforted me and felt my pain and now He was showing me His power and ultimate sovereignty. He had a plan for me.
At the beginning of the year I had felt convicted to read through the whole bible and so I had started having a daily quiet time with God which I had never gotten around to before that point. I read three chapters of the Old Testament, a psalm and a chapter from the New Testament and read from a devotional book called "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers. The Monday morning after, I started reading that day's devotion and felt like I had just been knocked over the head with a bag of bricks. The words were speaking directly to me:
"January 30: The Dilemma of Obedience
'Samuel was afraid to tell Eli the vision' (1 Samuel 3:15)
God never speaks to us in dramatic ways, but in ways which are easy to misunderstand. Then we say, "I wonder if that is God's voice?" Isaiah said that the Lord spoke to him 'with a strong hand,' that is, by the pressure of his circumstances (Isaiah 8:11). Without the sovereign hand of God Himself, nothing touches our lives. Do we discern His hand at work, or do we see things as mere occurrences?
Get into the habit of saying, "Speak, LORD," and life will become a romance (1 Samuel 3:9). Every time circumstances press in on you, say, "Speak, LORD," and make time to listen. Chastening is more than a means of discipline, it is meant to bring me to the point of saying, "Speak, LORD." Think back to a time when God spoke to you. Do you remember what He said? Was it Luke 11:13, or was it Thessalonians 5:23? As we listen, our ears become more sensitive, and like Jesus, we will hear God all the time..."
- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, Updated Edition
OOFT. I was blown away. Again, God was letting me know that He had spoken to me. I had to have faith and trust that He had it all under control.
So, I knew that I hadn't been imagining things, God had spoken to me and I knew that, even if it wasn't to be Cuba, His plan for me included Latin Link. My Mum sent over some information and booklets she had picked up at church and I read through them and looked on the LL website. I felt the same as I had at the CU missions night, nothing was calling out to me. Nothing except Cuba.
Eventually I decided just to go with it, and I sent off an application form for Latin Link's Cuba Step team. The next week I remembered about phoning the LL rep and so I gave him a call. I explained to him what had happened how I felt God calling me to do this and he was really encouraging and said that he'd received my application that morning. He said that, if I wanted, he could speak to the leaders of the CU and see if he could still put me on that team. It wasn't what I had been thinking of and I hadn't actually met up with my small group leader to chat about what had happened yet, so I decided that it would be better if I spoke to him first, rather than have it look as if I had gone behind their backs.
I did eventually speak with both of the leaders separately, but to respect their privacy (you'll notice I haven't mentioned names either) I'm going to skip that part of my story out.
Eventually I had my interview to be on the Latin Link Cuba Step team. It was a really great conversation and God helped me to just be really honest about things. I was then told that I was, pretty much, on the team! The way Step teams usually work is that individuals apply to LL, sometimes for a specific country and sometimes not, and then LL put the teams together. This means that, usually, the teams don't know each other. I was understandably wary about spending three weeks in another country with a team of people I'd never met before but had faith that God must be doing something special, taking into account all the trauma I'd gone through not being on the CU team! I was really excited to find out who was on my team and excited that finally things had come together. I was able to look back on those weeks and weeks of uncertainty and see how God had drawn me closer to Him in that time, to develop my faith in Him more and to show me what it really meant to "wait upon the Lord."
Things continued to develop easily and naturally. I spent five days speaking only in Spanish to try and encourage people to sponsor me to raise the funds for going, walking around with a small whiteboard all the time so that I could write down what I was saying for people (... pretty much everyone haha) who didn't speak Spanish. I didn't get much money donated from friends but the money steadily kept coming in from people at my home church, family friends, friends of my Mum's, colleagues of my step-dad's, friends of my step-dad's parents... in fact, pretty much all of the money I needed came from donations, I didn't need to do much active fundraising at all! It was God who told me to go to Cuba and so He was faithful to provide what I needed to get there.
In June, I went down to Reading for team orientation where I would be meeting my team for the first time. It was a wonderful weekend and as soon as I met the team I knew that these were the people I was meant to be with. We had so much fun and it only made me more excited for going to Cuba.
Before I knew it, I was sitting at the departure gate in Edinburgh Airport at the start of my journey. Through all the confusion and uncertainty God had been working His sovereign power and after all the waiting, here I was: on my way to Cuba, finally.
A friend gave me a verse during my time of waiting which really sums up what I went through and learnt:
"God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?" Numbers 23:19 (ESV)
God isn't just some supernatural being who stays up in His heaven and let's us get on with things. When we surrender our lives to Him, He is faithful to do amazing things with it and use it for His glory. He never leaves us for one second, never slumbers nor sleeps, always taking care and loving us as our perfect Heavenly Father. Even when something is happening in your life and you don't understand why, surrender it to God and He will use it. Becoming a christian doesn't mean that bad things won't happen, but it does mean we can know that God has a purpose in everything that He does and lets happen and that He will be with us every step of the way, providing us with all we need; material, spiritual or emotional.
As a child of God I am able to look into my future with no worries. Whatever happens, I belong to God and all will work to good for me. To live is Christ and to die is gain.
If you haven't accepted Jesus as your saviour and surrendered your life to Him, this is the kind of relationship you could have. This is the relationship you were created to have. God is waiting for you with outstretched arms, longing for you to come to Him. Through Jesus Christ you can have life ABUNDANT! You can be free to live your life without being a prisoner to sin, free to be the person God created you to be. Only then will you have the peace that passes all understanding and joy that stands against all of life's trials.
Praying for you always, may you find peace in Christ Jesus,
Amy
