March,
1996
Dear Ministry Partner,
How
do you measure success? This was a
question I had as we returned from the
Our
team had some setbacks in that we were not as free as we might have liked to
pursue our goals of evangelism and training.
The pastor who had been expected to be our host was not in the country
for the duration of our trip. The one
evangelistic meeting that the Cuban students organized had no non-Christians in
attendance. The mother of one of the
women on our team died suddenly of a heart attack. The team member was not able to get a plane
out of the country in time in order to attend the funeral in
On
the positive side, we were able to provide training to approximately 25
students. Since the last visit, some of
the Cuban students have developed in terms of their leadership abilities and
spiritual maturity. They were definitely
ready for someone to show them the next step in building a campus
ministry. We have every reason to
believe that these students will seek to apply what they have learned and that
they'll be ready to take yet another step forward by next year.
Once
again, just as important as the small amounts of literature and the training
that we were able to leave behind was the encouragement that we were able to
bring.
By
the end of our trip we had given away all of our gifts and many of our
clothes. On the last day as we were going
to the airport, Eunice, the woman whose mother had died, was giving away the
last of her clothes. She had nothing
left in her suitcase except an old bikini!
(This would have been an inappropriate gift for the Cuban Christians!)
She wondered who would be a suitable recipient for a few dress shirts she had
brought. (I thought the shirts were rather plain and unattractive.)
"How about
Raoul? You don't think he might
want them, do you?" Eunice asked me.
Raoul is a small, slender man in his thirties. In the absence of the pastor, Raoul had
patiently served us all week by driving us around in the pastor's car. With my broken Spanish I had found out in
earlier conversations that Raoul is a carpenter by trade, that he is single,
and that he has been a Christian for three years. Raoul had to fix the car a few times during
the week that we were there. Every night
he would park the car in the front room of the pastor's house as
is the custom of many Cubans, in order to keep it from being stolen. I doubt that Raoul can ever hope to have a car of his
own. Throughout the busy week Raoul was
always there quietly helping in the background.
Raoul was overjoyed to receive the
shirts from Eunice. He told her that he
was particularly grateful because six months earlier someone had broken into
his home and stolen nearly everything he had including his clothes. I had noticed the odd combinations of Raoul's
wardrobe including one pair of pants that seemed to appear with alarming
regularity. Since one sees many strange
manners of dress in a foreign country, I had thought very little about Raoul's
appearance.
If we were able to bring
encouragement to the believers by bringing a greeting, literature, training,
and a few material goods, they were able to encourage us through their
lives. Some of the students, the
pastor's wife, Raoul and others showed us humility, courage, perseverance,
contentment, hospitality, and warmth.
I was reminded
throughout our trip that "God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the
outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart."(ISam.16:7b) Great
"results" were not in evidence on this trip. Nevertheless, I am confident that God was
using us for His good purposes inasmuch as we desired to serve Him
faithfully. Success in the Kingdom is
simply being faithful to what God calls us to do. The results are up to Him.
Thanks again for your gift of faith
to the young people of
His
Ambassador,
Catherine