Our Father; Nuestro Padre

God moment, Week 2

Thursday night church service, July 3rd. The church we go to is an Evangelical Methodist Church, with a very charismatic worship style. That night, the Lord touched me and helped me come to grips with the fact that I now live in Costa Rica (more or less), and that this congregation is who I will worship with for the next year of my life. In that instance, I felt as though I was calling me to finally surrender all of my time in Costa Rica to Him, and I told Him that He can use me however He’d like.

Unfortunately for me, that meant that I was to interpret the pastor’s sermon that night. Something I had never done before.

It’s tougher than you’d think to interpret an actual sermon to an actual church congregation and, to make things a little tougher, I had to use a microphone and stand up front. I was in a lot of prayer prior to the sermon, and I was lacking confidence when the moment finally came.

Just seconds into the sermon, I realized how difficult it is to understand what the pastor’s saying, remember everything he said, and then spit it back out in comprehensible English. After the pastor’s third little paragraph (we were basically trading paragraphs), I totally blanked. I had nothing to say, and it was rather embarrassing. But that was okay, I played it off, got some help from a church member in the front row, and told the Spanish-speaking church that sometimes I forget everything the pastor has just said. They laughed, and I was in the clear.

However, a few minutes later, things got shaky again. I had been going strong since that first mistake, and I was starting to get more confident. I decided to thank God through prayer, and was talking to Him, “Thank you Lord, for helping me to understand the pastor, and to translate his words. Please continue to be with me.”

One thing I didn’t think about during that prayer: the pastor was still talking. He finished his paragraph, I looked at him, looked at the congregation, and just smiled like an idiot. I had no idea what he had just said. Prayer is the best thing we can offer God, but probably not the smarted thing in the world when you’re in the middle of translating. I was embarrassed, and mostly because I felt guilty for not listening to the pastor when that’s my job.

Anyways, I finished that sermon and was able to translate the majority of what the pastor said. It was my first experience at translating, and I was far from perfect.

The point of the story, however, is that, earlier in the service, God prepared me for my year of service here in Costa Rica. He let me come to grips with the fact that I now live in Costa Rica, and I was able to change my mentality as I entered into that translating experience. Rather than see it as a one-and-done, “I need to do this well” kind of translating experience, I knew it was just a stepping stone to a much greater platform that I’ll encounter one day. Because my hunch is that I will have many more experiences with translating over the next year, and one of my ultimate goals in life is to preach in Spanish. God used Thursday night’s service to start humbly preparing me for such a goal.

And, regardless of my inability to translate perfectly, my heart for the church in Costa Rica was revealed to me in a new way. Serving the church here will fill my heart and bring me an incredible amount of joy, and I got to see that first-hand on Thursday night. So thank you, Lord, for a great night of worship.

And thank you for reading about it.