Thursday, July 12, 2007

All in God's Plan

If you remember, I wrote about a guy named Carlos in my post dubbed "Nascar" (3 posts ago). If you don't remember, I encourage you to go back and read that post before you read any further..... Intermission...... He's a guy that lives here in Nazca and works 7 days a week on a bus that goes to Bella Union. I asked that y'all pray for him and I've been praying for him as well. Last week during our time in Nazca, I prayed that I would get to see Carlos again, so I could talk to him more. I thought that the prayers went unanswered. Well, as I said in my previous post, we were unexpectedly redirected to Nazca yesterday. We were supposed to have not returned here for the remainder of the summer. Well, about 30 mins after we got here, we were walking around and just HAPPENED to see Carlos at the bus station, getting ready to depart for Bella Union. It was so unexpected. He was on top of the bus loading luggage, so we couldn't really talk to him at the time. Plus, as soon as he got down, he was gonna have to leave anyway. So, we basically just said hey and went on about our business. Immediately, and throughout the remainder of the day, I felt horrible about it. I had begged God to give me an opportunity to see Carlos again, He had given me the opportunity, and what did I do with it? I was really disappointed/mad at myself.
Well, this morning, we had our Bible study on Ecclesiastes 2, and we talked about not regretting anything we do in life (like King Solomon did). That wasn't all we talked about, but it really made me think about Carlos. I decided that I was going to go to the bus station at 10am and wait for him to return from Bella Union this morning. So I did, and Solomon came with me. And sure enough, Carlos arrived. I was so happy to see him. We got on the bus (it never really stops), and rode through Nazca a little bit. Carlos was happy to see us as well, but he still had to work. He told us he would meet us in a park in an hour (at 11:30). We trusted that he would show, so we got off the bus. We farted around for an hour and then went to the park. 11:30 came and went, and Carlos didn't show. We waited and we waited, confident that he would come (Carlos is on Peruvian time, which converts to 30-45 mins late). It got to be 12:30, and we were just about to go and look for Carlos, when he showed up in a car and honked at us. Solomon and I got in and he drove to a truck stop (much like one in the states). We wound up eating lunch with him at the truck stop restaurant. We (Solomon) slowly brought up the topic of religion. Eventually, after we were done eating, Solomon was hardcore sharing Christ. Because Carlos already knew the basics, we just clarified everything over and over. Carlos listened intently and at the end, Solomon asked him if he would like to accept Jesus into his life. He said that he wanted to! We talked about a few more things in the restaurant, and then asked if we could drive somewhere quiet to pray. So, Carlos drove us a little ways and parked beside the road. And there Solomon prayed, and Carlos repeated. It was totally awesome. Carlos is now a brother in Christ and gets to share with us in heaven. All of this is possible because God orchestrated our reunion with Carlos. Even when I tried to mess it up, He still put us three together (I couldn't have done it without Solomon; Carlos' accent is hard for me to understand). It turned out better in the end that we didn't talk to him yesterday, because we wouldn't have had time. But today, we had all the time we needed to bring him into the Kingdom. We, at first, thought that our time here in Nazca was an inconvenient delay, but now I praise God that we are stuck here. Continue to pray for Carlos. He is but a spiritual child. Thanks for taking the time to read these long posts.

Revelation 21:8