Meat Counters and Cowboy Hats.

When I was in about fifth grade my grandpa got really sick. I remember my parents telling me that he wasn’t following Jesus so naturally, whenever prayer requests would come up at the end of youth group or in this case bible camp, I would ask for prayer for my grandpa to accept Jesus. The morning of the night that he died my dad lead him to Jesus. I remember getting so excited that the Lord had answered my prayers. That was my first recollection of when I knew that God had to be real.

A couple of days ago in my quiet time I was reading in Matthew 20 where Jesus shares the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In the parable Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to that of a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. In this parable the landowner hires some workers in the morning and more throughout the day and into the evening. At the end of the day when it is time to receive their pay, they all receive one denarius. The workers who had started in the morning were angered that they were not payed more than those that had started work just before the end of the day. I am so in awe of the grace and mercy that the Lord shows us. It truly doesn’t matter how long it takes us to say yes to following Jesus. Whether you’ve been following Jesus nearly your entire life, or whether you say yes at the very end, your yes is honored the same. 

Over the past couple of weeks we have gotten the privilege of sharing the base with a group of Guatemalans that were going through a missions training intensive. We got to see into a little bit of what God was doing in their lives and it has been such a beautiful picture of the kingdom. One night my team decided to worship before feedback. After a while of worshipping with my eyes closed I opened my eyes to see that quite a few of the people from “Hineni” (the name of the program) had joined us. I immediately fell apart. I was so in awe of the way that the Lord speaks into people of ALL NATIONS. The same God that I worship in the states is the same God that the people of Guatemala worship. There was another time that we got to pair off with people that were apart of Hineni and ask the Lord what he wanted to speak to them. The Lord quickly painted me an image to share with Pablo. I realized that I don’t leave room for the Lord to speak or show me things like this enough. The Lord wants to speak into other people through me simply because He loves his children. It’s really not about me. How humbling to be used in that way!

In one of Hineni’s last days we got to go out to a village to do some evangelism with them. I ended up in a group with Josue and Sarah, two of the people in the Hineni program. They speak about as much English as I speak Spanish. We began to pray and ask the Lord where he was leading us. As I was praying I saw a lime green building. When I opened my eyes I saw the exact building in the distance. I told Josue and Sarah and we ended up heading that way. The store ended up being a small meat counter. As I let Josue and Sarah talk to him they asked him about his family, his beliefs, and got to know him bit. It turned out that he and his family were all christians. At first I was a little disappointed, but then the Lord gave me a heart check. Sometimes the Lord needs us to minister to believers as well. To bring encouragement and also to bring the listening ears of Jesus. This man definitely seemed to have a lot on his mind. I only caught bits and pieces of what he was telling Josue and Sarah but the Lord gave me peace that I had saw correctly and that our visit to this meat counter was completely intentional.

After that we walked towards the town square with about seven minutes until we were supposed to meet up with the rest of the group. We walked by an older man wearing a cowboy hat and the Holy Spirit gave me a nudge. I continued to walk by with Josue and Sarah and after we had passed him I felt another nudge so I stopped and I told Josue and Sarah that we should turn around and pray for the man we had just passed. We turned around and we met this seventy year old man whose name was also Josue. We talked to Josue and I intently listened and watched his body language. I didn’t understand much of what he was saying but the parable of the workers in the vineyard kept coming to my mind. We had passed our meeting time so we knew we needed to pray. Josue, Sarah, and I led this man into prayer and we prayed with him for a few minutes all aloud at the same time. Josue and Sarah in Spanish, and I in English. I knew that the Holy Spirit was moving and I was happy with our stop. As we were walking back to the rest of our friends Josue told me through google translate that this Josue had believed in God but he had just accepted Jesus into his heart right there as we had prayed with him. I was ecstatic. This was the first time that I had witnessed someone come to Jesus like this. I realized that it made total sense that my mind had gone to the parable of the vineyard. Even at seventy years old, Josues “yes” will receive the same honor as my “yes” at nineteen years old. The Lord is so so sweet.

As always I want to say a huge thank you to those of you who have supported me through prayer and donations. I am currently $745 away from my $13,000 deadline which is at the end of this month! If you would like to help me reach this goal you can do so through the donate button here on my blog or you can venmo me: Lexy-Donath

Thank you so much for following along! I love you all! As always reach out to me if you have any questions!

Love y’all!

-Lex <3