Lessons Learned

I wrote that last year was the year for being robbed. Well, this year so far can be called the year of lessons learned. For me, as I am now in a position of leadership in our church (basically second-in-command to the pastor) and in our youth group as well I have been learning a lot about what it means to be a church leader in the first place. Already, with the number of youth in our church the pastor and I have had to make some visits to homes to talk with youth and their families: girls who lie to their parents, don't do their chores, and stay out all night; a father who does not go to the church who will not let his sons get baptized; a guy who has been rumored to have been taking church girls out to drink and even possibly sleeping with one (still trying to figure out what happened there); young teenagers living on their own, kicked out of the house or run away because of abuse; single mothers with 5 or 6 kids to feed.
Every time I walk into one of these situations I ask myself, who am I to be giving counsel to this person? How do I tell a non-Christian father he needs to communicate better with his sons or he shouldn't yell at his daughter because it hurts her? I'm learning to let God use me in those places, even when I feel inadequate. I'm learning to speak the truth in love, even when it hurts those I have to speak it to, which is not something that comes naturally to me. I'm learning that part of this job is just to help shoulder some of the emotional burden that out pastor has carried alone for so many years. For the first time I am learning what it means for people to look to me to know what to do next. That is also not very comfortable and sometimes I wish I could just take a break.
In another area that I am learning in is how to better love my wife and most of all how to be more vulnerable and transparent with her and those that are closest to me. Actually, doing so has helped me a lot in the counsel I have had to give to people in the church too. But anyways, last month it came pretty forcefully to the attention of Ann and I that we have fallen in another rut, and mostly of my doing because I am a hard nut to crack when it somes to expressing myself emotionally. This had come up before but it seemed like not much had changed, so we decided this time that we were going to try to change on out own, and i especially needed to look for more support from other people. As a result, we have begun to meet to talk and pray more regularly with our housemates, I have started meeting regularly with John to keep me accountable, and I sent out an email to people back in the States letting them know what was going on and asking for prayer. We also began a couples' bible study on the marraige relationship with some other young expat couples here, and our pastor has taken it upon herself to give me lessons on how to be more caring and kind to Ann. So I am learning a lot.
That's a lot to munch on in just the first couple months of this year. But from all this we are learning that to live the Christian life and to follow God's calling, we don't have to go out looking for it. We just have to have eyes to see and ears to hear and the opportunities will come knocking on our door. We came here with no intentions but to love people and to be open to what God had ready for us, we didn't go searching for organizations to volunteer with or anything, and now our week is always full of stuff that that found us by our simply living and being willing. That has been one of the coolest parts of our journey so far.