Don't look back

Is it wrong not to miss home? I miss people, I miss my family; but am I wrong to love where I am at so much that I don’t really want to look back. I heard a story about a man who said, “God is calling me to go, not to come back.” I want to live by that saying.

There was a student a long time ago, Ramon Rivas, who went through this Bible Institute down here in Argentina. While he was here, he felt the knocking of God at his heart. God was pressing on his spirit to move to the jungles of South America to share the gospel with those who have never heard of Jesus. Rivas found his wife at this school and they got married just before making the risky decision of sharing and living in the jungles. While living in that area, the river is the best form of transportation; and they didn’t exactly have USS Arizona while traveling. A good ol’ fashion, hand-made rowboat provided their only protection, which wasn’t much. I say protection because the part of the world that Rivas chose to mission in was plagued with drug trade. Illegal and private companies there would force locals to help produce the drugs and to secretly work as their refusal would cost them their lives. Now Rivas was a man who feared God, so naturally he was successful in what God called him to do. He brought many who have never been told about the wonderful life of Jesus to Christ. However, as you know, a true life for God will always go against, and even sometimes offend, the world. The more people that Rivers and his wife converted, the fewer workers these drug traders had to make their produce. One day, just a normal day (but then again how is any day living on faith alone in the jungles normal), Rivas was on the river in his little boat. I am sure that he was talking to God, or enjoying the sights around him while he was flowing peacefully down the river; or maybe just relaxing after a hard nights sleep. But whatever he was thinking or doing, it was cut short. Some of the drug traders were really becoming annoyed and angry with this successful missionary. So they tracked him down and shot him. They killed him right on the spot, for lifting their workers from death to life. Rivas showed them how to leave the life of slavery, never to look back, and to become servants for Christ—and he was murdered for it. Ramon Rivas reminds me of Jesus almost. He left his home to live among the lost people in the Jungle—a place most people could not bring themselves to visit, much less live. He became the only man who was doing the right thing, and the people with influence in the area killed him for it. What an awesome example he is.

Before his death, while studying here in Argentina, he felt like he had to confide in his counselor, telling of his powerful calling and God’s plan. His counselor, though proud of his ambitious attitude, warned of the dangers of the jungle. He advised him to think before making any rushed decisions. Rivas respectfully listened, stood up, lifted his chin in knowledge that the Holy Spirit and the armies of heaven were behind him, and said in confidence, even if God was the only one who supported him, “God called me to go, not to come back.”

So he went as God called him to go, and he did not come back. I love that story, and there is a hallway on campus named after this martyr. But Things are still going great. I have practically no time anymore Tuesday through Friday as we now have a Job and sport that we do everyday after class. And we are going to BA on Monday to witness to thousands of students, so I am pretty hyped about that. We have Spanish class in the morning and then Bible class… well that’s in the morning too. My days have never felt so long and I have never been more tired at night, but it’s till pretty awesome. Ill let yah know how BA goes Monday but I don’t have as much time to write as much as I did. Oh and I now have like 6 verses memorized in Spanish… just saying.

Take one step at a time as God calls you, even if you don’t know the ending, or even the second step, of His perfect plan—something I have had to learn.

“If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified.” –1 Peter 5:14