Some Amazing Seminary Students

We're really enjoying having the seminary students who live on campus over in the evenings to get toknow them better, hear their testimonies, and practice our Spanish.  The students are an encouragement to us, as many of them have had to make big sacrifices to be here but are confident of God’s call in their lives. The students come from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela and are here to study at the Nazarene Seminary to be pastors or missionaries.

One student (we’ll call him D. for reasons of safety) was the leading drug dealer in his barrio. D. would get high and drunk nearly every day and witnessed one of his best friends die from bleeding to death from a broken beer bottle. D’s brother was a Christian and kept asking him to go to church, until D decided he’d do it to get his brother off his back. There he had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and was at the Seminary 20 days later. It’s quite powerful to hear his testimony first hand, and God can use him to reach some tough people.

The student with his hand in the air is from Venezuela and a great baseball player.  He played for Venezuela's professinal team and had a contract in front of him to play with the Atlanta Braves in the states.  At the same time he was receiving a call from God to preach.  He gave up the prestige and fortune of professional ball to serve the Lord.

Rut (Ruth), the student on the left, is from an indigenous tribe in the jungle of Ecuador. She is very shy, especially when speaking with Gringos (white people), but she made the trip to the Seminary to answer God’s call on her life. Even though she is living in her native country, I think she has had to adjust more than we have had to life in Quito. Her life in the jungle was very different than life in a large city. She wasn’t sure how to use a fork, spoon, and knife when she first arrived. Doing laundry in a machine was very foreign to her. On her first trip to the mall she was terrified of the escalator since she’d never seen anything like it.

No matter how difficult God’s call seems in your life, if you answer ‘yes’ to it He will provide you with every good thing you need to complete it.