Thursday, June 26, 2008

Planting a Seed


Hello Fellow Bloggers...

I usually don't post sappy or inspirational posts like this but I have to tell you guys about something pretty frikkin awesome I experienced recently. I know this quite a long post but I am sure you won't be disappointed. Trust me!





Let me start from the beginning
Back when I was in high school, during my Junior year, there was a girl who sat behind me in my Geometry Class (yea I was pretty bad at math). I won't disclose names so we will just call her Regina. Anyways, as I got to know Regina, I felt the strange need to talk to her about Jesus. It was one of those things where you don't know why but you just feel the need to do it. So I spent alot of time talking to her about God, Jesus, Death, Heaven and other topics. Now at the time I was attending my old hispanic church but would go to FRC every now and then on Saturday nights and First Wednesdays. One day I finally told her, hey you should come to church with me and my sister. I explained to her how I attended a hispanic church but I knew about a great American church she would enjoy. Well, needless to say, she quickly shot me down (not the first time I get shot down by a girl). She said she didn't really feel the need to go to church and thanked me anyways. I told her the offer was always on the table. 

Progress
As time passed I continued to keep her in prayer and knew that God wasn't done with her. That same year, "The Passion of the Christ" came out in movie theaters and everyone and their mother had gone to see it. So one day in geometry class, Regina approached me and said what I had been wanting to hear for a while. She said, "hey Robert, I went to go see Passion of the Christ this weekend and I cried like a baby" I was like yea ok so did everyone else. She then said, "I want to go to church!" I was like WHAAAAT! I was so happy I couldn't believe it. So I told my sister about it and my sister took her to church. My sister was attending Calvary Chapel at the time and decided to take her there. All in all they went to church once together had a cup of coffee and pretty much never saw each other again. Unfortunately, we kinda lost contact once we went on to our Senior year and eventually graduated. 

Here's where it gets good
Now I would be lying if I said that I constantly thought about and prayed for her after high school. To be quite honest, I just figured it to be like most of my high school friends that I would never see again. Every now and then I would think, "I wonder how Regina is doing" but that's it. Now about a week after Easter, I was going through my usual blogs on my RSS reader when I found a particular video on someone's blog. The Video was an Easter Recap from FRC. So I was watching the video when suddenly who do you know shows up on the video?

THE ONE AND ONLY REGINA!

She talked about how it was the best Easter she had experienced because she gave her life to Jesus. Ok, now I must say that if it wasn't for me using my sister's laptop at the time I probably would have thrown it across the room and started jumping for joy. I immediately called out for my sister to come watch the video. She too was in awe and we both had chills. We were ecstatic at the fact that the person we were trying bring to Christ in high school not only went to church again, but she went to the church I was constantly inviting her to, and got saved there. 

It gets even better!
During the next 2 weeks, I was praying hard for God to let me bump in to her somewhere or somehow. I wanted to see if she was kept going to church and congratulate her on her new birth. I spent hours looking her up on myspace and had no luck. I had pretty much given up. One day I went to the gym on a Tuesday night as usual and as I was getting off the treadmill, who do you think I spot on the treadmill behind me?

THE ONE AND ONLY REGINA!

She didn't recognize me at first(thinner, long hair, beard, ears pierced, and glasses....who could blame her?) but once I waved she recognized me. I couldn't believe I finally found her. Seriously people, I have bumped into maybe 10 people since I graduated 3 years ago. She told me she lives in Miramar and is never in my neighborhood but came to that gym because her sister had invited her (If that's not a God thing, I dunno what is). 

Ok so here's where it gets crazy 
We got to talking and I asked her if she was still going to church. What she answered almost floored me. She said she was still going to church and was now officially on staff. HUH!!! "excuse me did you just say staff?" I couldn't believe it! She explained to me how she was volunteering in the pre-school ministry at FRC's Hallandale Campus. She said she has been learning and growing alot at FRC and that God has blessed her big time. She said that they decided her to offer her a official position the pre-school director at Hallandale. 

Almost Done!
Words cannot describe how it feels to see that the girl God was tugging me to talk to about him not only ended up getting saved at the very church that I had been inviting her too but was on staff and was now impacting lives herself. She told me that she had been thinking about my sister and I alot lately and wanted to thank us for what we did back in high school. It just goes to show you that even when you might not see the fruits of what you sew immediately, God is working as long as you obey and plant the seed!

- being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6 (New International Version)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

awesome post! amazing how God works..I honestly would have not recognized her if i has seen her.

Carlos Arellano said...

U a fruit cake!!

Anonymous said...

absolutely awe inspiring..