Fighting Against the Flood
Silverixia shares the difficulties she faces in ministry ... and God's faithfulness.
God has been so faithful in my life. I heard about God’s trail from my mother. ... I put my faith in Jesus and His work on the Cross.
I saw God’s faithful leading in giving me Anelio to be my husband. God knew my heart’s desire to serve Him. There are many men who don’t share that burden. But God gave me Anelio, one who is willing to serve and even suffer for God’s work. In the beginning our marriage was a disaster. Then we faced sickness. But God raised us up from all these things to serve Him. God chose us to work for Him.
My dad was so mad. “What in the world will you do in [another village]? You have no relatives there. Here you have a coffee garden. Who will help you there? No one! You will suffer. Your children will suffer because of your foolishness.”
Since he doesn’t know God, he cannot understand. So we went ... depending on God’s faithfulness. And although it has been very hard like Anelio explained, God has never let us down.
There is now a small group of true believers in the village. And there are many more that are hearing God’s Word for the first time. We are trusting Him for a good harvest.
But it is hard. It reminds me of one afternoon when we went out of the village with our children. We just needed to get away and alone for a little while. We had crossed a river and then all at once a flash flood came. With two little ones, how could we cross the raging river? Big trees had been snapped off and were floating down. It was dangerous. We tied together some banana plants and made a raft of sorts. Holding onto this we were able to slowly and painfully get across the river and back to the village.
As we were struggling to cross the flooded river, I thought, “This is just like our ministry here. We are struggling to go against the flood. Our en- ergy is gone. Things are desperate. We fear for our children.”
But just as God got us safely to the other side of the river, He will faithfully get us through these first difficult years of ministry. We have nothing but Him to depend on. And He is enough.