I’m excited to share my favorite story from my last trip with Amazon Outreach! Steve asked me if I felt comfortable sharing about The Bucket Ministry. He told me that our guide, Jose, didn’t have access to clean drinking water and he would be getting off the boat the next day. It had been two years since I had done the presentation, but I told Steve I would do it.
Fast forward to the next day at lunch and Steve asked if I was ready. Well, we hadn’t even found a bucket, much less the instruction book! I prayed fervently for the Lord to use me and speak through me, briefly refreshed myself with the presentation, and away we went. Our guide was there, along with the rest of our team because it’s always a great opportunity to share about The Bucket Ministry and the gospel. I fumbled through the presentation, talking about how the filter, if you take care of it, will provide a family with clean drinking water for 20+ years, which in turn will also help to keep them healthy!
After going through the instructions for how to use and care for it, I told them that this was a temporary solution. Yes, it will help remove nasty things in the water they can see and things they can’t see, and will help keep them healthy...but it’s only temporary. Because we are sinful, we will all die and face judgement one day, BUT I also have Living Water I wanted to tell them about. So I shared how Jesus is the Living Water. I told him He is our Savior who died on the cross for our sins and rose to life on the 3rd day. If we confess our sins, believe, and ask Him to forgive us, then He will cleanse us, even better than the filter does, and we can spend eternity with Him.
I presented the bucket, filter, and anti-worm medicine with our guide, and then he left...or so I thought. Our team started a debriefing meeting, only to be “interrupted” by Pastor João Wilson a little later to tell us our guide wanted to pray to receive Christ!!! Pastor had talked with him further and our guide wanted not only clean water for his family, but the Living Water! He prayed to receive Christ right there!
Here is something I didn’t tell you: This was not our original guide. Unknown to most of us, we got a little lost early on in the trip, so we picked up this guide, as he was fishing, to help lead us! After he prayed to receive Christ, one of our interpreters said, “we got lost so he could be found!”
Y’ALL!!! How great is our God?! This man was literally fishing and we asked him to come along, then God said follow Me and he did! So not only was he going to be able to take clean drinking water to his family, he got to take the truth of the Living Water back to his family! He was fishing for fish, and God called him to be a fisher of men! I am blown away by how God orchestrated all that, for Jose’s name to be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life!
Leslie Strange
Flint Baptist Church Team Member
Trip Date: August 6-15, 2021