Experiences of the Altar - Starting from scratch

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 Hello darlings, my name is Vilma Amorim and today I will be sharing with all of you one of my experiences on the altar. I got married at 26 years old, I did the work of God in Brazil for 2 years, then we came to US  and I have been here for about 8 years. In this journey on the altar, I have gone through many experiences, but I will be sharing only one, that I can say that really marked me.

We were on our way to the United States, a country in which I had never imagined I would place my feet on. As soon as I got married, there were many pastors who were going to Africa, and so I imagined we would be heading out there as well, hahaha.

I remember once I talked to my husband, if one day I was to go to Africa I would do my bags singing and dancing. 

Very well then, the day came for us to go to another country, but... it was not to go to Africa, it was to the United States. 

One of the first difficulties that a pastor and his wife find is the language. We worked with the Word, but how could we work? How could we save? If we didn’t know how to speak. So this was the main challenge, to learn the language.

We stayed a few days in Houston, Texas to be able to learn Spanish, because we were going to be working with Latino people . We went to a church where we stayed for only 3 months, after were sent to another where we stayed for 1 year and 2 months. Until this point everything was going well, we were in a city that bordered Mexico, in other words, the entire city spoke Spanish, so we were learning much more, the people from the church would teach us with lots of patience and care. 

We were able to communicate with the people, pay bills, go shopping, evangelize, go to restaurants... even though our Spanish was not so good, we could do all that we needed, people understood us.

It was then that the day arrived in which we were called for a new mission...

Bishop called my husband and asked for us to pack our things and go to the headquarters, we would be moving but he still hadn’t said where exactly we were going to be sent.

We did as we were told, we packed up, passed the church on to the new pastor and headed to the headquarters.

When we arrived there, Bishop talked to us and began to explain where we would be heading to next: You are going to start a new work in a city where there is no Universal Church, and there is no home for you to live in.

Then Bishop gave us instructions on how we were going to do everything: first look for a home for you to move in and after you will look for a place were the church could be and so on, you will keep moving forward. 

He then told us the name of the city, New Orleans. At the time neither my husband nor I understood the name of this city, we were like,  what? Where? (Today we laugh at this…  hahaha) 

The next morning, we woke up early and left for our new mission. And just to kick off our new challenge, our GPS wasn’t working, hahaha  

We were still in Houston, a big city that until this day we don’t know all that well.

And now what shall we do? We didn’t know how to leave without the GPS! Then we went to the headquarters to see if we could get the GPS to work some way, but nothing. Then the pastor’s wife that was in the office gave us a map! People!!! A map! (If with a GPS we had gotten lost, imagine with a piece of paper hahaha).

But faith can move mountains right? And so we went. 

We were lost for about two hours, going up and down bridges that were never-ending, my husband and I were becoming impatient, until God gave a light and we were able to get on the right path. 

It was about 8 hours of driving, and we had been lost for 2 hours. At night we would have a meeting in a special work, so we needed to get there in time for the meeting.  

We didn’t have a house, or a place for the church, but we didn’t become desperate with this, our greatest joy is that we had this special work and 1 assistant. 

We arrived at night; the people were already gathered for the meeting that happened every Tuesday. 

We went straight there, the way we were, we still didn’t have a place to shower, the full with luggage, and we were late. 

The prayer was in the living room of a house were 5 single men lived. Right there in this house, the people put some chairs together and the assistant (who was from El Salvador) was the one who did the meetings.  

I sat in the very front, a bit shy, to be honest I felt a bit lost, it seemed as if I didn’t know where I really was.

When the people closed their eyes I looked behind, and in between about 20 people (I can’t remember the exact amount), about 16 were men and about 4 women.

It was a small living room, with dark lighting, and everyone pretty tight.

Everyone looked at us very curious.

-        The pastor has arrived!

My husband did the service, introduced himself to the people and in the end some people came to welcome us.

The meeting ended, everyone went to their own homes.

We were in a city where we didn’t know anything or anyone! It was already late at night.

And being quit new in the country, we didn’t have any experience on how to resolve some things, everything was still new.

And us? Where would we go? Where would we sleep? We were starving and tired. The car full was full with our bags, we were dreaming for a shower.

We were in a completely different city compared to a city that was bordering Mexico.

In New Orleans, it was easier to find a “needle in a haystack” then to find a person who spoke Spanish in some hotel, store or any place where I could sort some things out. 

With some help from a friend through the phone translating from English, we were able to look at a place to sleep and to stay at for some days while we found a house. 

English would be our greatest difficulty in this new place. We had many things that we had to figure out. And our Spanish was still more of like an improvisation, but we already had to risk it with our English. Hahahaha 

But one way or another we had to figure out some things, with the strength that comes from God every day, we would conquer. With our focus being the souls, there were people there who wanted to hear the word of God. We could not stay worried with our own comfort but with bringing them to salvation. We were able to get a house, later on we found a better place to do the meetings, but it still wasn’t the church. 

And after some months of many trials and searching, we got a place to be able to open a church officially. We were in this city for almost about 2 years. It wasn’t easy at all, because when we would go to negotiate for a place and the people would see that we didn’t really know the language, they didn’t have much patience to hear our English completely stuttered and wrong. But God never abandoned us and we never let fear and embarrassment dominate us, finally we found a place to be able to gather the people and begin the work there.

When you decide to live for the altar of God, you must have the assurance of what you really want. Because God is going to mold us through the challenges that we never imagined we would go through. 

A life on the altar is a life of complete surrender. We are not on the altar to do our own will, but the will of the One who chose us to do His holy and perfect work.