The beginning of April, Sra. Cirila asked if she could be baptized. I’ve had many requests for baptism over the years here, but for nearly all of those other times, the people did not know the Lord and were not willing to surrender their lives to him, so I had to decline. Baptism is not some magical insurance policy that guarantees a person an escape from hell.
Talking with Cirila, I learned that her niece and son were both pressuring her to be baptized “so she could be saved.” I explained to her what biblical baptism is, and after more discussion, she asked if we would give her more teaching so that she could come to understand who God is and what He expects of her.
When asked, she couldn’t tell me who the Son of God was or that He had come to earth or why. So we decided to begin instruction classes with her. She has been eager to learn, though earlier on, she could barely recall what the prior lesson had been about. We have been going very slowly, explaining the basics.
After a few classes, she seemed to come to understand her sin and asked how she could apologize for it to God and to her neighbors whom she had hurt. That more than anything signals to me that she is sensing the Spirt speaking to her. Over the next few classes, we helped her learn how to talk to God in prayer, how to confess and repent of sin, and how to make restitution with others. She seems to have grasped those concepts. She asked to pray with Alicia in Quechua to pledge her life to following Jesus.
She is sincere, but she is still quite ignorant and childlike in her understanding. That has the benefit of making her quicker to accept instruction that some others. It is a challenge to know what to ask her of her at what point, but she has so far been willing.
Pray for us as we have only a couple weeks of instruction left with her, and pray for the group coming from Huaral that they would have wisdom as they continue to make a disciple of Sra. Cirila.
Juan David 