Week 4: Bed-time stories

R. Sandoval

Week 4: Bed-time stories

Sometimes when I´m sick I feel so out of myself. I hate not being able to feel good, it´s distracting and energy draining. Sometimes I just decide in my head I´m not sick, although I am, in order to act normally while others would lie down in bed the whole day.

Going out from there—this week has been very challenging for me in so many ways. While I tried to bear with my incapability to breathe normally, I was also being touched on the sensitive spots of my soul while I heard about the ministry of the arts and God.

I had always wondered, for years, how I could relate my art and God into one thing. I had a dream about a gallery, photography and arts merging together. That old vision I had put down to sleep during the last two years was kind of put up again into revival while I heard Liz, one of the leaders of Pick-a-Pocket (an arts ministry to fight extreme poverty), talk about their dream of opening an café/gallery that would be established on the purpose of using the arts to reach the unreached. 

Pum. Pum. Pum. My heart pounding! I felt the revival of my dreams stir up and give me the shivers. I couldn´t believe what I was hearing, felt how good it was to dream and to see dreams of others come true gave me joy. 

While we prayed during one of the intercession sessions, I could see how my future suddenly crumbled. All that I had been picturing disappeared and was replaced by this new white canvas that truly scared me. I feel excited but without direction of whatever God´s plan is for me. I am EAGER, to see what is going to happen.

God has not revealed to me what is it that I am going to do after DTS but I know that for now I have to take the best of that and apply it for this time. I can use my arts now to reach other people. 

On outreach I don´t want to separate my love for photography and the arts from God´s purpose, I know he has placed it in my heart for a reason, so that I can love others through this dream.

I keep reminding myself what Dave Nevard said while he was here, “You have to make things happen on outreach, they are not just going to happen by themselves”. And so I know that whatever God´s plan is for every single one of us in the DTS, we have to move our hands to make things happen and not just settle for what is laid out for us.

Bed-time stories make you dream, and although they seem impossible, they are inspiring. I am so excited for what is yet to come, but for now I will just continue to dream.