Pray for Eduardo

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Eduardo, the young man above. He is super nice and rarely gets riled up. Pretty much everything he does is done in a matter-of-fact way. We are pretty good friends in school and I try to encourage him as much as I can, even though he often would rather give up instead of study.

But he needs Jesus just the way the rest of us do.

Eduardo is approaching a point of his life where he needs to start making decisions that will affect the rest of his life. But he is very passive and seems to be content to just let things ride and see where they lead.

Some of his passivity may come from his insecurity about himself. He is an intelligent student, but he is terrified of making mistakes. This could be due to his age (15) even though he is only coming to school for about four years now. There are younger students who know about as much as he does.

Eduardo knows about God. He has heard about Him pretty much every day since he has started school. We pray and talk about scripture in class. Some of his classmates have accepted Christ. He knows about all that.

But it isn't personal.

Like I said, Eduardo needs to start making some decisions soon, where he wants too or not. And there are a lot of bad influences around him that he could easily follow. I may have said this before, but sometimes it feels like everything is stacked against these deaf youth. Many of their families could not fully support a Christian (and by Christian, I do NOT exclusively mean Mennonite) lifestyle which makes it very hard for them decide to follow Jesus.

I feel inadequate to be a mentor for this young man, but I feel like God has placed me here for a reason. I want to do the best I can.

So pray for Eduardo. Passivity is one of the devil's best tools and I'm afraid of what could happen to Eduardo should he not stand up and make hard decisions. Pray that Eduardo could begin understand his insurmountable value to God, even if he feels pretty small sometimes. Pray that God would keep "knocking at his door" as the Bible puts it.

And pray for me. I am a flawed human being. However, I desire to live so that Christ could be glorified, and if God can use me to provide a means of mentoring and providing an example to Eduardo, I will endeavor to fulfill that responsibility to the best of my ability.