Here I am, sitting in a little cafe in Guatemala thinking to myself, how did I end up here? Then it hit me, I know exactly why. Because my amazing and all powerful God placed me here exactly at this time and with the perfect people. This first week in Antigua, Guatemala has been so amazing and the Holy Spirit has done some pretty rad things. For these 3 months, my team and I are staying at the Adventures In Missions base just a couple minutes outside of Antigua. We live with our contacts, 5 of them, who speak life into us EVERY SINGLE day. We are SO blessed to have them, for they have all done the world race before and have felt God calling them to move to Guatemala to work with Adventures In Missions. The house we are staying in is beautiful and we get to live a little adventurous by sleeping in our tents out back every night! This may seem like a complaint but this is actually a blessing. Sleeping in tents, taking cold showers and not having wifi have really taught us a lesson about being more appreciative for when we do have these luxuries around.
God has been doing many many amazing wonders this past week but I would like to share about one particular story I felt God wanting me to share. Now, I have to try and word this in a way, y’all done think I’m crazy. The week before launch I had pink eye and I went to the doctors and they gave me eye drops. They told me to wear glasses for a full week and not my contacts. Me, being my stubborn self, wore my contacts the fourth day in and guess what happens? It comes back, this time even worse. My eyes were so red and I looked like death. At launch and the beginning of Guatemala, I thought wearing my contacts wasn’t going to be a problem but it also just made it worse as well. A couple weeks before launch, during launch and during the first couple days of Guatemala, I had felt spiritually dry, cold hearted and distant from The Lord. I have to admit the time between training camp and launch was one of the most difficult times of my life, but I didn’t realize how much it actually pushed me AWAY from God. One night here in Antigua, one of our contacts, Gabe, had asked what happened to my eye and at that point I was so frustrated with it, I didn’t even know what to say. Why would God do this to me? He knows I HATE eye infections. The first thing you should know is that Gabe has such a spiritual gift of prophesying and he truly hit home when he asked if I was feeling spiritually dry and untrusting of The Lord. How did he know that about me? It truly stunned me and blew me away. But then it hit me, this is the first time God had used physical wounds to show what was actually happening on the inside. He knew I hated eye infections, and this was His way of getting me to trust Him again and see the bigger picture. That night I had a long talk with The Lord and I woke up and my eye was just a little better. My eye getting 100% completely better wasn’t going to be an overnight thing because coming out of my cold hearted and distant ways, wasn’t going to be an overnight thing either. The days after that, I have slowly been regaining my trust and my heart has been soften by The Lord and my eye has been getting better.
I guess what I want you to take away from this is that sometimes God will use physical pain to uncover the spiritual pain inside.
