Livin’ La Vida Moca (PHOTOS)

Putting my time on the race this far in words has become so incredibly difficult for me and it’s taken me two weeks to realize why.

The joy of The Lord.

It’s really hard to describe the joy of The Lord but today summarized pretty well what it has felt like on the race for me. I hope you can feel the joy of The Lord that I’ve felt even just reading this.

Today was the start of the race for my team.

We are the first team on our squad to be alone as a team in a location. We are not with our host or a translator (Ashley on our team speaks Spanish though. Woohoo for that!) and we have so much freedom in our ministry.

Here’s what today looked like:

Woke up and had a team bible study over spiritual gifts.
Went to breakfast and had delicious eggs and COFFEE.
Taught 20 kids about 2-10 years old about goodness and English words.

Side note: these kids are little angel babies. They are respectful. They are helpful. They listen. They are eager to learn. We just get to love on them and serve them the best we can.

After morning English we walked to a baseball field with a lot of the students and watched the end of a baseball practice. We got to talk with the players and coach and they invited us to come tomorrow to their practice and to play a game against them. We are going down. That’s a certainty.

Then we ate lunch where we were served rice and beans and fried plantains and chicken and salad and COKE.

Side note: our cooks have gone above and beyond for us already. We have so much food we can’t eat it all. And it is seriously all so delicious. I asked where we can buy coffee and then they made me enough coffee to have two cups full. They speak my love language.

Then we went back to our house where we were going to take a nap before our afternoon class. I set up my hammock on the porch and before I knew it like 5 kids were surrounding me, sitting in chairs around me just being with me. Other neighbors came over and sat on our porch (and in troy and Andrews case came into their room and sat on their bed). These people want to get to know us. They want to be around us. We are lucky to get an hour of team time in without anyone around us. And we love it.

Then we taught our afternoon class of about 15 people differing in ages from 10-35 years old. Three of my morning kids came to the adult class and I got to work one on one with them and go more in depth with English. There was so much joy and laughter and a serious desire to learn. It was such a breath of fresh air.

Afterwards we came back to our house and had more of the community come over and hang out on our porch with us. They later came to the park with us and we ran and then started a game of soccer. Some of the baseball boys from earlier came and joined as well.

We left after a few hours to eat dinner where we were served more delicious food. I can’t get over the food, y’all. People from the community came and sat with us during meals. One man who hung out with us named Juan would take our water bottled and fill them for us. Children come and ask to take our empty plates from us. There is so much respect and love flowing from this community here in Moca.

During dinner I felt such a strong nudge from God to pray for Juan. We found out today that he is deaf, but he still sits and hangs out with us. He serves us. He helped put our hammocks up and take them down. He climbed a tree to get all if us mangos. He is just there for us and we haven’t even been able to communicate with him much. He has such a heart of gold.

After dinner he came back to our house and was sitting on our porch. I asked him how long he has been deaf. He said 4 years. So I asked if I could pray for him. Our whole team ended up gathering around him, laying hands in him, and praying for healing. I sincerely believe God will heal him of this, maybe not today, but I just know.

Then we had team time. Played banana grams and heads up and had good feedback and conversations.

This day has been so joyful. All last week I felt like I was being so attacked in different ways by Satan, and today there was so much peace and straight joy flowing from all of us into the community and from the community into us.

We have literally have been here 24 hours and have met most of the community. Hung out with them. Laughed with them. Hugged them. Snuggled them. Taught them. Served them. And we’re served by them. I couldn’t be more happy.

I’m telling y’all.

The joy of The Lord.