To be honest, I never understood what that actually meant until experiencing it. Sharing a little bit of my background this month…we have been doing various projects on a giant ranch, called The Jungle School. It is through an organization called Hearts in Action. Since my whole squad of 30 people is here, we are all split up into different teams of projects to do. The jobs range from painting, building small projects, organizing rooms, bookshelves, office work, to many small things in between. It’s kind of been all over the place on our jobs, but I’m really learning how to flexible in my daily schedule. It seems like something so small to be flexible about, but having someone control basically all your time of the day can be frustrating. Ive learned that in being flexible, I can’t have expectations. And that’s life. To just be happy with where I am at in the moment. And it’s still a work in process for sure.
All of the workers here are amazing, speak all Spanish (except a few who are bilingual) and have big hearts. It’s been such a blessing to get to know them and learn about them their lives, and be impacted by them. Being in an all Spanish culture, knowing little Spanish, is hard. But it’s becoming a norm in my life. But waking up everyday and having my teammates speak English is such a blessing. Basically everywhere we go is all Spanish speaking, but sometimes we have a translator or the few people that know Spanish on our squad help us out. There is a lot of broken communication, but this just reminds me how special simple gestures can go a long ways.
Anyways, they have this 2 week conference where people who are training to be missionaries come here to stay and learn from all over the world. One of the first nights of it, a few friends from my squad and I were dragged into doing a funny dance. The day before we were just messing around dancing after work, and the guy speaking, Mario, basically forced us to get up there and show off our moves. It ended up being super hilarious, and we just made fools of ourselves in front of and everyone who was watching.
We then went into a worship, mind you all this was in Spanish. Not knowing any words is getting pretty normal to me, but it’s still confusing. I’m definitely learning Spanish and picking up on the common words, but worshiping I could really feel the presence of God. It was powerful to see everyone in there singing in Spanish, but feeling like a part of it, and all worshiping God together in different languages. It hit me. Jesus isn’t just in America. And this sounds dumb, because I always knew that, but really feeling that His love has no borders. How there is no language barrier that stops God. How there is no culture that stops God. And how there is no nation or country that stops God either. He love is everywhere in this world. He truly loves every single person on this earth, and these people in this room have felt it. Just thinking about that gives me the chills.
God has no boarders anywhere. It was a small reminder to me that I’m not alone in this journey, and following Jesus is not easy, but so worth it. That God is on the move, and I’m seeing it happen with my own two eyes. His love is capturing people’s hearts around the world.
Love you all!
-Paigey
