Life And Death And Indian’s Nose

 The other morning, Pastor Antonio, the pastor whom we’re living with, woke us up at 4 am. He piled us in a van and after a forty five-minute ride through the winding mountains where we’ve been living for the past month, led us to a cornfield with stalks reaching over ten feet tall to the twinkling stars above us.
 
We then proceeded to run through the cornfields. In the middle of the night. Banjos started playing in my head as I began wondering what I had signed myself up for.
 
In time, we started to ascend up a muddy and slippery trail up a mountain. Basically what everyone wants to experience around five in the morning. It had been a stretching week beforehand. The honeymoon stage of being part of Team Hebron had officially ended as frustrations with each other had continually mounted this week and we were tired of being with each other. Not only was I struggling with my team but I was also frustrated at the journey that God and I were going through. The calling out of lies I had chosen to believe about myself in the past, and the frustration I had experienced from God being silent/taking His time in explaining to me the process of breaking free from the lies. Oh God’s timing. How the Father loves to do things not when we want it but when we need it.

 Indian's Nose from the bottom

We had also been asked to pray and intercede earlier in the week for a woman named Lydia in her last few hours of struggling with cancer. The experience brought back memories of death that I wished to not relive but was faced full on with.
 
Yet there was also life this week. As we were prayer walking through the neighboring town of San Marcos, we stopped at a house to pray over a fifteen-day-old baby. The newborn boy had been struggling with sleeping during the night, instead screaming continually in pain. As we laid hands on him and began praying, Pastor Antonio spoke to the mother who ended up accepting Christ! Throughout this whole time, the baby had been out, deep in a heavy sleep from restless nights but finally his eyes fluttered and he was greeted by 13 smiling gringo faces that had prayed for protection over him in the night. When we found out that he still didn’t have a name, we asked if we could dedicate this baby to the Lord and asked Him for a name: Elias (Elijah in Spanish).
 
We finally reached the top of the mountain. We had climbed to the top of Indian’s Nose, the highest peak in the surrounding area just as the sun was breaking over the horizon and I gazed at the wonder of all that Creator made.

From the top of the Indian's Nose

 
I didn’t have a crazy breakthrough moment on the mountaintop. I didn’t breakdown in tears with a revelation of the Lord about what to do in order to break free. There wasn’t an overflowing renewal of love for my team.

Though I did take some epic pictures

 
There was just a simple prayer.

“Thank you for letting me watch the sunrise. You really are amazing and truly love me. I don’t understand what’s going on right now but I know that whatever is going on in my life, You’ll be with me and that’s all I really ask for right now.”

Sometimes it's not always about the mountaintop experience. Usually it's the day to day walking with God that really changes us.