A lot happened the last few days in Costa Rica. They were amazing days filled with laughter, love and ministry, but they were stressful. It started on January 31st. I was driving us home from the jail in the church van when I hit a parked car. Immediately, I felt so dumb and wanted to retreat into myself, but I couldn’t because we had to deal with the situation. Thankfully, we prayed and God answered. The man didn’t want to get the police involved and accepted $20 for the damages, but then I still had to drive us home and explain to the pastor what happened and how we could remedy the situation. The quote we got for fixing the van was $140. That was money we didn’t have. We are living off of $4 a day for food, we don’t have $140 for incidents. I was so mad that Satan was trying to bring a rift in between us and our beloved hosts! I spoke to our leaders and they were so amazing, saying that most teams were under budget for the month and that we could pay the full amount. Thank you God.
Then we got to have an amazing last day which included a barbeque at Pastor’s house. We ate (I had tres leches cake for the first time, new favorite), played games, sang, prayed, and gave testimonies about how awesome God is and how our time in Costa Rica had been. When we finally get home at like 11pm, we still had to pack to be ready to leave at 6:30 in the morning. After being exhausted from packing, I realized that when we got all of our passports and stuff out of the safe we were missing $700. Satan didn’t have any victory with the car accident and now is trying again to destroy our relationships here. We searched high and low for the money. It was nowhere and we had to be in San Jose by 9am to meet the rest of our group. So we left and prayed that God would reproduce the money in our stuff in Nicaragua. It has been 5 days now, the money has not appeared and we are still dealing with the situation. Satan will not have victory because we are choosing love and forgiveness. I don’t know where the money is or how it went missing, but I choose to forgive and forget so Satan can not steal the love I have for Costa Rica and Zoe Church. Added to all that, I had to get our team with all our stuff (avg. about 60lbs/person) to San Jose and then take an 8 hour bus ride to Granada. I’m thankful for these 6 days before jumping back into ministry, but it has been a rollercoaster of emotions here too.
Please continue to pray for us. Pray for the money situation and against any plans Satan has to steal our joy in the coming months. God is doing great things in and through us and it is pissing Satan off that lives are are being changed forever.
Jay Dannelley
