There have been periods in my life where everything was going great and I knew that God was going to use exactly what was happening for the Kingdom. There have been other points in my life where I wasn't so sure that He was going to use certain situations, or that he was in them to begin with, which turned out to be untrue. He uses everything, but lately Ive learnt that there is nothing He doesn't use or that He isn't in. God is just as much Himself in the great moments of our life as He is in the worst. I think a lot of times His blessings just get looked over for some unknown reason.
Friday morning, the 17th of October to be exact, I went mountain biking for the first time. I ride my bike practically everywhere at home, but then again thats Indianapolis where all the roads are flat and the traffic actually has a system. Here though, in Guatemala, traffic more or less does what it wants. There are no speed limits, just randomly placed speed bumps to try to encourage people not to go too awfully fast, but who are we kidding, the common goal seems to be gaining as much speed between speed bumps as possible.
Also, the roads here aren't just random small hills. They're mountains. Huge ones with really steep grades that are a pain to get up, and a long ways down. One of the guys I was with was tracking our journey on his phone and his top speed was 45 miles an hour on the way down. Which, because I was pretty close behind the whole time, Im going to say was my top speed too. In essence, we we're flying down this mountain, making turns that didn't seem to be too sharp, but ended up being much sharper than expected, and wouldn't you know it. One of these turns, the first timer went down. I skipped my face across the concrete once or twice, slid my body across the road and stopped right in the center of what would've been oncoming traffic. If the van that was about to make the turn had been maybe 10 seconds sooner I probably would've gotten ran over on top of all this.
Good news though, I didn't get ran over, or die, but I did learn something while I was breaking the cardinal rule of Mountain biking; don't to use your face, I learned that God is just as much God on the top of the mountain when you can look down at the clouds and see all of Guatemala City spread out before you, as He is on the side of the mountain when you're going 45 mph feeling your hair and your mustache dance through the wind, as He is when your face is plowing into the ground, as He is when you're in a bed with a doctor spending a solid hour at least above your face pulling rocks out of your chin, stitching up the inside of your chin, then the outside. His blessings, although they looked drastically different were still there in every one of those moments.
They're just easier to pass by in some moments. It could've been really easy for me to miss the fact that I didn't get ran over when I hit the ground, or that it wasn't the big rock that hit me in the face, or that the doctor had one of those numbing shots on hand so I didn't have to feel him shove his finger half way through my face or the first couple stitches. Then after all of that had happened it could have been real easy for me to miss the fact that God was in every second of the day. The seemingly good ones and the seemingly bad ones. He's always there.
There are pictures, but some people like a warning before they see holes in peoples faces, so if you really want to see them just email me and Ill send them to you [email protected].
And as always, Im still in need of just a touch more before Im fully funded, and also, prayers would be great. Ive been put into a leadership role, and prayers seem to help that quite a bit. Thanks everyone!
