I sat in a circle alongside my forty-five squadmates, dressed in my Sunday Best — so, a teammate’s cardigan and a little mascara that began to melt off my face within 10 minutes of exposure to Nica heat.
We carved out time as a family to share stories of what we’ve seen the Lord doing this month in Nicaragua.
Person after person shared moments where they saw the Lord at work in the communities and villages we’ve been traveling to daily. Stories about women the Lord gave us eyes to see, words of hope and encouragement to share with men who felt hurt or judged by the church. We remembered the story of the man at the baseball game who gave his life to Christ for the first time with three of my squadmates. The story of how three teen girls accepted Jesus in a wood clearing after we presented the Gospel with the local pastor. My teammate, Jordan, told us what it was like to pray through tears of overwhelming compassion during door-to-door ministry with a young Nicaraguan woman whose story was so similar to her own. And there was the day we spent meeting with locals in a fishing village along the Pacific’s edge, walking sandy roads in the heat of the Latin American sun.
You see, it’s month two and we’re still getting into the swing of this new lifestyle. We’re figuring out what it looks like, feels like, sounds, smells, and tastes like.
My O Squad and Nica family riding the roads of Nicaragua in style.
Month two has been full of door to door ministry for the most part. Each morning we split in half and pile into the back of two cattle trucks — don’t be fooled we can get over 50 people into the back of just one. We drive down the most questionable village dirt roads, dodging hanging vines and shrubbery studded with sharp thorns. Our confident driver makes his way over ditches and missing chunks of road on the way to pick up our local friends and pastors; I say a silent prayer for survival as the truck tilts so far to one side that I’m pretty sure this is how it all ends. Once our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters are ‘safely’ onboard we venture into remote villages to share the Gospel of Hope together.
If I’m being honest here, door-to-door ministry makes me really uncomfortable. When people say door-to-door, I have flashbacks to times when Mormons would come knock on the door of my childhood home — we would close the blinds, turn off the lights and I distinctly remember laying silent on the living room floor more than once. No one’s home. Please, go away.
Even though I had a chance to do the same type of ministry in Kenya, walking up to people’s homes and asking them if they knew Jesus, if they would like to know Jesus, or if they would like prayer, it’s still not my top choice of how to share the Gospel. I would rather build a relationship over time, inviting you to know my heart and story, and giving you space to extend the same invitation to me.
Fishing village on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua
But that night during our time of remembrance, the Holy Spirit called me to attention when one of the men on my squad, Jonathan, began to speak. I needed to hear the wisdom he was about to share,
“Think about it guys. When Jesus was doing ministry He traveled from door to door, town to town, and place to place, to share the Gospel. He spent time with fishermen on sandy banks, at the water’s edge. That’s literally what we did today. What a privilege, that we get to do ministry and reach people the same way Jesus did over 2,000 years ago.”
What a privilege, that we get to do ministry and reach people the same way Jesus did…
Walking along the shores of those sandy streets and dirt roads in Nicaragua my prayer as I approached a home always went a little something like, “Lord, I don’t know them but you do. Give me the words you want them to hear. Less of me, more of you.” And you know what? Jesus always met me in those moments. And what’s better? He met with the Nicaraguans we befriended along the way, too.
So instead of looking at door-to-door ministry out of a lens of fear, the Lord is changing my heart to see with joy what a privilege it is to look someone in the eyes and say, “The Lord sees you, He knows you, and His love for you is so incredibly great, so incredibly fierce, that He sent me from 3,000 miles away to tell you about it.”
Yes.
What a privilege it is to share the message of truth, hope, and matchless love found in Jesus.
