Costa Rica was my favorite month and my favorite ministry so far. My team and I were with our entire squad at one ministry again this month- Ocean’s Edge in Jacó. The Edge has an open-air layout covered in beachy murals, and it’s so dreamy. We spent 3 weeks fixing up the Edge- digging holes for construction, building stairs, organizing rooms, and we even created a soccer field in the neighborhood park. We also volunteered at the local church, and helped nanny for a few of the long-term missionaries.
Jacó used to be called the Las Vegas of Costa Rica. In the last few years, the city has been working on rebranding the community and revitalizing the city into more of a safe, family-friendly city. Ocean’s Edge partners with the local government and other community organizations to restore Jaco both physically and spiritually. Although God is moving in this city, there is still a lot of darkness in prostitution, drugs, and partying. Our curfew was 8pm because of the way that Jaco transforms at night. My team and I would watch the sunset at the beach most nights after ministry and we’d be offered cocaine at, like, 6pm, so you can imagine what 11pm was like.
We were able to stay out past curfew one night to go on a prayer walk around the city. A few other girls on my squad and I decided to walk to one of the hotels near the beach that is known in Jaco to be a hub for prostitution. During the day we would walk past it on our way to the beach and we would see men and women leaving the hotel together; we could hear the small talk and it was obvious that many of these interactions were between strangers. The night of the prayer walk, we had about an hour and a half, so we decided to walk around the hotel and pray. Halfway through our time, we decided to walk through the casino and cover the building in prayer from the inside out.
Women lined the walls of both the outside and the inside of the hotel and casino. They weren’t mingling with one another, they weren’t going up to the bar to order drinks, they were just waiting to be picked. We didn’t spend a lot of time inside the casino; we prayed and left. As we were walking, I tried to keep calm and act like I knew what I was doing. I told myself, “You’re a social worker, you can do this. You’ve dealt with things like this before, it’s nothing new.” We didn’t spend a lot of time inside. We prayed and left, and walked back to our ministry location. As we were worshipping afterwards, I started weeping. I thought I could hold it together because this wasn’t my first rodeo dealing with sexual exploitation, but I couldn’t hold it together. I cried and cried and asked God why. Why do people buy each other? How does loneliness and selfishness become so deep that people buy and sell people? What do the women feel; where did their value go?
These are questions I’ve been asking for years, and I still don’t have an answer for them, but I did feel God’s heart break that night. As I was crying and questioning, God said, “I know you don’t understand, but know that my heart breaks for them more than yours does. You are not alone in your sorrow. I have more sorrow for the world than you can understand.” I will keep asking my questions, but I know that God does have a plan, and I don’t have to always understand His plan in order to trust and follow Him.
