TALAMANCA – We got to spend five days in the jungle, literally heaven on earth. We got to love on Gods children, wear the same outfit everyday, sweat profusely and not shower, all while learning new things!! I learned so much so I wanted to kind of recap what my days looked like! Enjoy!
DAY ONE
We are going to jump right in! We woke up at 4:00am to start our 6 hour bus ride to Talamanca. Once we arrived we eat and unpacked which took about an hour. We had the opportunity to go do some house visits around the community to grow relationship as well as share the Lords word. Diego, the base leader in Talamanca told us that it was going to be a long walk so I started to get nervous. These people live in the jungle were there are no roads in lots of areas, so they are used to walking everywhere. When he says it’s long.. it’s long. Finally we all got our rain boots on and headed out. 6 MILES LATER we made it to our first house. It took us about 4 hours to get to this mans house in the middle of the jungle, and he wasn’t even there. I was very frustrated at first because the humidity isn’t a joke, we had walked in rainboots for hours, and I ran out of water a long time ago, I was wet and so unbelievably tired. I thought all of these things justified my reasoning for being frustrated so it was ok for me to be mad. Diego began to talk about how it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t here we can still leave the Holy Spirit here for him to feel when he gets back. We stood in front of his house with his two pigs, dogs, and chickens and worshiped for about 45 minutes. Nature began to sing with us and all the animals became quiet. During worship the Lord spoke clearly to me about my thought process during those first two hours. He said this is a perfect representation of the lengths I will go to love my children. He travels far and wide to try and get our attention and sometimes we don’t listen but he does it anyways, every time. For me I traveled 6 miles in the killer heat with giant rain boots not even knowing if this man was even going to be there. It was worth every second though because we were able to leave something there that was worth leaving. Diego had walked this path over 20 times so I am very capable of doing it once with a happy heart. On the way back I was filled with joy, yes I was tired, but I was able to walk with a smile on my face knowing that I am ready to go through any length to reach my brothers and sisters. Throughout the rest of my trip I remember this and it made my journey more memorable that I ever could have imagined. We finally got back to the base and we enjoyed diner as a family thankful for the opportunity we had this day.
This was after our hike!!
DAY TWO
We started our morning off at 8:00am with devotions and coffee. Then we headed out to do house visits again. My group got to visit three houses and two of them were moms. The first house we went to this women had been praying that all of her children we come to love the Lord. The Lord gave me Psalms 91, “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are our armor and protection.” Now this was the first time that God had ever given me scripture to quote without the Bible in front of me which was so cool. He wanted me to remind her that in this time of trusting that God will guide them home that the lord is protecting them and her. It was very special. Then as we made it to the second house this women’s children had all moved out so she was alone. She has the most pets I have ever seen and it was so cool. She told us that she gets bored so she does lots of short term projects with her house. She had just recently put in a pond in her front yard with 400 fish in it!! She was telling us how she takes care of them and how if she doesn’t keep the pond covered the birds fly down and eat them. The Lord told me to say, “just like you know every detail on how to care for your pets and how you know what hurts them and what they like, the lord knows the same about you. He knows what hurts you, but he also knows the desires of your heart and he is going to comfort you in your time of loneliness. He is going to show you new passions to fill your time with that grows his kingdom.” She lit up with joy and started crying. Its so cool to be apart of Gods plan when it comes to loving his children. Once we headed back to the base we took 3 minute showers, and when I say shower I mean I stood under the water for 3 minutes then dried off. We had church to go to and guess who got to speak… MEEE. I felt like the Lords word over Talamanca was comfort. There was lots of people that needed to know that God is going to be there comforter in hard times. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.” God guided all of my words and it was a joy to plant those seeds knowing God was going to water them!
This is the truck we take to some houses visits, the most memories were made in the back of this truck! This was the one time we got max A/C! So thanks God for the wind!
DAY THREE
We started our day out like all the other ones, with family around the table plus lots of joy. We got to adventure to a woman’s house who had 9 children. Her mother was the most powerful witch in Talamanca. A couple years ago she was able to tell her mom she wanted to be a Christian and so she moved out. She is now raising her kids to be Jesus lovers 🙂 Sadly around 5 days before we arrived at her house her oldest son had died. Her whole family was in deep grief, you could just feel the sadness. Her oldest daughter had a 21 day old baby, they said they haven’t been taking care of because it’s to hard to even wake up in the morning much less take care of new life. One of my squad mates got to share a message about how God is with us in our mourning. Then we did some worship and opened up a time of prayer. The second oldest son in the house spoke about how now that he is the man of the house he feels a heavy weight of responsibilities but he knows he can do it with Jesus. I shared that the Lord sees their house as a “house full of warriors” and I encouraged her oldest son that the Lord is here to comfort him and his family and that he is a mighty warrior! The whole house had lots of moments of tears but it was healing this family. It was an incredibly hard but powerful environment to be apart of. So thanks God for your encouraging words!
This was our squad sitting in the house were healing happened!!
DAY FOUR
Our last full day in this beautiful jungle was a good one. We got to wake up at 3am to do a prayer walk for all the persecuted churches around the world. It was probably one of the coolest things I did in the jungle. I felt like a true trooper of the Lord. We walked up and down the roads with flashlights and rain boots just praying for these churches. Each one of us had a church we “represented” and when it was that churches turn to be prayed for we went to the front of the group and lead the pack. It was powerful. We eventually stopped in a circle and got to pray over Talamanca, Talamancas people, then we prayed over ourselves. The reason we woke up at 3am to do a prayer walk is because most of the places we were praying for, in there time zone it would be day time. It was so cool to think, God is fighting for us and praying for us all the time and we don’t always know about it. Now we are troops of God doing the same thing for his children, praying for all these people but they have no idea. We were just planting seeds so willingly even though we weren’t getting anything specific out of it. Then about an hour later we went back and slept in because we got the morning off.. THANKS GOD. Later on in the day we had the opportunity to lead a youth group with the teenagers from the community. I knew that God gave me a passion for young kids but I never thought It included hanging with kids my age. WRONG, I loved it more than anything I’ve done! It was so cool to lead and guide these young adults. God showed me a new passion and told me I am capable of being a youth leader. I could mentor these teenagers, be a role model in my actions, be someone they can have fun with, and most importantly love them all the way God does. It was a very cool experience to find out I like something I thought I never would. We played games, had worship, someone from my team gave a message, and then we all hung out after. I love building relationships and I’m so thankful God has given me the opportunity to do that all the time!
You can’t forget about all the cool animals we saw, yes there are pigs in the jungle! who knew!!
