This last week my team along with two other teams from my squad had the opportunity to go work with the ministry OM Talamanca. OM Talamanca works within the jungles of Limon, Costa Rica with indigenous tribes/clans. They encourage the two plus churches within the communities and do house visits that are sometimes a two day walk or more into the jungle. If that’s not missional living on my hosts part I don’t know what is. Our ministry host Diego along with Josue and Andrea(our fearless and amazing translators) were life giving and so full of the Holy Spirit.
So the week started off around 4 in the morning. We woke up, ate a very early breakfast, and hopped in the bus. I got to spend the 7-8 hour bus ride with Jesus in the back with all the bags and Kayla on the other side of them. Finally arriving at what we thought was our stop ended up being the farthest the bus could actually take us. Then it took three trips(to get us and all of our stuff) back and forth to the actual base in the back of the pick up truck.
The week was long days with long walks, and lots of hard yet beautiful experiences. Our house visits were one of my favorite parts of the whole week. Our last house visit was the craziest treck into the jungle I’ve ever been on. I’m pretty sure it was at least three miles in, up and down and up again. It took around an hour just to get there. We saw poison dart frogs, had mud squishing up to our shins, and mosquito bites to prove we were jungle livin.
Throughout the rest of the week we saw some more cool stuff like monkeys, a Tuscan, macaws, and bugs the size of your face.
We also lead and orchestrated church services and worship, and lead a Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s outreach. I had the privilege to share part of my testimony with the women’s group. Encouraging them in their identities in the Lord and reminding them of who God says they are. We did a little bit of manual labor as well. Over all it was a really amazing ministry.
There was however a lot of crazy spiritual warfare. There are bruhas which are witch doctors within the community. We never came into contact with either of them but there was definitely a dark presence that would make itself known at times.
I dealt with a lot of feelings of loneliness, unworthiness, and over all just frustration with myself, my emotions and thoughts that would well up at little things that happened here and there throughout the week. I also got a weird head cold one day and spent the whole day with a sore throat, headache, aches in my body, and at one point I think I may have had a fever.
The hardest thing to do was to press in and keep fighting. I knew we only had a week in Talamanca and I knew God had called us to this place for a reason. So I pressed through what was hard and a lot of that, from my perspective, is part of missional living. Pushing through even when you want to give up.
Another quick highlight was the last morning in Talamanca. All of us woke up at 3am and went on a prayer walk. The coolest part about it though was the fact that whoever wanted to pray would walk in front and lead us all as their words pulled us forward. We then stopped at a creek/stream and worshiped and prayed as a whole. So so cool.
I learned a lot, grew a lot and God showed up. The people we visited showed me that God truly brings joy to any and all circumstances. It was a really amazing week and I would say one of my favorite weeks on the race thus far.
