What would life look like if every morning, we as Christians, woke up and asked God, “What do you want me to do today?”
Well, welcome to ATL month!!! (ATL aka Ask The Lord), and this is exactly what we get do every day this month! It’s month 3, and we’re in El Salvador! Everyday we get to wake up and ask God what he wants us to do for the day, and then we go do just that! Every morning the girls and I on Team Agape wake up and have our quiet times, then we spend time in a half hour of worship together asking God what he wants us to do, then we do just that. We go out into the city and do what God asked of us. Living life this way is the most exhilarating way to live. It’s a real life adventure everyday, and we get to do it with God.
Week 1 we’re in San Salvador, then we move to Tasajera Isalnd for 2 weeks, and the last week we asked God where to go and he sent us back to San Salvador!
Here’s a glimpse of our first week ATL Dec 10- Dec 14:
Monday, we got words concerning the homeless, showing love, going in love, and just seeing people- letting them know they are all seen, noticed, and loved. During our time of worship as a team, God gave us all different words concerning what we should do for the day. On this morning, he specifically told me three things that he would do if he was still on earth (aka things I needed to do): feed the hungry, help the homeless, and clothe the naked. He then told me to pose the idea to the team that we all needed to carry around one of our own shirts to give away to people we meet as the spirit lead us. We then split off into pairs and went as the spirit lead. We stopped and talked to people/ prayed for them and got to know their stories. My teammates Hailey and Meagan actually met someone who said to them, “I just been asking God for a new shirt.” Right then and there, Meagan whipped out her shirt from her purse and gave it to him, and he put it on immediately! He had no idea they had a shirt when he told them his prayer, and they got to be used as an answer to prayer for this man. Marissa and Denae’ also met a homeless man who was on crutches, and they were able to give away one of their shirts for him to use as a cushion on his crutch! I met a teen-aged girl walking with her mom and little sister on my way home (I actually ended up seeing her on Friday walking down the street IN MY SHIRT!) Karlie and I also bought bananas and cookies and passed them out to people as we walked and prayed.
Tuesday, God told us all to go in three’s and he told three of us that needed to happen. He just so happened to break us up into two groups: one group having the predominant spanish speakers, and the other group with no spanish speakers. As we walked along and met people, The spanish speaking group only met/ talked with/ prayed with other spanish speakers, while on the other hand, God brought only english speakers into the path of the group who only spoke spanish! Who would’ve guessed it! On this day God told us to be prepared. So, we carried around granola bars, more shirts, and garbage bags/ gloves. This day we walked the streets and just picked up trash. Before the day started, God also told me, “Build my kingdom where you see people building things on earth.” We just so happened to run into construction workers while we picked up garbage, and we were able to give them a snack. We also ended up walking by the hospital and got the chance to pray over quite a few people who were sick/ injured.
Wednesday, God gave us jobs to do to prepare for later in the week. On Friday we planned to pass out Christmas gifts because it’s a jewish tradition, you can read about it in Esther, and although we aren’t jewish, we still felt it was a great idea to bless others, so we went to the dollar store and stocked up on all sorts of small toys, socks, journals, candies, etc. We also had plans to make dinner for the homeless on Thursday night, so we went to the grocery store to buy supplies for that as well.
On the way to the stores, we got to pray over a homeless woman named Juanita, after we prayed she said that she felt a weight lifted off her shoulders and she felt beautiful for the first time. If that doesn’t so perfectly describe the presence of our savior, I’m not sure what does.
During the evening half of the day, we went out to the corner. Rewind a tad for some context: Saturday night Marissa (along with a few others from the squad who are now in other cities) met some girls working the corner. She then went back on Sunday with half of our team and took them out to dinner. She made plans to go out with them again Tuesday, however, on our way there we made a wrong turn and ended up a half hour late, and they were not there. So, of course, we had to go back. We felt it in our spirit to make sure they knew they weren’t forgotten about or stood up on purpose. We made sure to get there 15 minutes early this evening, however, we had no way to contact them, so they had no way to know we were there. We planned to wait a few minutes after 7, since that was the meeting time the other two nights. But, God continued to prompt us to keep waiting. Around 7:20 we then planend to leave no later than 7:30, because we were standing at their corner and it was getting sketchy. One care actually pulled over to ask to pick one of us up (kind of funny actually because we were standing there in sweatshirts/ sweatpants/ aka not nice clothes at all, so how on earth did he assume that) anyway, we did not want to wait any longer for our safety, but God told Hailey, wait just 10 more minutes til 7:40. If they aren’t there after an hour of us waiting then it’s safe to go. And you bet, they showed up at 7:35. If we would’ve left at 7:30 as planned we would’ve missed them!
We had stopped to get roses on the way and were able to gift them to the girls. We wanted to remind them how valuable, beautiful and special they are. We were able to explain that they weren’t forgotten about the night before, and they told us they were actually able to go home and rest and paint and basically have some R&R time for themselves. They were working this evening so they declined going to dinner- after all they, in their minds, needed to make money in order to pay for rent/ food/ other life necessities, but they made plans to go out Friday!
Thursday, God asked Nae and I to go together, and I wasn’t supposed to talk but only translate for her. We were prompted to go to the hospital to pray over the sick, however, we found out we needed a note to get in- which we didn’t have. So instead we did a prayer walk around the campus and then went back to a line of people whom were waiting to get inside to see their loved ones who were being treated. We then prayed with the visitors over the people they were coming to see.
That afternoon, half of the team spent time wrapping the gifts which we were going to pass out the next day, and the other half made dinner which we were giving out to the homeless later in the evening. Once that was completed, we did go and have dinner with the people we had befriended during the week. When we were leaving two of our friends brought to our attention that they needed shoes, and it turns out that Denae’ and Riss both had a size of shoes that could fit them, so they ran home and came back to give away their shoes!
(side note, I was actually kind of bummed that I didn’t have anything to give because no one would fit a size 5 shoe and most don’t fit in my clothes either, but I was so proud and inspired by my teammates).
Friday. Today was actually a planned adventure day. Every week we get two “off” days. ( I put it in quotations because we all know God doesn’t take “off” days- he’s always working and moving, and as Christians, we don’t take breaks from being his follower, however what it really means as an off day is an unplanned ministry day). One of our days is for adventure, since we get to go to so many places in the world, it’s nice to actually get to see and experience what they have to offer, and we get a Sabbath/ rest day. However, we were all so exhausted from the week of late nights, early mornings and miles on miles of walking a day, that we all chose to make our adventure day an extra rest day and I don’t think any of us left our beds until like 3pm! We then decided we needed food, so we ventured out to find a street vendor selling pupusas (our go to meal the last 3 months- it’s essentially a glorified quesadilla, but seriously SO good.) So as we ventured out to get our dinner, a cute little older woman stopped us on the street. She was in raggedy, old, torn up clothes. Everything she had on had holes in it. She told us she stopped us because she thought we were angels. Karlie then had a brilliant idea/ prompting of the spirit to go run back to our hostel and give Lucy a new hat. As she did that, Lucy then proceeded to tell me she needed shoes and showed my how her shoes weren’t really shoes at all- more like socks. (Rewind to when I was sad that I had noone to give my shoes away to), look at God always providing opportunities to love him by loving others, well turns out she was a size 5 shoe! Who would’ve thought! I then ran, and I mean RAN back to the house in excitement to be able to give my shoes away. She was so thankful, and felt so loved. It was such a special moment. And then, it was right after we said our goodbyes to her that I saw the teenage girl walking down the street in my shirt that I mentioned on Monday- I had not seen her all week but those two times and I can’t describe how much excitement I felt in that moment! Remember when I said God doesn’t take off days? I wasn’t kidding. He just throws opportunities in our laps all the time and it’s just up to us to choose to walk forward in it or not.
Needless to say, these first five days of ATL in El Salvador were truly amazing. We got to learn to really rely on the spirit and how to obey his promptings. We got to see him move in and through us and create. divine opportunities and divine connections for us to be the hands and feet of Jesus. What a God we serve. And it’s so encouraging and beautiful to know that this is possible, and applicable to live out our faith as “missionaries” just in our everyday life- to see people on our walk to the grocery store, to not overlook the hurting, to obey the spirit’s promptings, etc. It’s attainable for everyone to do. You don’t need a host, or planned ministry or an organization to work with to be the hands and feet of Jesus. We just have to choose it.
