So like I promised in my last blog post I wrote a long post about the ministry I did in Honduras and all he awesome people I got to serve but that post requires me to upload pictures which is an extremely time consuming process on low speed internet so that blog post is still in the works. But in the mean time here is a little story of how I lost my faith in God in Honduras.
Our last day of ministry the orphanage we had been serving at threw us a fair well party. So we spent the entire afternoon in the meeting room called the Salon with all the residents dancing and having a great time. Earlier in the day it had been raining so I wore my rain jacket to ministry. But by the time we got there the rain had stopped and it was hot so I decided to tie my jacket around my waist. I was pushing Sammy (one of the guys from my house) to the Salon for the party and my rain jacket fell off. I asked the person behind me to pick it up and she did. When we arrived at the Salon she handed it back to me and I tied it back around my waist. Maybe an hour or so later I was recording a video of myself dancing with Ivon (another guy from my house) and I could feel my jacket slipping off again. Sure enough it dropped to the floor. I asked my teammate to pick it up and place it on the floor with Mallory’s bag because I knew it would just keep falling off. My thought was since it’s with Mallory’s bag I know I won’t leave it because I know Mallory isn’t going to leave her bag and water bottle. The flaw in my plan was that when I finished dancing with Ivon I didn’t tell Mallory the plan.
Fast forward 28 hours later I am in my room at our hosts home packing my bags because we were leaving Honduras in 8 hours. I look at the front of my day pack which is where I usually keep my rain jacket and I realize how empty it is. I literally say out load “Where the heck is my rain jacket?” Then it hits me. I LEFT IT AT MINISTRY THE DAY BEFORE!!!! I look at the clock and it is well past our curfew and we are not allowed out of the house. Our squad leader, Brit, asked if I want her to text our ministry host, Scarleth, to see if there is any way I can go back to the orphanage and get my jacket. I’ll spare you all the details but basically our ministry host said that I could take 3 people with me and walk to the orphanage and get the jacket. So I find 3 people. The only problem is that now it’s pouring down raining outside and I don’t have a rain jacket. So I borrow a jacket from one of my squad mates and grab my head lamp and set out in dark and the middle of the night to try to retrieve my rain jacket.
The walk to the orphanage is 15 mins down these back streets that are made of twist your ankle cobble stone and is covered in poop form all the stray dogs, horses, and random herds of cattle that go up and down them constantly. So I’m trying not to trip and fall or step in poop all the while feeling bad because these 3 other people are walking with me and getting drenched because of my irresponsibility. The whole way over I’m praying “Please God let my jacket be exactly where I left it” We arrive safely at the orphanage. Side note: One of the people I picked to come with me was Kyndal. THANK GOD! When I picked her I was thinking how kind and willing to serve she is so I knew she would be willing to help me out. What I didn’t consider was the fact that she speaks Spanish. So when we got to the orphanage and needed to explain why we were there in the middle of the night I was super grateful to have Kyndal there by my side.
We find the director and let her know why we are there. She gets someone to let us into the Salon. As soon as we walk in I look right to the spot where I left my jacket and it isn’t there. My heart drops. I took a deep breath and thought to myself “ I don’t know how but this is all going to be okay.” We talk to the director again but the bottom line is that it was the middle of the night so they couldn’t wake up everyone at the orphanage just to find my jacket. They would look into it the next day. But since we were leaving at 2am there was no way I would be able to get it back.
I got back to the house and I kept thinking “this is going to work out.” Let’s face it, it’s the nature of the world race that you have to be able to adapt to change. You are going to loose things and you’re going to pick up things. Your situation is constantly changing and you have to rely on God to able to adapt. Everyone kept asking if I found the jacket and I told them all “no I didn’t find it but it’s okay because it will all work out somehow.” I said it and I thought I believed it…
Fast forward again to 11 pm I am laying in my room in the darkness fast asleep. Then I hear what sounds like an excerpt from “Stomp” (the play where they make the music by beating on tin trash cans and stomping on the ground). The source of the noise was the tin roof right outside our window. It was raining so hard that the water was creating this cacophony of noise. The noise is what woke me up but the noise isn’t what kept me up.
As I laid in bed hearing the loud banging outside my window all I could think was how stupid it was of my to lose my rain jacket. I just saw myself getting drenched the next day and every day until eternity because I had made a mistake. God reminded me of the confidence I had earlier in the day when I had said “it will all work out”. After I was reminded of that I realized that I was tossing and turning because even though I said it I didn’t really believe it. I had faith that if I did everything right that God would do the things that I couldn’t. But I did not at all have faith that God would provide for me when my need was the result of my own irresponsibility.
I laid there and replayed the moment that I walked away from my jacket over and over again and beat myself up for my irresponsibility. My constant negative thoughts and the persistent pounding of the rain magnified my unbelief more and more until all I could see where all of these areas in my life where I had no faith in God’s ability to provide for me or bless me because of my short comings. When I did things right or when something went wrong because of someone else’s actions I could go before the throne boldly with my requests for rectification. But when I was at fault or had come up short I always tried to fix it on my own because I didn’t think that God would. And it took this situation that I couldn’t fix for me to realize that.
So I finally start to dose off around 12:45 only for my alarm to go off at 1am. I was of course in a terrible mood after a night of walking in the rain, no sleep, and torturing myself with unbelief all night. As we drove away on the bus with it sprinkling outside all I could think was how I was driving further and further away from my jacket. It felt like with every mile my problem was getting larger and larger and there was no way it would ever be resolved. I know this sounds dramatic but honestly that is exactly how I felt.
We arrive in El Salvador and we start to get settled in. Then someone lets us know that there is a mall a 10 min walk away. One of my teammates wanted to go to the mall so I decided to go with her and look to see if maybe I could find a replacement jacket. The whole walk there I’m thinking “rain jackets run small I’ll never be able to find one in my size and rain jackets are super expense. Do i really want to spend my entire budget for the month on a jacket?” We are walking around this mall with all these foreign stores and from what I can see none of them sell anything like a rain jacket.
Then I thought to myself maybe I am trying to make something happen when it’s not supposed to. I had made the choice to try to trust God even if it was hard but here I was trying of my own strength to find some miracle jacket to fix my problem. What if there was someone that was supposed to just bless me with a jacket later, or what if the jacket I needed wasn’t even at this mall or in this country. For all I know God could have the perfect jacket for me on some free table in Asia! There were too many possibilities for me to try to figure it out on my own. So I prayed to myself “God I put this in your hands. I trust that you will provide. If I’m supposed to find a replacement jacket here then I will because I trusted you to lead me to it.” We go down the escalator and I see a shop really far down and almost around the corner selling jackets. We go inside and what do you know it’s literally a shop full of rain jackets. Not only do I find a great jacket but it’s 50% off and so I get it for $27! Walking out of that store with a jacket in my hand I could have cried. I was so grateful the problem had been solved.
The next morning I’m doing my quiet time and the theme of my devotional is of course about tackling the root of feeling unworthy. I laid all of my doubt, fear, and insecurity at the feet of the Father. He made it very clear that He doesn’t do anything for me because I deserve it. Honestly, even when I have done everything “perfectly right” the bottom line is that my sin nature means that I still deserve death. But He does EVERYTHING for me because He loves me. When I mess up it’s not a surprise to him. He knew I was going to mess up before I was even born. So I should focus more on his love and less on my own imperfection. The icing on the cake is that on the walk back from the orphanage I had an incredible conversation with one of the girls from my squad. It was vulnerable and raw and honest and it was truly an honor to be asked to speak into her in that way. Even if nothing else it was worth losing my jacket just for that.
Long story short God is faithful not because of me but in spite of me.
