Does God really speak to us? This is a question that I wanted to really dig into as we begin our second month of ministry. One way to help me dive into this will be through a book by our founder, Seth Barnes, titled Listening Prayer. It's formatted as a daily devotional and has already opened my eyes and ears to how our big God works!
During our travel day, before diving into the answer to this question, I prayed that God would send the Holy Spirit before us to map out our time spent in Honduras. Turns out God certainly heard my prayer, and the prayers of my team mates.
As we traveled our leader started to realize that the original plan was probably not going to be the best choice for us to get to Roatan. Soon after another team leader mentioned that she talked with a woman who lived in the city we were about to drive through. This woman was contacted and sure enough we needed to stay in her city and not the city that was planned for us to stay. This left us with another problem though, where would we sleep. God was far ahead of us, this woman offered her own home to our team for a place to sleep. So she stayed awake until close to midnight, walked up to the main road to flag down our van, and then organized a van for us the next morning to get to the ferry. God showed up big time!
Once we got to the island and settled into our ministry site we wanted to see what this place was all about. Since it was Sunday, our day off, we decided to go exploring. We prayed on the walk up to the main road for God to show us His plan for our day. Our plan to was go swim with the dolphins, but it was closed. Luckily, God had sent us an amazing man who had picked us up (hitchhiking is totally normal here) and drove us right to the place. Since it was closed he told Noah that there was a wonderful beach where we could enjoy swimming and the scenery. On the way we passed a Lighthouse restaurant. In order to get this you need to know that our team mate Jason loves to spend time with God at a lighthouse back home. The man driving us was kind enough to cancel his original plans and take us to a new place, plus he stopped to allow us a few minutes at the lighthouse.
When we got to the beach, sure enough it was beautiful and there was a nice open restaurant where we could eat and use their lounge chairs on the beach. Then God brought us a local man who was kind enough to show us to ATMs, watch our belongings while we swam, and helped us arrange a cheap boat ride (which we didn't take since we were so tired.) While we swam God showed us an amazing live star fish, a beautiful coral reef and some wonderful new friends. A couple who was vacationing to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary started chatting with us in the water. Before long they had invited us all to dinner on them! Was God really providing us with a free meal? He was. We watched the sunset with our new "parents" Mark and Belinda from Texas. We danced to the band, ate great food, watch a man dance with fire and learned about crab racing. It was the perfect ending to an incredible day.
Our local friend also arranged a van for us to get back home safely, which we did. The day started with us wanting to swim with dolphins, but God had a different plan for us. His plan was entirely more fun! We were able to meet amazing people who were such blessings to us. It really filled me up for this tough week of work that we have had at our ministry site.
Later in the week God also sent me some concrete. . . but that's another blog.
