Month one in Puerto Rico was an ease into what the World Race is.
My team was with two other teams, Alegria and Radical, for the month in both Mayaguez and Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Our “original” plans for Arecibo were changed as soon as we landed in Puerto Rico it seemed but God had a plan for us in Mayaguez.
We stayed there for about a week, being told that we were going to just hang out and spend time together while we awaited our next step. If you are ever left in Puerto Rico without transportation for a week I think I could hook you up with a group of amazing people and a beautiful place to live. We lived at a compound called “Jesamir” in the mountains and were loved on by a pastor and his wife named Rueben and Mila and two adorable dogs. At the beginning of the week we were given freedom to spend time together and with God which was amazing. A lot of us though, myself included, were ready to begin the “Race” part of the World Race. We were ready to get started on ministry and were ready for the week to be over.
The Sunday we were there we ended up going to a local church in the town center and were driven there by a group of people that would change our perspective on that week. We ended up spending the day with them eating, dancing and laughing. We celebrated one person’s 25th birthday that day and we had just met him! As time passed we spent more time with them being loved on and loving them. We loved the people that we met in Mayaguez so much that it was hard to leave. In fact, when it was time to leave I remember sitting in the bus, crammed with people and bags, thinking that wherever we were going was going to have huge shoes to fill.
When we arrived in Vega Baja I remember climbing the stairs to our new home and thinking that it was nothing like Mayaguez. We had a beautiful 3 bedroom house with a kitchen and two bathrooms. God provided so much more in that house than I imagined for Race. The house was on the property of a Christian Missionary Alliance (CMA) church and through that church we met even more people to love.
Our three teams were split into two ministry sites at different CMA churches. My team went to a city called Bayamon and we spent the last two weeks in Puerto Rico scrapping and painting walls. It was hard and it was amazing and we through it we saw even more how small the world is and how big the family of God is.
That’s what my month was characterized as, learning what being a part of the family of God really should and does look like. It’s beautiful, stressful and multilingual. I know that I already posted a blog about it but it was such an amazing thing to be a part of in both the group of twenty Racers and the people that we met along the way.
