My friend at home recently asked me “what’s the coolest thing you’ve seen the Lord do on the race so far?”
I fumbled with the question a little bit and the fact that I couldn’t come up with a stand-out moment kind of bothered me. Don’t get me wrong, God has taught me huge things, but there was no single “event” that stood out in my mind.
I decided to talk to God that night about my anticipations of what I thought the race would be. I think sometimes as racers we anticipate to walk people through salvation often. We anticipate having epiphanies regularly or witnessing single moments of transformation happen before our eyes. I kind of expected that I’d come home with this grandiose collection of stories to tell. I know I will come home with memories worth sharing. I just think a lot of them will be far simpler than I expected. Because of this intriguing question and follow-up conversation with God, I have renewed vision for the simple stories sometimes being the most beautiful. I don’t want to confine my collection of “stories worth telling” to a box. Especially because we don’t want to convey that our hope or that God’s faithfulness rests in “mountain-top experiences.” My faith is not in the miracles of the Lord, rather my faith is in the Lord and the essence of who He is.
Essence (n.)- “the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character.”
It’s funny because soon after I talked through all of this with God and arrived at this conclusion, He handed me several of those mountain-top moments, one after another. I know He wanted me to sit with Him and contemplate the beauty of the simple things first. I don’t want to look at the landscape of a mountain and be satisfied by its majestic presence in it’s size and shape. I want to zoom in and appreciate the abundant presence of trees, flowing rivers, and life on the mountain. I want to recognize the way the top of it hides behind the clouds and makes the sky feel closer. I want to imagine the magnificent view from the top. I want to picture going to tell it on that mountain that Jesus Christ is Lord. I want to imagine sitting at the top in His presence wondering which angel he let paint the sunset that night.
One of my simple moments of the race was winning over the affection of the little boy we live with this month. He was so shy the first night we got here. When I asked him if he wanted to play, they told me he’s very shy with new people. Now Thiago begs me to read the interactive Bible stories I have on my iPad with him each night. He’ll lean into me and name all the types of animals in Noah’s ark. We play hide and seek, chase each other around the house, and draw pictures together.
A simple story of God’s kind heart was in Nicaragua. I voiced to my friends that it had been a while since I held a baby! I was missing being with my family because my cousin had just recently had her baby, Caroline. I told God that night I would like to hold a baby soon. The next morning we went to evangelize. We arrived at a house and this woman was holding a precious baby with big bright eyes! I told her that her baby had beautiful eyes and she handed him right to me. Five minutes later he fell asleep in my arms and I held him for 30 minutes, loving every second. (Now we live with a 3 month old baby in Honduras!)
I’ve told the story of the way God has given me dogs in every country so far in a previous blog. When we arrived in the country following that blog post, we got off the bus to a beautiful smiley-eyed golden retriever! Come to find out they had 7 dogs, 4 of them being 6 month old Rottweilers. They asked if any of us were dog trainers. Although I am not a dog trainer, I became one last month! I LOVED getting to see the fruits of our labor at the end of the month when all 4 puppies passed our little obedience class. On top of that, Nicaragua was a second all squad month. When I’m around a lot of people for extended periods of time I get overwhelmed. It was so sweet of the Lord to provide ministry opportunity for lots of one on one time with my teammate, Rachel, my fellow dog trainer. That time really filled us up!
Meeting Patricia in Nicaragua has been a highlight of the race for me. She’s an old woman that lives in the city of Granada. We met her when we were out evangelizing. She has the kind of faith that can move mountains in the name of Jesus. When we came to her house she welcomed us inside and her daughters grabbed all the lawn chairs they had to offer us a place to sit down. This woman knows the Lord deeply. She told us stories of His faithfulness in her life. She used to work at the local dump that I mentioned in my previous post. They were saving for a house one day, but some ongoing health problems prohibited her from being able to continue work. The Lord still provided. A ministry from the UK built them a 2-room house with cement walls and a tin roof (a much nicer home than some of other homes we had visited). She said she had prayed for this house, but thought that it would only be one room. She kept repeating to us “not ONE, but TWO rooms in our house. The Lord is so faithful and so generous.” When we asked if we could pray for her, she told us she had just had surgery, but the incision was infected which was causing a lot of pain. We laid hands on her and prayed. Her husband was down on his knees in surrenderance to the Lord. Patricia was still praying when we finished, pleading with the Lord for healing. The presence of the Holy Spirit in the room was almost tangible. The rest of us started singing softly as Patricia wept in prayer. I opened my eyes one moment and had one of those “is this really my life?” moments and smiled thanking the Lord for allowing us to experience this. We were back to visit her several times and loved the incredible faith she had.
One morning when I was walking along the beach by myself in Panama I was praying the spirit highlight someone for me to go talk to. The beach is pretty serene and empty, with usually no one out there. A woman was walking my direction and I felt prompted to talk to her. This was the first country and I was still nervous to approach strangers. In disobedience I let her pass by. She literally turned around and came toward me to ask me if I knew of any restaurants near by. I told her I knew of one by our house, just a two minute walk down the road. We walked together and talked about life. Come to find out, she is from North East Ohio and has nieces that go to my high school! What a small world! I ended up sitting with her while she had lunch and we spent an hour and a half in good conversation.
In Costa Rica, we had night ministry every Wednesday evening. It was ATL (ask the Lord) for the whole squad. We had to go out in at least groups of 3. That night the guys on our team had gone to the feed the homeless ministry, so Hannah, Rachel, and I took it as an opportunity to pour into the women at the brothel. The city is known as being a hub for legal prostitution and drug/alcohol crime. We went into the casino and up the stairs to an empty bar. As it was still early in the evening, no one was there except the bar tenders, “I” and “P.” We ordered virgin drinks and talked with them. “P” was hesitant to answer questions about herself, but very sweet. “I” was older and opened up more. When she found out we were missionaries she said “do you know where you are right now?” She explained this place is dangerous and there are 60-80 working girls downstairs. We told her we just leave it up to God where we should go. Somehow it came up in conversation that these ladies had never tried a chocolate covered pretzel! We told them we would find some and bring them the next week at the same time. They seemed excited! Well come to find out, pretzels are not an easily discovered snack in Central America. On Wednesday, we went to 4 different grocery stores in town looking for pretzels. We were about to make a last ditch effort to one more grocery store, but the clouds were threatening a storm (shout out to rainy season). Rachel and I decided we could beat the rain if we took a bike. With several hilarious attempts under our belt, we successfully managed balancing both of us on this bike to ride across town and found what we are sure was the only bag of pretzels in all of Central America. We skipped dinner to make these promised treats and then hurried out the door when it was time. “I” and “P” had been waiting for us and were so excited we came back and brought the pretzels. “P’s” demeanor was so different. She was so much more at ease and open with us. We had such a good night spending time with them. The third Wednesday, our last in Costa Rica, we went back and took our squad leader, Rachael with us. “I” was there again, but instead with a new bartender we had never met before, “S,” who is apparently her best friend. A song came on that we knew and we sang all the lyrics. “I” started taking requests for songs and we taught them the “church clap” dance. They were so hesitant to come out and dance with us but eventually did and we had a great time. They started teaching us some popular Costa Rican dances and we laughed a lot! The dances are harder than they look. As time was dwindling I was worried we hadn’t had intentional conversation on the last night with them, but there was something more light-hearted in their spirits. My squad leader said as we left that night, “we may not have said the name of Jesus tonight, but I know we brought them His joy.”
Sometimes my simple stories are just times I sat in the presence of the Lord and was still. Sometimes it’s something as small as going for a run and feeling fueled because of it.
My prayer is that we more often recognize the simple things and simple stories as miracles.
Miracle comes from the Latin word miraculum which means ‘object of wonder.’
