Okay, so disclaimer: this blog might go all over the place but I can’t help feel the need to share the absolute ridiculousness that God has orchestrated these last few days and I’m just too excited to try and organiza my thoughts before writting. So, here we go…
Wednesday, October 12- Kourou–> Cayenne, French Guiana
After spending the previous 2 nights at Magali and Bruno Clair’s house (see previous blog to see the craziness that that was!) my team and I began looking online for a place to stay in Macapa, Brazil since that is where we were heading next. Our lodging budged is a whopping $5 USD per night per person (so 6 girls, $30/night). Kind of ridiculous right? I mean anywhere in the States you might find a cheap hotel for maybe $50 for two people! Well $30 is what we’ve got to work with.
So we begin looking at Airbnb.com and in the city of Macapa only 8 showed up. From those 8, we pick the cheapest one, which was still way out of our budget.
One of my teammates emailed the homeowner and explained that we were from this organization that sends out people to different nations to tell people about God and show love, we had a very tight budget and if it was possible for them to accommodate us. Within 2 hours we get a reply that, yes, that budget is fine and we now have a place to stay once we get into Macapa!! Huge praise #1
Thursday October 13 – Cayenne, French Guiana –> Macapa, Brazil
Early in the morning, as we are getting ready to leave Cayenne after spending the night at a person’s house who we had just met a few hours before, we get a message from Jose (the owner) and he suggests we add his wife on Facebook to make communication easier- Pastora Elizabeth Lacerda. Wait what??? Pastora? Is this a pastor family? Are they a Christian pastor family. I’m confused, how did we get in contact with these people?…Airbnb… hmmmm okay? I guess we’ll find out for sure once we meet them.
After traveling for about 16 hours we decide to sleep at the Macapa airport since it’s free, relatively safe, and it’s 11:30pm and we’ve got no where to sleep since we got into Brazil a day before planned. We finally get wifi and receive a message from Jose that they can pick us up from the airport, we simply need to send them a reply what time would be good for us. Huge praise #2 ( getting around with no car of your own can be a bit tricky, even more when there are 7 girls traveling with huge packs together)
Friday October 14- Macapa, Brazil
I woke up on my sleeping pad after sleeping maybe 3 hours at the airport, I still have that sleepy head look and up comes walking a man and a woman who we find out are Jose and Elizabeth, our hosts.
On the drive home, through broken Portuguese/ Spanish we find out that indeed Elizabeth a pastor! And their church has been going strong for 7 years and there are many opportunities in which we can partner with this congregation to spread God’s love.
We get to the house and oh my! the property is huge, our room has A/C, each person has a bed (or hammock), we’ve got an outdoor kitchen and a pool!! Huge praise #3.
This obviously calls for jumping in the pool fully clothed!
We finally get some time to relax and sleep after traveling for so long. It was much needed.
Saturday October 15
Guess what we found out!!? Pastora Elizabeth does a Christian radio show every Saturday morning that reaches all of Brazil and can even be heard online anywhere in the world. Oh, and she wants us to share about the World Race and about what God has been doing on our lives a bit? Yeah ok, no big deal!! One of my teammates Esther, had the opportunity to share the vision behind World Race and how we are called to trust in the Lord in all circumstances. It was a beautiful thing to see her share with such confidence. Then we get a call in. It’s a guy that is from Macapa but is living in Nebraska and was encouraged by us.
This. Is. Absolute. Craziness.
I feel like for the last month i have been asking myself over and over, “How the heck did we even get here??!” How am I in South America for 11 months. How am I going to travel 12 countries. How am I sitting in Brazil right now. How do we keep having a safe place to sleep and eat every day. How do we keep being apart of these awe some ministries that we haven’t even gone out looking for? How is it that through airbnb, we had the opportunity to go on a national radio and reach all of Brazil and beyond?!!! I’ll tell you how, because God has every single detail of this trip, heck our lives planned out to the T. He is looking at us and saying, will today be the day you are willing to see how big and amazing I am? Will you let me blow your mind by the simple things I do?
I can’t imagine what God has in store next.
In Him,
Lila
