As I was reading Seth Barnes book Kingdom Journey today, I got to this sentence, “When I occasionally go through a hard season and feel estranged from myself, I remind myself to look beyond my own little world. I ask “Have I surrendered? Am I listening for God’s voice?” This is the exact process I had to go through this past week. I had to give it to God. I had to listen. As soon as I pulled into the goat yard in West Bay of Grand Cayman, I received an answer to the prayer. The prayer I had been praying for days: “Lord, why have you brought me here? Obviously, it is not for the reason’s I thought, but Lord show me, I want to work for you.”
I am sure when you saw the sentence: He brought me here to experience the goat yard, you may have thought: you are from MS for goodness sakes, aren’t there goat yards there? Ha, why yes, yes there are, but this goat yard is different. It is a corner lot in the “inner city” of West Bay in Grand Cayman. As, I explain the physical appearance of it, use your imagination and the image you come up with is probably spot on, then check out the photos below.
So, Monday, we pulled in to a corner lot, excited to see where our last “club” was going to be held. We blinked a few times to make sure we pulled in the right place. We hopped out of the car and the smell of marijuana filled the air, reggae music from the neighboring house filled our ears (and I am pretty sure everyone’s ears within a few blocks of this place.) On the other neighboring side, there were about 6 yelling Caymanian guys. They were gambling, drinking and what we suspected to be doing drugs. They weren’t the only ones doing drugs, all around the lot people were dealing drugs openly.
My first prayer was “Lord, please keep me safe, I am not in the mood to get shot today, please keep me safe.” (Selfish prayer, I know.) As we started scoping out the place a little more, we started seeing so much potential. Something about this corner lot was drawing us in, we started getting excited!
There was a huge tree for shade. There was an open area for the kids to sit, because we hoped the kids that filled the streets would be interested and come. We knew we didn’t have much, but with God, something good could happen.
Seriously, next thing we know, a big white taxi bus with “Lady D” embroidered on the front windshield pulls up. This stylish Caymanian lady hops out and starts speedily talking to us. It was very apparent she was excited, but to be honest, I was just trying to pick out words I could understand to process through the accent. She was talking so fast all I caught was “table.” I looked in the back of her taxi and there was a table. I was relieved because we wanted a place to set our materials and cd player, so they weren’t all covered in ants and other bugs.
Right after we set up the table, no joke Lady D sweeps in with decorations. She puts a table cloth on it, flowers in a conch shell, an aloe plant, and school supplies as prizes for the kids to grab. Wow in about 5 minutes, the goat yard turned from exactly that, a goat yard, into Garden Esperanza, or garden of hope.
The whole week we had clubs teaching about Jesus there. I want to blog more about it, but it is some pretty cool stuff, so I want to keep your attention through it. That being said, I will post the second part of this blog tomorrow. Lesson of this story, trust God. He may lead you to crazy places, some that we aren’t comfortable in, but when we surrender control over to Him crazy things start happening. Where will your goat yard be?
Garden Esperanza
club… lots of kids showed up!
