Let me tell you a story about walking by faith…
Right now I am sitting on a bus, way over crowded with people, on my way to Panama. I bet you are wondering how I got here. Well on december 30, I left El Salvador with my team and headed to the debrief in Granada, Nicaragua. We spent 5 days there taking time to process through everything that has happened these past 2 months. during this time God spoke to me several times through my squad mates. I will tell you about 2 of the things He said to me. The first was the word intimacy. He made me realize that I had been praying for all these things. Things that I thought would get me to where I wanted to be in my relationship with Him. He showed me that it was intimacy that I was seeking and through that all these other things would come. That all I need to be focusing on is the pursuit of Him.
The second thing was that if I don’t share the things that are on my heart I will never have a brave conversation. That I will never have the intimacy He is calling me to have with my team, or anyone else on my squad. See I had been learning a lot about people without really learning who they are. I had been building surface level relationships. Debrief was a great time for me. I learned a lot about myself and how to pursue a deeper intimacy with my Father.
Okay, so back to how I got on the bus headed to Panama. Debrief ended on the 5th, so the team found out where our next ministry site was and hopped on a bus with a few other teams headed to the same area, and we were off making our way San Jose, Costa Rica. We arrived in San Jose at about 9:30 pm, and now it was time to find a place to stay for the night. So as all the team leaders (all 4 of them) were scrambling around to find a place to stay for the night, one team had a contact that was a missionary who lived in San Jose and that could host 2 teams for the night. 2 teams down, 2 more to go. The next team decided to just go and head over to their ministry for the month.
Well, that left my team..
So as Brooks (my team leader) ran around trying to find a place for us to stay, God provided. He provided us with a a hostel to stay in for the night. So we picked up our bags and headed there. When we got to the hostel we went right to sleep. After a much needed night of sleep, we woke up at 7 am and picked up our bags once again and went to a bus station. We got there and bought our tickets to Panama, and thought to ourselves “alright, were almost there” little did we know God had a different plan. So we have the tickets and about an hour before the bus leaves, we try to get a hold of our missionary contact for the next month to let him know that we are on our way. That was when we realized that both Brooks and my phones weren’t working. So brooks went walking around trying to find someone to let us use their phone, well 3 dollars later we were talking with one of the contacts. This contact however was a bridge, she was in charge of getting us to our main contact for the month. Here is where the problem came. As we spoke with her, she told us that she could not get a hold of him. So she said that it might be better if we just stayed in Costa Rica and tried to figure something else out for the month. We said ‘okay, thank you” and we parted ways. Brooks and I started talking and trying to figure out what to do, so we went to buy new SIM cards for our phones, but the only pace we found, told us that they only sold phones. We end up having to buy a phone so that we can call our squad leaders or another team and figure out what to do next. So now we have this brand new cell phone and are about to make a call, when phone says “No Service”.
Okay… so now what?
Again Brooks and I sit down and have no idea what to do. When it hits us that we needed to go back to the girls and pray. So we walk back to them, and tell them what is going on, and that we need to pray, and ask God what He wants us to do. We prayed for a while, and we sat in silence and just listened to what He had to say. After time spent in prayer, we went around and asked what they felt and discussed what we as a team felt like God was saying, and we got “trust Me, and get on the bus”. One of my teammates felt like God was telling her to share a verse out of matthew.
that verse was..
Matthew 6:25-34
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
so here we are sitting on a bus, way over crowded with people, on our way to Panama with no idea of what is going to happen we we get there.
What an awesome opportunity to trust in the Lord and walk by faith.
Stay Tuned for what happens next..
