2/14/20
Our ministry and life in Costa Rica are very different from Palacaguina. Team TNT experienced real culture shock as we transitioned from life in a small village to life in a big city. It’s very overwhelming. We’re also living together as an entire squad, along with a visitor for the month, so there are 13 of us together in our home and that’s a nice thing, but also still an adjustment.
In Palacaguina we had one group of people to work with, doing the different ministries the church was involved in, which was almost always construction on Pastor David’s church, with a few days of exceptions. We found a lot of free time between jobs and working on Nicaraguan time, which isn’t focused on punctuality.
In Costa Rica, our 2 teams are scheduled to work with 9 different ministries in the course of the 2 and a half weeks we will be here.
Yesterday was TNT’s first day of ministry. It was a really long and exhausting, and also fruitful day. We experienced a lot. And what I want to tell you about is the ministry we worked with in the morning, which I think is called Casa Esperanza. Not 100% sure; I’m still learning the names of everything we’re doing.
So, on Tuesday and Thursday, in the Red Zone of town, this beautiful ministry comes together to love on women who live and work in the area. Yes, there is a lot of prostitution in the Red Zone and, yes, at night it’s not known as the safest area to be in.
The ministry feeds the women breakfast, gives them a biblical lesson, and just spends time talking and listening to the women because so many of them have nobody in their lives who want to just listen and talk.
That’s how it goes normally.
But we weren’t there on an exactly normal day.
You see, this was the day before Valentine’s Day, and this ministry saw multiple reasons to love on these women even more than normal. The day before Valentine’s is also an internationally recognized day for raising awareness of human trafficking, with a goal of promoting human rights and ending trafficking of all kinds.
The symbol is a red X written on the back of your right hand.
I’m honestly not familiar with this movement, so it worked to raise awareness to me for sure. And so we entered the ministry and with a red marker put Xs on the back of our hand to communicate to these women that they mattered to us. It’s honestly a really nice tool for overcoming a language barrier when you can put something like that out there for the women to know you care.
Some of the women were quiet and some of the women were loud, boisterous, and talkative, but I saw that they were all touched by the magnificent party the ministry was throwing to celebrate their identity as women who are beloved children of God.
It started as a normal day and we served breakfast. And then there was a special presentation as a few of the volunteers began playing music and dancing. But then the real magic started as a mariachi band marched in during the middle of a song and started serenading the women with beautiful music to make them feel loved and seen.
And at the end of everything, there was cake.
The cake meant something to these women, but it meant something very different to my team. It’s funny how that works. It’s just a fact and a reality of life that my needs are not the same needs as the people I minister to. God teaches us all different things in different ways.
You see, this month my team is focusing on growing in our spiritual lives by learning the art of sacrifice.
Each week, we are fasting from something. This week, we are fasting from snack food.
We are fasting from snack food, and here was a cake sitting in front of us.
In that moment, our team really had to examine the purpose of our fast and the boundaries we felt were needed. You see, since it was a cake provided by our ministry host, we all agreed that it would be ok to eat it. It was something provided to us, not a snack we were seeking out to fulfill ourselves.
But we all still chose not to eat the cake.
We chose not to eat the cake because this was a sacrifice to us that helped us reflect on God’s love and provision in new ways.
I’ll be honest, that cake looked really good. I wanted it. But saying no felt like the right thing to do. And I don’t regret not eating the cake. I don’t regret it at all. We came home to delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples and more than enough to meet our physical needs for food. We just had to wait a little while.
And for the women there, I know that cake met more than just their physical needs for food. That cake communicated love and caring and so many things that they may not find in their lives on a daily basis. God was communicating very different to them than what He was communicating to me with that cake.
And then one of the ladies running the ministry shared a message with the ladies about God’s unconditional love. Valentine’s Day is a really good time to remind people how much they’re loved by our Father in Heaven. I hope you know it too. I hope you know that God offers unconditional love. And I hope you seek out opportunities to learn new things from Him in the unexpected things like cake.
This wasn’t the end of our journey, however. We learned a lot in the red X and the cake, but we still had one more obstacle to overcome.
We came to the Red Zone being very cautious by leaving all of our valuables at home. I didn’t wear a watch today and those of you who know me know that was a big deal. Anyway, at the end of it all the interns of AIM who accompanied us to the ministry walked us to the bus stop and left because they had somewhere else to be.
And as we stood there, it started to sink in how vulnerable we were. We had no phones. We didn’t know any phone numbers. We had never ridden the bus on our own and had never ridden it at all to return to our home. We had been told, by the interns, about landmarks to look for that would tell us to pull the cable to stop the bus. We had been told any bus that stopped there was an ok bus to get on, but then a bus stopped weirdly in the middle of the road and almost nobody at the stop walked into the street to get on, so we didn’t know if this was an acceptable bus or not and we decided to keep waiting.
But we all felt peace. We talked through our predicament and how vulnerable we were and what we needed to do next time in order to prevent this situation from arising again, but we all felt like it was going to be ok. God was with us, telling us when to wait and when to go and reminding us that He was in control.
And the next bus came after like 15 more minutes of waiting. Everyone got on and we felt good. And as we drove, we recognized landmarks like a Subway we’d passed on the way. And we managed to get home.
We were quite proud of ourselves, but more than anything we were just thankful to God for keeping us calm and guiding us in the situation. Our God is so big and so all-knowing and I am so glad He’s the one we trust in.
And now we’re ready to do it again.
