** Hello from Panama City! We arrived here a few days ago and have been exploring the city… it´s a really pretty place with lots to do (which we did a lot of on our ¨squad day of fun¨ yesterday!). Yes, we saw the canal. Today our team is going to a contact about 45 minutes outside of the city… we´ll be doing work with the church´s Children and risk program, helping with a retreat for high schoolers and working with the school… we won´t know about internet until we get out there…. so bye for now!**
This is a blog I wrote about 2 weeks ago during our time in Costa Rica… sorry it´s a little late!
A Light in the Darkness
This month has been tough. Really tough. The facts are this: we’re in San Jose, Costa Rica. It’s a really big city. Our whole squad it together this month for the first time. It’s been nice to really get to know different people I usually only see once a month. My team is split up doing different things. Jackie and Lindsey are in SE Costa Rica and doing set-up in Panama. The rest of us are here but Danny and Colleen are living with local families so I see them for only part of the day. I miss my team. And my thoughts continually go to… “if it’s this hard now, what the heck am I going to do the day after the race?” I’ve done some interesting things. I went to the beach and went zip-lining. I went to the beach again to hangout and witness to some of Pam’s friends who were vacationing there. I’m taking some Spanish classes at a local school. I’m praying for people. I go running every day. I pretty much know by name all of the bus drivers on the bus line we take around the city. But… something’s seems to be missing… oh yes, that would be the formal “ministry.”
We wanted to work with a Children’s Hospital. In Africa nobody batted an eyelash at us walking around freely visiting people… standing right next to a nurse I was making play-do “wounds” on Children and praying for healing and removing the play-do while were in Swaziland Now we’re back in the west and this is the Fort Knox of hospitals. We had to submit an application. We never heard back. So one day Danny and I went to just go and pray with people in the waiting room. We pretended we didn’t know Spanish and walked past a distracted guard. Then we talked to people for 10 whole minutes in the waiting room before a guard told us that if we didn’t have a sick child we couldn’t be there. In respect to AIM policies we decided not to have a child and just wait to see if we ever heard back. Which we didn’t…
So if you recall from earlier in this ramble… I’m going to Spanish classes just kind of waiting to hear what the heck I’m supposed to be doing with my time. YWAM put us in contact with this really nice language school called Epifania. When the teachers came to our house to test us they were so nice… the woman who tested me is Guiselle, an owner of the school. During my interview she asked me if I knew what Epifania meant and then explained that it’s Epiphany… God’s light in the world.
After the weekend we started attending classes at their school. It is a really pretty building with bright vibrant walls… and it is just so pleasant there. We get to speak Spanish for 4 hours with a 20 minute fruit and coffee break. There’s just something really warm and kind and homey about this place.
Guiselle is this really amazing warm Christian woman. She was teaching my the conversation half of my class for our first week. On the first day we were talking about how we know if someone is a Christian and what real faith looks like. She is a rebellious Catholic who attends a contemporary church service midweek at a Protestant church. By day 3 she decided to tell us the story of her school.
She has been teaching Japanese students at the embassy for 33 years. When the wanted to open a school she was praying about what to call it. She heard her daughters name Estefania. She didn’t know what it meant so she kept repeating it, and it turned into Epifania and she said God told her she the school was going to be a light in the world. Then when they were praying about where the building should be she said she thought of this random building she passed on her way home. There wasn’t a sale sign but she just knew… so they went and spoke to the owner who was happy to sell the building, which was currently being used as a brothel. Upon finishing the building renovations the staff went from room to room. They prayed that God would clean each room from all the evil that had occurred there and they prayed for each of the women who had worked their that God would clean and transform their lives.
Today Guiselle and Epifania continue to be a light in a dark place. They really trust God as their boss in a way that lots of us want to but don’t quite believe. A Japanese woman recently pointed out to her that they would be down to 4 students and wondering how they would pay their rent. Guiselle replied that God is her boss and he knows how it will work out. Later that same day they received a call from YWAM with a group of 12 missionaries on this program called the World Race who wanted to take Spanish classes for a few weeks given them more than enough income for the month.
Epifania is our Spanish school but also the ministry that found us while we were living life. We talk about Jesus and pray with our teachers for their spouses, for their community, and for the non Christian students that are drawn to the friendly atmosphere of their school. Guiselle prays every morning for discernment about what she should teach and how to teach it clearly. She prays for miracles and transformation in the lives of her students. Finally, when we tell her that she should move to America and make lots of money as a professor at a university…she tells us that this is where her ministry is… and that she is confident that what she teaches us will multiply when we are able to share the light of Jesus with Latinos.
