Some of the best things about living in Costa Rica are the ways in which creation so obviously sings the Lord’s praise. Everywhere you turn, there’s something new to marvel at or admire, something new to point you toward the Father’s creativity. I mean, the view from our back porch alone is enough to make even the most stubborn atheist ponder the existence of the Artist.
For me, though, one piece of creation in particular perfectly encompasses all that the first three months of the Race have been for me. At my team’s Tuesday ministry, there’s a wall of flowers that are commonly known as morning glories. They’re a small species? of flower, and while they come in different colors, these particular ones are purple, and they’re impossible not to notice. The special thing about them, though, is the meaning held by their name. Though they may be beautiful and healthy, morning glories only bloom while the sun is still rising. And, once afternoon beckons and the sun sits at the tip of the world, they fold into themselves again and wait for the next twinge of morning.
Costa Rica has looked a lot like these morning glories. It was our first country, the one that turned us into Racers—the one that molded a band of strangers into a family held together by worship and community. At the break of day, we were wrapped up in ourselves and learning what it meant to stretch our hands outward. Then, we woke up by hand of the Son and opened into the beauty of what it means to walk in Holy Spirit Power.
Costa Rica was hard. I came into this country coming out of a year-long B-Zone, like I’d lost a leg and was having to learn how to walk again. I was challenged in so many ways, by so many different circumstances, that it’s sometimes hard to grasp all the things the Lord’s revealed to me. He showed me I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but that He’s laid out a lot of time for me to walk through it with Him. I experienced spiritual warfare here, a kind of disconnect with the Father I’ve never quite known.
Costa Rica was easy. I came into this country with a squad and am walking out of it with new brothers and sisters. The Lord made community living easy, because He showed Himself so evidently to me in those I was living with. He cultivated new relationships and built within me a new confidence for my generation. He gave me people to laugh with, to dive deep with, to analyze with, to eat with, to share with, to cry with, to hold and to love. I got to spend my days carrying children on my back and filling the pages of dozens of coloring books. I was fed—shoutout to Xinia—some of the best food I’ve ever eaten in my life, and I never, ever got tired of gallo pinto.
Costa Rica was the beginning. Like the morning glories, our time in this place is closing with the forward movement of time, and while the next phase of our journey has arrived, the things the Lord did in Costa Rica make me more expectant of all the things He’s going to do.
We’ll be in Cambodia in a few days! What?! Please be praying for us as we travel and set foot back in what was once familiar culture but is now almost foreign (L.A. baby!). Pray for new excitement and joy and curiousity and safety! And for those we’re leaving behind here in CR. We’re leaving pieces of our hearts here (and some of them are going back home—thanks Team Leaders), but the Lord is doing big things! #thanksGod
