My team has made it to Guatemala. We have been here for 1 week, and things are wildly different than Costa Rica.
For starters, my team is living in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. We have 1 toilet that you flush by manually pouring water down it. We have no shower. We are sleeping on a concrete floor under a tin roof, with no walls… and it’s 40 degrees at night. But I have already found so much peace and joy in this environment!
While I am incredibly thankful for my time in Costa Rica and what the Lord taught me, I already feel more connected here than I did in the entire 2 months of Costa Rica. Our ministry hosts, Juan and Evelyn, are incredibly sweet. They have invited us into their brokenness and allowed us to pray over really hard situations. They live lives that are inspiring. They spend all their money feeding people and are okay having nothing. So far we have done construction around the property (this place didn’t even exist a year ago and has been entirely built by hand). I have built a couple doors. Starting next week we get to start doing ministry with the police. The head of the police is a believer and brings other officers to our property once a week. Then we will start to be able to go into the community to pray with people. Specifically, we will get to go into hospitals to pray with people. We might get to do some soccer ministry. It’s all still very up in the air because of covid, but I’m so looking forward to what is in store these next couple of months!
Okay, so that’s the logistical update… but what is God teaching me?
So glad you asked!
On the heels of wrestling with patience, the Lord has been challenging me a lot with focusing on the current, while trusting Him with the future.
In Acts 8, Phillip gets promoted from being a server of food to having the opportunity to preach… all because Saul causes the believes to scatter.
Phillip preaches one message in Samaria, and thousands of people are saved. Phillip is in this massive hub city where revival has just broken out, and what does God say? Rather than staying there, God tells Phillip to walk into the desert. God gives no explanation of why, just that Phillip should start walking.
God essentially asks Phillip, “Do you trust Me enough to lead you away from the blessing that I led you into?”
Complete uncertainty.
Phillip ends up meeting an Ethiopian man, explaining a passage in Isaiah to him, baptizing him, and getting taken away.
But the thing that stood out to me is that when Phillip was asked to walk into the desert, God asked him to walk from Jerusalem to Gaza. When Phillip gets taken away, he gets taken to Azotus. Then he preaches all the way to Caesarea.
Notice anything?
Phillip never makes it to Gaza. The Lord has challenged me with a truth that sometimes He will send me towards something that I never actually will get to inherit… all for the sake of something better. I might end up somewhere different than I thought, but it’s where He has me. The question for me is am I willing to be obedient with where He has me, even if I never make it to Gaza?
Is that enough for me?
I have already watched the Lord completely wreck my expectations of what I thought this year would be, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Maybe I won’t get to Gaza this year, but Caesarea is pretty great! I’m so incredibly thankful for where He has me and what He is teaching me!
I pray that you are experiencing peace in where the Lord currently has you, even if it isn’t where you thought you might be!
