Through It All

The past week has flown by. In the moment, it has been difficult to recognize where God was working. Though I knew God was present, it was taking a little more effort on my part to seek Him. Only through my recent reflection and quiet time have I been able to see a revelation in how God has been working over the course of my entire trip. God has managed to change my heart and open my eyes.

Let me preface this by saying that I have had a wonderful time in my ministry in Costa Rica. I have learned to seek the glory of God no matter where I was. Most of my ministry was a joy but some I struggled with. Throughout the past few weeks I have been serving in areas in which I felt no connection. Quite frankly, I did not want to be there at all. I did not want to evangelize through home visits. I did not want to sit through a hip-hop dance performance. I did not want to go on a prayer walk. I felt ill-equipped and uninterested. But I went and was present through it all.

Through persisting in the ministry I did not want to be a part of, God has been hard at work. I did not realize this until after I finished my prayer walk and spent some time alone. What I realized is that all of my work and ministry in Costa Rica has been delicately weaved together without my knowledge. The ministry in which I looked least forward to spoke the loudest in my quiet time.

To begin, a few weeks ago we spent some time speaking on evangelism. As a team, we prayed and sought after what evangelism would look like for us as we went out into the community of Barva. We made the decision to do home visits in the area. I went and was able to pray over a man named Louis.

The next instance came when I found out that there was a hip-hop dance team coming to our host church. We visited the dance studio in San Jose the week before. We already had a 10-hour ministry day so I was exhausted and not interested in the dancers. I went. After hearing Jose, the owner of the dance studio, share his testimony and dreams, I was compelled to share with him. I explained that I admired his dreams because he wanted to seek God where he found Him.

The final instance was our prayer walk. I was feeling sick the night before so I was not motivated to go on the walk. In addition, I heard the other group’s stories from their prayer walk and I was discouraged. We prayed to see if there was any specific direction in which our prayer walk would take us. We set out with no sense of direction. We started down a hill but turned around due to the danger of the road traffic. My team wanted to take a bus, and I was beginning to feel discouraged.

This is when the Lord really started to work in me. As we were standing at the bus stop, my heart was convicted. Thoughts from the dancers the weekend before flooded my mind. I was struck, in that moment, with what I shared with Jose: seek the Lord where you find Him. I knew we were not supposed to get on that bus. I told my group that we needed to revisit the area in which we did home visits. Long story short we turned around and went back to the original street. As we were headed up the hill, we passed Louis! A few girls stayed back to speak with him for what seemed like forever. Through their conversation we were able to find ministry for the day and help Louis and his neighbors plant a garden at the community park.

We started our day with no set ministry and open hearts. It’s incredible to see how the Lord can work in that. It was a reminder for me that God is working through it all.