November flew by! I had visitors, travels, and a lot of planning for the three Striders that are coming very early next year! Essentially, tripling the work load I had last year at this time!
The beginning of the month I hosted a Latin Link coordinator from Scotland (he was quite involved with the STEP team I had last April) he wanted to go see where the team had been, so we went North and the trip was just excellent. Poor Martin, though, was trapped in the car with me for a little over 12 hours (total)! He survived and walked away very encouraged – aside from the day we took him into the back country (in flip flops) and he stepped on an ant hill…we wore him out! During the visit we got to spend a little time with one of the host families whose daughter (a mother of two young children, see picture: she’s in the pink shirt. her mother is to her right and the woman on my right is the late pastor’s wife* the pastor who passed away during the April Step Team earlier this year) was dying of cancer – it was very serious and the doctors had given up and told the family to buy the funeral clothes and casket. This year has been very trying on the family, I had tried to visit before
and never found them available. To my surprise and the glory of God, I take Martin up to see the family and who do you think comes waltzing out of the house while we are there?! The daughter!!! She’s walking, eating, gaining weight, she was healed! She herself explained what happened – she doesn’t remember any of the visitors she had or really the time there. Her mom told me that when they took her off life support she woke up. The daughter told me that it was like she had been sleeping (dreamless) and then she breathed in something so rich and decadent, it was like the purest oxygen she’d ever experienced. She woke up and immediately wanted to eat, had energy…the whole deal! The family and medical team had given up; now she’s at home with her family and travels 6 hours to the local hospital here in San Jose once a week for testing to ensure that she is in fact healing (which she totally is but the doctors want to keep tabs as miracles aren’t accepted by everyone! It was so exciting, we’ve been praying for them since April and to see such a 180 degree change is SO encouraging! God is so good!After Martin’s visit it was off to Peru for the Latin Link Leadership Conference and crisis management training. It was so lovely to meet so many people from all the teams in Central and South America! We had time to share experiences, resources, get some training, it was all in all a very lovely time! (To see more fotos click the following link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153803614714165.1073741832.512119164&type=1&l=e45bf9fbd9)
After spending an unexpected day in the El Salvador airport I made it safely back to Costa Rica, with all my new resources and a refreshed outlook on the upcoming months! Then it was time to meet the Short Term Coordinator for Latin America Mission (Canada)! She lives in Canada and so we had a good visit and a little logistic strategizing regarding missionaries that LAM will send to Costa Rica. For those of you not familiar, I work for 2 missions agencies: Latin American Mission (Canada) as well as Latin Link (European), most of my time here on the ground is spent with Latin Link. I will be assisting LAM with short term missions more in the future, by checking in on their short termers, locations, host families, etc. I’m excited and looking forward to this next step!
This year has had a lot of emotional ups and downs, times where I have seriously questioned my sanity, discernment, myself in general. There have been doubts, moments of pure joy, fear, you name it I’ve probably dealt with it this year. Something that struck me this month during one of my devotionals was that it is important to give God time to respond I just finished up my time in the book of Job this morning (haha yes I’ve been there for a few months, there’s just so much to get out of it!) and after all the agony and questions God finally responds to Job. He reminds him that he is God, he’s got everything under control!
*Whoa talk about great timing I literally just got back in from stepping outside because for the past hour or so someone has been pounding on a door and as I am trying to write a lovely update post the constant BAM BAM BAM was not very helpful! So I finished up that last paragraph and went to see what the ruckus was about. I walked over to find an abuela (grandma) to my neighbour’s kids exhausted and trying to open their front door – she’s been kicking it for about an hour *insert unimpressed expression and I went over and I asked her if she was alright and she goes “I can’t open the door…and I can’t get out of the complex because the keys are in the door” haha so I asked her if I could try and she repeatedly goes “do you think you can get it?!?!?” I tell her I’ll give it a shot. I turn the key one way, no good, she loudly reminds me not to break the key in the door – which up until that point had been my plan of attack…So! I changed the plan and turned the key the other way *click click…and the door opens! Voila! Kayla to the rescue! Sometimes you just need an outside perspective, someone to come in – oh I've just had an epiphany! Sometimes we are trying to push ourselves through a door and we just can’t seem to get it to open (figurative door of course), we’re pounding and kicking, fighting to get in. Like this abuela, then, exhausted from trying to do it alone, allow someone else to help. We say “God I cannot get this door to open! He either says “Well you’re not supposed to go through it, hence why it’s locked…”OR “Let me give it a shot” and he opens it for you! The Bible tells us that God will lead us on the best pathway for our lives (Psalm 32:8) sometimes we’re so busy trying to pound down doors we forget to ask the one who has all the keys. Or we don’t wait for him to respond, we figure we can handle it ourselves. Some things take time and we need to give God the opportunity to respond, we bombard him with questions and don’t always give him the space to answer, to open a door, to remind us it’s closed for a reason…
I pray that as you enter this holiday season you will remember to take time to reflect on the doors in your life and whether or not you, like this abuela, are relentlessly pounding instead of asking for help. Or perhaps the door’s not opening because you have the keys to the wrong apartment or you just need to spend sometime outside enjoying the sunshine :)
Merry Merry Christmas!!!
Ps. Prayer requests would be that God would give me wisdom and and open the right doors so that I can help to ensure these new Striders will have great placements and really enjoy their time here in Ticolandia!
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