Month 4: Into the Jungle Again

There’s a weird melancholy when you go to leave a place knowing you may never be back and you may never see your new friends again this side of heaven. 

I feel like in my last days in a place, all my senses are heightened and I take notice of every detail a lot more. Every bird that chirps, every tiny flower along the path, every small hug and smile, every crash of the gentle waves on the shore, every sip of morning coffee. 

There’s a sweetness and a sadness in noticing all the details. 

In my last days in Nicaragua, I noticed every tiny thing. The smiles on the kids faces, the ways they tucked their shirts in in a particular way, which ones ran up to give hugs first and which ones always waited to give the last hug. The way the waves crashed over the rocks below the Rancho, the way I never quite got used to mangoes falling on the roof, the way our little painted coffee cups warmed my hands every morning. 

Leaving our host, our kiddos, our island in Nicaragua was hard. Our time there was sweet and restorative. 

On the 6th of April, team Selah said our final goodbyes and headed to the ferry port. We ferried back to the mainland and had a couple hours in a van before we ended up in Granada for a night. We met the rest of the squad there, and we had a sweet reunion with lots of hugs and story-swapping. 

On the morning of the 7th, we left at 6 a.m. to start our travel to Costa Rica. A few different delays, and one sweaty border crossing later, my new team finally met our host at 1 a.m. on the 8th. 

We were greeted by our host and 8 of his guys. We loaded our bags into a few wheelbarrows they had and I was given a bright flash light to hold. “You go first, look out for monkeys and alligators.” 

I walked alongside one of the men named Gabriel as he pushed a wheelbarrow full of our big packs and urged me over the river and down the path. Less than 10 minutes from where we parked, all of a sudden is a big wooden gate that opens up into a clearing in the jungle that a big white house sits in the middle of. 

This month my new team is partnering with Global Teen Challenge, where our primary focuses are discipleship, evangelism, and Bible distribution. Global Teen Challenge uses a year-long discipleship program to help people overcome drug and alcohol addiction and abuse, and live a life for Jesus Christ. My all-girls team is staying in half of the big white house, and 4 women currently going through the program live in the other half. About 20 minutes away, the men’s program Taller de Maestro (Master’s Workshop), is home to about 35 guys and a handful of staff and interns. Part of the work the ministry does is growing and harvesting cacao and making delicious dark chocolate bars. 

So far, we’ve gotten to share devotionals with the women we live alongside, as well as get to know them and encourage them over meals and daily living. We have church on Saturday’s at the womens house and on Sunday’s at the men’s house. Church at the men’s house wraps up with a shared meal and then hours of playing games with one another, our first time there was unexpectedly so fun and sweet. 

This week we went to San Jose for a few days to do street witnessing–more on that wild and wonderful experience in the next blog! 

Over the next few weeks, we’re planning on doing more teachings and devotionals with the women we live with. We also have been told of the possibility to go into indigenous communities in the mountains near us to share Bibles that were recently translated into their native language for the first time! We’re going to be doing more evangelism, as well as continuing to go to church at the men’s house on Sundays, and this Friday we’ve been invited to a 12-hour prayer night at the men’s house! 

Ministry here so far has been exciting and stretching. I can see my team walking in different giftings than we have in months past. 

We live in the rainforest, near the beach town of Puerto Viejo, in the far southeast corner of the Caribbean coast. There are monkeys in the trees outside our windows and (supposedly) alligators in the river across the path from where we live. 

My new team has been sweet and refreshing. We’ve picked the name Zeal for ourselves. I’m praying we’d have a contagious zeal for the Lord. So far we’ve dug deep into prayer, time with the Lord, and fasting. 

I’m so excited and expectant about this month in Costa Rica. God is on the move and it’s been powerful to see the beautiful restoration in the lives of the men and women we live alongside. 

Please be praying: 

• for the ministry here. That God would bless and keep it. That it would be life-changing again and again. That the men and women in the program would trust the Lord deeply and love Him greatly. That the staff would be strengthened and equipped to guide and shepherd and lead within the will of God. 
• for team Zeal. That we would continually leverage our individual and collective strengths for the spread of the gospel and the good of the Kingdom. That we would be people who walk boldly in our God-given identity and authority.