What are you doing?

I have been asked this question more times than I can count over the last couple months. All I could answer was, I don’t know we are waiting to see. We have been here on the field for three weeks now and I can honestly say I still don’t know exactly what ministry will look like tomorrow or next week. This year has been a year of flexibility. When we thought we were leaving behind unknown plans for our journey in Gainesville we were wrong, God still had more to teach us. He wanted us to step into ministry that was flexible, no schedule or rotation to count on. God is choosing to take us on a journey that requires complete dependence on him each and every day as we ask him what the day will hold, because no day is the same. Each day is his and his alone, and because he is teaching us to be flexible to not count on one way of doing things it allows him to work more freely.

With that said I can’t share what exactly ministry will look like in the future but I am so happy to share what it has looked like the last three weeks, what God has allowed us to experience and be a part of!

One day I might have a machete in hand as we clear the jungle on the YWAM base and another a handmade invitation to the church service on Sunday. The ministry these past couple weeks has looked like a variety of manual labor, evangelism, sports ministry, and youth ministry.

Here are some of the ways we have been ministering here in Costa Rica!

• Helped our YWAM base clear jungle with rakes and machetes, mix concrete from scratch, some of us helped create a compost home. Others helped with painting, raking the grounds, helped fix the tarp structure we hang our clothes under and more.

• Evangelism days look like going into the town to talk with people, invite people to church, praying over people as well as over the businesses and town itself. This area is a tourist town on the east coast of Costa Rica, people visit from all over and many choose to stay because of the “relaxed” laid back town it is. A lot of the people are searching for something and trying to fulfill their search with things such as drugs, nature, spirits etc. But we know these things can only bring temporary happiness, we are grateful God has brought us to this spiritually heavy region to bring hope and light into the community. It is really neat building relationships with people we will be able to grow over the next couple months of being here.

• We also have started going into an indigenous town to evangelism. This is a small town populated by local Costa Ricans who only speak Spanish. Entering the town felt very heavy, we defiantly all felt challenged out of our comfort zones as we attempted to communicate solely in Spanish.

• We did one day of sports ministry in a local community. This simply looked like showing up at a soccer field and going door to door to invite the kids in the community to come play a game of soccer with us. We are hoping to do this again soon and share with the kids we have built relationships with the gospel! Not only with soccer but hopefully with some other sports in other communities in the area as well.

• This weekend we helped the YWAM Staff at our base put on a youth camp for about 10 or so teens. We got to worship with them, share testimonies, lead teachings and just hangout and spend time with them.

• We also have had the opportunity to be heavily involved in ministering to a local church. At least once a month we lead the service from start to finish as well as every Sunday sharing testimonies and helping lead worship. It is a really neat experience to get to worship in both Spanish and English and we love getting to support the pastor in this way.

This is a glimpse into all we have been doing here in Costa Rica thus far, we are excited for whatever God has in store for the remainder of the time and what other ministry opportunities we will have!

So, what are we doing? Learning to walk in flexibility more and more for whatever ministry God has in store for us each and every day!