Wow, so much to share from this amazing week in Nicoya, part of Guanacaste in Costa Rica. The stories of God´s goodness start before we even left San Jose! There are so many testimonies, but of course at the same time we experienced some intense opposition from the enemy! We got back to the San Jose base for 2 days before we left for Nicoya and during that time we had planned to do 2 ministries: one at the homeless shelter in San Jose and the other with a children´s ministry group called Metro Ministries. I was supposed to go with Metro Ministries along with one of the other leaders (Morgan) and the other leader Elena was supposed to go with the homeless ministry. However, 2 hours before the homeless ministry group was supposed to leave 4 of our teammates got extremely sick, including Elena, the leader who was supposed to go with the homeless group. I ended up trying to take care of all the sick people and then had to go with the homeless ministry group as the leader. I wasn´t really ready and felt really overwhelmed, but I went with the group. It was such an incredible time! We sang some worship songs, help feed them dinner and then one of the girls shared her testimony with the homeless people staying at the shelter. At the end we asked if anyone wanted prayer and about 30 people came up to be prayed for! As we prayed over people, 6 people ended up commiting thier lives to Christ! This was so unexpected and such an encouragement to me especially as I didn´t want to go in the first place, but God had such an awesome plan for us to be there.
The next day we left for Nicoya, which is about 4 hours north of San Jose in Costa Rica. The base in Nicoya is in the middle of nowhere, about 30 minutes from any town. It was a great time to experience God in His creation and enjoy nature. Every day we went to different homes to give out Bibles with the YWAM base in Nicoya. They have an incredible mission that they feel God has called them to do; give a Bible to every home in the province of Guanacaste which is about 10,000 homes. During the week we were there we passed out over 300 Bibles to homes in Guanacaste and saw God´s hand on this ministry! We were able to lead over 10 different people to Christ and see Him deliver many people from drug addiction, suicide, and alcoholism. One story of many that I would like to share with you is a family who we went to their door. The husband-father of the home was outside smoking a ciggarette and we greeted him and let him know that we had a Bible that we wanted to give him. He graciously accepted the Bible and then we asked him if we could pray for him and his family for anything. He then invited us into his house and said yes and that he would like us to talk with his family. We started sharing stories from the Bible with him since he shared with us that he nor anyone in his home could read, but that they love hearing Bible stories. After a great time sharing stories we asked him about his relationship with Christ and he said he didn´t have one, but he would like one. We were able to pray for him, his wife, his son, and his brother in law to accept Christ all together. It was so beautiful to see a whole family come to Christ! It reminded me of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16 who heard the message of faith and immediately went home and shared with his whole family and they were all saved. As we finished praying for the family the sister of the man of the home came in and we shared with her what we were doing. She started crying as she shared about her story. she is a Christian and has been praying for her husband to be saved and go to church with her and he just prayed to accept Christ with us. She also shared how she had struggled with suicide and just the day before had attempted suicide but couldn´t do it. We knew we had to pray for her to be delivered of this so we did and she was freed from it! God has shown Himself so faithful to us!
There are so many more stories to share, but not enough time! Just a little update: the sick people are all healed now, thank God! Two of them had to go to the hospital and one had a kidney infection and the other had parasites and they are doing better. We have had quite a bit more opposition other than sickness and so I ask for your prayers for our team´s health, but also that we would be able to stand against the schemes of the enemy. God has a mighty call and purpose for our team and so I pray that we would continue on with what God has called us to do. We are leaving Liberia, Costa Rica tomorrow morning and will be in Honduras tomorrow night. We will be in Honduras for 2 weeks and then El Salvador for one week and will be back in San Jose in time for Thanksgiving (Nov. 25).
Thanks so much for your prayers for our team! I hope you have been encouraged like us in what God is doing here in Costa Rica! God bless you.
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