Blessings and Wildflowers

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog because honestly I’ve been struggling to find words to put to the experiences I’ve been having. But I think I’ve finally got the words so prepare for a lot of blogs in the next week! I want to first share an experience that I had my third week in Nicaragua. The word that God gave me for my first month of ministry was Blessings and boy did He not disappoint.

My team was doing ATL (asking the Lord) ministry one day; asking the Lord what ministry He wants you to do and then being obedient to what He tells you to do. We were praying and I heard from the Lord that He wanted me to go to the church that we had been doing ministry at for the last couple of weeks. I didn’t know why we were supposed to go or what we were supposed to do once we had gotten there. All I heard was “Go to the church” and “I told Kellie too” (Kellie is one of my wonderful teammates on the race). So once we had reconvened after praying I asked Kellie what she had heard and sure enough she said that God told her we were supposed to go the church. Wow! How beautiful is it that we have a God who speaks to us everyday of our lives. It makes me think of Moses and how “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11).

Now Kellie and I hadn’t talked to one another about it yet but we both felt that we needed to go just her and me alone but not wanting to exlude anyone and honestly just being a little disobedient, we did not. Another one of my wonderful teammates Sabrina (they’re all just so wonderful what can I say) came with us. We walked to the church, sat down outside and started to pray about what God wanted us to do. Sabrina led a prayer walk around the church and we prayed again and weren’t hearing anything. Until Kellie spoke and said that she had heard the Lord say that we weren’t listening and being obedient to what He was saying so He couldn’t show us what to do. So in confusion, we headed back to the house and on the way God told us to go back home and then come back to the church just the two of us, like He had originally commanded us to do. Sabrina was the first to speak up and say “I don’t think that God wants me to come back with you guys”. So in obedience we came back, dropped off Sabrina and all of our stuff and headed back to the church.

Still not knowing what God wanted us to do we walked around the village next to the church and on the way we saw one of the little girls (about 10 years old) who had been hanging out with us at the church worksite the past couple of weeks. We said “hola” and on our way back to the church we realized she was following us. We walked the long stretch of stairs up to the church, sat down again outside of it an started praying again. Then she came running up the stairs in a make-shift shirt/dress, putting on her shoes as she was running. She came and sat down next to us while we were praying for a while and then got up and left. When I heard her get up I looked up and saw her running to a tree next to the church. “What is she doing?” I thought. Then she reached up and started picking Hibiscus flowers off of the tree. And at that moment I heard God say very clearly “Go get that little girl and tell her that I love her”. Urgency filled my heart and I waved for her to come over to us again. She came up to us, sat down next to me and I started talking to her in Spanish, asking her if she knew Jesus, if she went to church, what her family was like and just making sure she was being well taken care of. I told her why we were here, that Jesus had told us to come and to tell her that He loved her, that He has us here just for her. She smiled, reached up and started putting the flowers into our hair, positioning them just right, two on each head. Once they were perfect she told me that I was beautiful. I told her that she was beautiful too and helped put flowers into her hair. I asked her who her friends were and she laughed and said “you guys!” I told her Jesus was her friend too. We sat like that for half an hour or so, talking, laughing and repositioning the flowers (because they fell out every 5 minutes or so). It was starting to get dark and so we headed back to the house, hugging her and saying our goodbyes.

I remember thinking “it was all for that little girl”. All the commanding and obedience because God wanted to let her know that He saw her, that He was there for her and that He loved her. It was a privilege to be able to be there to see it, it was a blessing to experience. And that’s how it is for all of us. He will go to great lengths, to the far side of the sea just to show us His love for us, just to tell us we are loved. You are loved by a God greater than your weakness and opposition. Not because of who you are or what you do but because He is a father who loves his children. That kind of love blows me away.