Mission: Urban

Today was a good day for me, actually, it may have been one of the best days I’ve had so far here in Costa Rica.  I got a bunch of solid good work done, had some really good conversations on my route, and had a very encouraging talk with a believer.

Today specifically I noticed an improvement in my ability to understand and my ability to talk.  All my conversations today were good, not perfect mind you, but I’m getting the structures down and I’m hearing more and more words (I’m recognizing when I don’t understand a word, as opposed to just recognizing words I understand).  The relationships with these people on my route are growing and we are becoming friends and that is satisfying.

One of the men on my route is a believer.  We didn’t discover that we both were believers until about a month into our conversations.  In one conversation about family he described his family as walking with God.  In a conversation about free time he said he reads his Bible often.  Eventually he got around to asking what I did and why I was in Costa Rica, when I told him i was a missionary he became really excited.  He made the comment that he too was, in a way, a missionary in his work.  That kind of perspective does not come from a nominal or cultural christian.

Two weeks ago I had been having a bad week, I was really discouraged.  It was a conversation about television, in my memorized monologue I put together, I mentioned that I had had a lot of stress since being here in CR and one of the ways I relax is by watching sports.  He asked why I had stress.  (these monologues are for the purpose of creating further conversation and this did it).  I tried to explain as best I could and decided to tell him that I had been really discouraged recently.  He asked why.  I tried to explain that I was feeling as if I’d never learn the language.

He began to encourage me, telling me that I was here in the first place because God brought me here.  That God is able to help me learn the language, that I needed to remember the reasons I am going to Argentina, the reasons God put in my heart.

He then asked me to do something, I didn’t quite understand quite what it was.  He said I needed to make or write some sort of sentence (oracion).  Huh?  Ok, later that day Tara told me that that word can also mean prayer…Ooohh!  So he wants me to pray or write a prayer and bring it to him?  Weird.  Ok.  So I finally got around to writing down a prayer.

Since the beginning of the 2nd trimester, my teachers have been expecting us to pray before classes…in Spanish.  This has been so hard for me, so much so that I haven’t been able to and I have refused to do it in Spanish.

It’s been in the back of my mind that I’ve needed to concentrate on learning to pray, so I took this as an opportunity to start.  So I wrote a simple prayer, thanking God for Andres and his encouragement, asking God to help me learn Spanish, and to keep the people of Argentina on my mind.

I shared it with Andres today, and again what an encouragement.  Through my broken Spanish he was able to lift my Spirit up again.  He marveled at the prayer I wrote, said that it was from God.  It was at that moment that I realized that it was my first prayer in Spanish, and I told him so.  He then said that I needed to guard this prayer and to pray this prayer every morning.  So that when I get to Argentina and am able to share God’s love, I can look back and see how God answers prayer and how able He is.

I walked away from that conversation lifted up and encouraged.  The family of God, crossing borders, crossing cutures, crossing language…how amazing!