Day 28: August
8, 2012
Today was an
awesome day! But let me start from the beginning and work up to it. I woke up
(on time this time) and went into the school to help with the students again.
There were two first graders that I got to work with a little again today. At
one point the principal brought me a seventh grader that was fairly new to the
school and needed help with English. Man! I was having a hard time figuring
some of those questions. She was learning modifiers. I hope I start taking TESL
classes soon so I’ll be more prepared to help in the future. I didn’t get to
stay with them as much today because Katie and Megan needed my help doing some
other things too. The team was in charge of doing gym classes with the
students. They had a lot of fun doing that. And it was a lot of fun to watch.
At the end of the day I got to play with the kindergarteners. There were only
two of them today. They were playing with a jump rope but they did everything
but jump rope. They are definitely cute though and I will miss working with
them. After helping out at the school I had some downtime. I walked to the
smoothie place and got a delicious smoothie and then I got some pastries for a
snack at the bakery also. I will definitely be missing the food here! There’s
nothing like it in the states!
But the
really cool part happened in the evening. The team we have currently is from
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They are called World Harvest Outreach (WHO). They
have a special gift in the prophetic area. So tonight they were doing a special
training on prophecy. It was a practical and hands on training. I was a
skeptical. I haven’t been raised in churches that really talk about spiritual
gifts or prophecy or speaking in tongues or anything like that other than what
is mentioned in the Bible. My view on that has been challenged in the past year
or so. I’ve been trying to figure out what I think about it all; which is why I
started researching the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues to get informed. I
wasn’t really sure what I thought about a prophetic training, but I figured it
might be good for me to go and just see what it was like. What could it hurt?
My prayer as
I’ve been down here this summer has been, “God, if there is something more that
I haven’t experienced. If there’s something I’m missing out on, show me what it
is. I’m open to it if it is from you.” I’ve even been aware over the past month
of something missing in my relationship with God. Like I had most of it, but I
had this urging that I was just lacking in some areas.
We started
the training. It was cool to see some of the people from the teams praying for
a moment before pointing out someone in the group and saying something to them
that they needed to hear. At one point, a guy named Kendal in the group stood
up and held up a piece of silver. He said God had told him to pack it and give
it to Pastor Rene. I can’t remember what it was now but he gave some
application of silver and how it relates to us being able to minister in Costa
Rica. Pastor came up and accepted it and said, “God has been speaking to me for
the last month about silver. I was going to go out and buy some, but he told me
he’d give me the first piece.” That was really cool to see. And it started to
prove that there was a reason for all of this Pentecostal type worship that I
had never seen before. I kept praying in my seat, “God show me, say something
to me that will show me that this is of you and this is what I’ve been missing.
But then came
the part that I was kind of dreading, the part where we had to practice. I was
a little scared, what if someone wanted to say something from God to them and I
didn’t have anything to say? He gave us some time to pray and then we were to
open our eyes and say something encouraging to someone. I felt like I had
barely had time to really get connected with God and the time was over already.
“Man!” I thought, “I didn’t get anything!” So I just kind of stood awkwardly
around hoping nobody would notice that I wasn’t exactly getting involved in the
practice. Then Katie came up to me. If you don’t know who Katie is yet, she is
in charge of the mission teams and getting contacts from the states. She stays
very busy during the summers and is pretty much in charge of the rest of us.
Katie gave me a big hug and said, “Hi Lindsey.” I just smiled and said hello as
well. She continued, “God just laid it on my heart to tell you that there’s
more out there. There’s more you haven’t experienced yet. Don’t be afraid to
jump into the more that you’ve been curious about. I don’t know what that means
but… yeah.”
WOW! That was
so cool! I was too emotional at the moment to be able to explain. I was
overwhelmed with the moment. That is exactly the words I needed to hear. God
used Katie to speak to me and show me what I had been so confused and curious
about. It was awesome. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that it was God,
because I had never had a chance to mention to Katie some of the questions I’d
had, even though I had wanted to on several occasions.
So what does
this all mean to me? It means that God confirmed to me that the spiritual gifts
and things used in the Bible have not been put to rest. God showed me that they
can still be used and it’s part of what I have been feeling like I’m missing. I
don’t have to worry about making sure it’s okay or if it’s even from God
because God told me through Katie that it was okay to jump into it. It was a
confirmation from God. I still want to do my research and see how spiritual
gifts should be used. But now I am confident that God uses the same spiritual
gifts he did in the New Testament in the world still today. And I know because
God told me.
You can pray
for continued revelation and learning for me. I have about five more days left
in Costa Rica and I am sure that it is going to be awesome! I can’t wait to see
how much more growing I do while I’m here. And I’m even more excited to see how
much more growing I will do when I return home. Keep praying for me.
