Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Beside Still Waters

My partner and I just got back from a short trip from the major communities in the Chayanta Province. We needed to make good contacts and get some more information about the area before we headed out for months at a time.

The trip was absolutley amazing and I don´t have time or space here to tell how God just showed Himself over and over again. In Ravelo, the first community, we couldn´t find anyone that knew anyone from the church and pastor has left to go somewhere. It started off rough and I remember being so discouraged right from the beginning thinking we weren´t going to find anything or be able to visit all the communities on the list in the short allotted time we had. God was ready to prove me wrong.

We got on the next bus to get to the small community outside of Ravelo, and I sat there on the thiry minute praying hard to God that He would just move and we could see Him move. There was a nice guy on the bus that helped me with my bag (I had nowhere to put it). When we got off to this tiny village, the guy that helped got off too. I asked him if he knew if there was a church in this village and if there was could I talk with the pastor. It turned out that he was the pastor and we had such a great conversation and he helped us so much.

From that point I was able to have peace in His providence and for the rest of the trip things happened in such a way that I looked back and said, ¨That was Him,¨ whether it was receiving food from random farmers who couldn´t speak spanish when we didn´t have food as we were just walking by, or finding the only bus leaving a certain city to the very place we needed to go, but only because the woman at the little store brought it up randomly (or not so randomly), we felt His presence everywhere. Only in His timing and His way were we able to reach each community that was on the list in four days (we had 7 or 8 to do so), though couldn´t have done it if we needed one more day given that we didn´t bring enough money. When we got back home to Sucre we had less than 20 cents between the two of us.

I praise God because I know for a fact that He did everything, brought us to each and every place we needed to go, and met people on the road and every corner who were exactly the person we needed to talk to. At times as we had our backpacks and met other travelers I felt as if I was in The Pilgrim´s Progress and each person, each city, each experience we grew in Him, in His presence, as well as His pleasure. He lead us every step of the way, and in His peace we were always beside still waters.

I didn´t take a bath for four days, and if this was fifteen years ago I would have been really proud of that. I was happy to get a hot shower this time around though.

¨He leads me beside still waters.¨
- Psalms 23:2

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

4 days...glad you were down there. Make sure you take a few baths and a few shots before you get back to civilization. Looking forward to it.