some prep for his talk. There was probably 50 people that we began to meet and chat with before we sat down for our meal. A wonderful group of missionary couples that don't get together as often as they like, so they look forward to a once a year retreat. This year the retreat was exchanged for our time today, as the economic crisis has affected them as well, and to accomodate the 'presidential visit'. Olive (?can't remember her last name at this moment) served as master of ceremonies and after we had a meal of a pot rst. kind of meat, mashed potatoes, brocoli, green bean, carrot mixture, and a cheesecake type dessert, we sang a couple of hymns together, and she gave a short presentation. She said that while president Obama has been in office for 90 days and recently gave his address, and Steve has been president of LAM this same amount of time, (April 4th will be our 90 days), they are looking forward to the 'state of the LAM address'. The similarities stop there as she sees our LAM president more as a "coach", and the missionaries as part of the "selection" team. So Steve was presented with a soccer ball, signed by all the missionaries! She said that they hoped it would be in his office and remind him of his team in Costa Rica. Of course Steve loved the illustration and you can bet it will get a select spot in his office!
He then spent about 30 minutes talking about what he has discovered in the last 2 1/2 months in leadership and what he sees as the most important things to tackle this year. He also talked about what kind of leadership he will bring to the LAM, emphasizing that he is relational and wants to be communicated with directly. Evidently, former presidents were "isolated" and you had to go through a ream of people to finally get to "the top". Steve encouraged them by Scripture that speaks of the first shall be last, and that we as an MSO exist FOR them, not the other way around. He committed streamlining systems and communication to make their time on the field as good as possible. There was a one hour Q and A time and all kinds of questions were raised. I believe he was able to bring great encouragement and gave them a very good birds eye view of not only who he is, but the positive changes and course that he hopes and prays to bring to the LAM. A good time was had by all.
Steve and I took about a half an hour to prepare to leave for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We got word that a group was coming to stay at the AMCA house, where we are,
and that sent Steve and I into a momentary panic. I called the couple that run the house to see if it is a small or large group and if it is going to be teenagers or adults. Interestingly enough, he didn't seem to have details. I left frustrated, but was quickly distracted from my concerns by our ride to our next destination . . . Bob Beamas, who he and his wife have done camp ministry here for 41 years, drove like a New York taxi driver to get us to the Worship Service at 3pm.
Sometimes I had to just close my eyes and take a deep breath . . . I asked if he had ever had any accidents in his many years of driving here. He said "2 fender benders during the first 10 years of being here." No sooner had he said those words than a car slammed on his brakes and came about 12 inches from T boning my side of the car! I decided to stop asking such questions!
The next 2 hours were very interesting. Bob is one of 8 leaders that combine Evangelicals and Catholics, all Believers, in a community of about 300 people that meet on Saturday afternoons from 3-5 pm, for worship and prayer. They are divided up during the week into small groups and each group has a pastor that teaches. They study books of the Bible, all on the same passages.
It is 90% Catholic! Each member must be committed to a home church and attend that church faithfully. But they also have 2 meetings a week with "Sword of the Spirit", and sometimes even more meetings. This is a "family" and you can see the love. It was such an amazing time of worship. The band made up of young people, stood to the side and led without any "hoopla".
The words were reflected on the wall in the center of the auditorium, which by the way is a lovely, large building that they recently built and payed for. Good acoustics. It is designed to have cross breeze and doors and windows are opened, with no air conditioning. There were 4 pastors up front, 2 being very active. One kept the flow of the Service going. There was people that would come up to one of the pastors, whisper something in his ear, he would go to the pastor at the microphone and whisper something in his ear. You could see that he was seriously processing what was being said. He took a moment and then spoke direction to the congregation. We found out later that evening from Bob that people would come up with prophecies and prayer requests. The pastor at the mike would pray and process if it was from the Spirit and allow only that which he felt was safe and good to bring to the congregation. Bob told us that they also look for a "pattern" of prophetic word, since the people coming up don't know what the other person has said. When we were there, 2 people were allowed to speak a prophetic word from the pulpit. One was a Scripture reading and interpretation and the other was a word of encouragement to the church family. No one speaks for more than a couple of minutes and it seamlessly moves from one thing to the next. Fascinating to watch the pastors work! There was much time dedicated to prayer and while the pastor prayed from the front, there was a beautiful hummmm from the audience as people quietly prayed out loud. There also was a time where people would gather in small groups and pray over each other. A man came up to us and said the Spirit had led him to pray for us and that he was to pray for power in our lives. Everywhere you looked people were praying and crying, but it was all so quiet and "organized", but not in a stiff way. There was a gentleness and sweetness to the time that truly ministered to my spirit. There is no doubt in my mind that these Catholics have a deep relationship with the Lord!
I have a couple of pictures but discovered that I can not put them on until our return to the States.
We then drove 45 minutes to Bob's house where his wife prepared us a soup and bread dinner.
We had some good but short conversation, as Bob was concerned about our getting back to the AMCA house before the "game" was over. Mexico and Costa Rica playing for the right to proceed on for the World Cup. The city stops for such important games. So he called us a taxi.
I discovered that there are no street names for residential streets. They go by landmarks!
We got into a taxi with a young man who had no idea where he was taking us and we didn't have and address . .. and we didn't know where we were going! Very interesting. The young man stopped at his house to get some help from a brother. He stopped along the way to talk to a police man, and he stopped at the "other" Shell bomba, to see if that was the right one . . . . it took nearly an hour of driving to finally get to the AMCA house. Steve would say, " I think that rotunda looks familiar". or "Maybe that is the right road". How crazy is that? But by God's grace we got "home". There were about 50 young people downstairs and we needed to unwind.
After some time spent on SKYPE with Cara and her birthday party in Phoenix, then a few minutes with Christa and Daniel in Nashville, we decided we were not going to sit in our bedroom depressed, missing our family, so we walked to a corner bar/restaurant. It was crowded and noisy with the music blaring, but we sat outside with cars and buses racing by us and it was a good distraction. We had a Costa Rican beer that even Steve liked (he is not a big fan of beer!) as it was light and not bitter. We shared some onion rings and Bar B Q wings and shed the stress of the day. It was nice to have the waiter accept our North American Bank card since we had no C.R. money, and he and Steve interacted over the afternoon game. . . Costa Rica lost to Mexico 2 to 0.
When we got back to the AMCA house, there were still a lot of kids hanging around, but we were beyond allowing anything to stress us. I took two melatonin and went to bed and Steve interacted with a couple of people on FB. We slept soundly through the night. God is good!!
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