Relationships.

So this week our topic is: Evangelism. I'm not gonna lie, that word has been really intimidating for me. I've never been good at expressing my faith to people and this was one of the main reasons why I came to Costa Rica; I wanted to express my faith and relationship with God in a natural way. When I used to think of Evangelism, I used to think that I could neverrrrr do that...that was only for the really good Christ followers and I didn't have enough knowledge of the bible to do that. Well, that is true to some extent, I will never know the entire bible and its entirety, but I do have other things that can be used to evangelize.

Evangelism is not just walking up to someone and preaching the word; it is telling people about the joy and happiness that you have found through Jesus. Evangelism can be creative, it can be loud, it can be one and one, but most importantly it is all about building a relationship with someone. This is the key that I had been missing when thinking about spreading the good news. When you want to express something that is so important to you to your friend, a family member and even a stranger; you have to be relational--what a concept right?!

Yesterday, we went out to a neighborhood in a not so good part of town and did bible distribution. I was really pumped because I had never done it before. So before we went out we had like an hour of just straight prayer time--this is key before going into a community and presenting Jesus to people. We prayed for God to go before us, to prepare the peoples hearts, to have the Holy Spirit help us when we go and to protect us. Each person went in the middle of the circle, layed hands on them, and prayed. This was probably the coolest thing we've done so far for me because during that prayer time I was asking God to give me a heart for these people. I started tearing up because I really feel that God was breaking my heart for what breaks his. The prayers were so powerful that morning, I just love when that happens!

So we divided up into groups of 3-4 and went out amongst the neighborhood. I really enjoyed my group because we all were so at ease that morning, but it helped that the two houses we went to were totally awesome! We only had time to go to two houses because we were with them so long so I'm only going to talk about the first house we went to..The first house was this sweet old couple that openly opened their house to us. We sat with them for a good half hour, maybe longer and just talked. Morgan (my leader and translator) was explaining to them that we were 'new' missionaries at a bible school and needed practice telling our testimony and what not so we literally just talked about what God has been doing in our lives and it was great! They too believed in God so it was just so special to be sitting with this couple just talking about our walk with God. They were so loving that they said "Our house is your house, you are always welcomed here"--you definitely dont get that in the states! Here we are, complete strangers, and they just openly let us in their home--this definitely was a culture shock to me.

But something that I did learn that is vital for evangelizing is that it is sooo about building that relation with people. Yes, it is important to tell people about Jesus, but sometimes it can be the simple act of listening to a sweet old couple talk, baking goods for the homeless, giving free water bottles down town, serving others, etc...I say this because it was so evident that the old couple we visited just really enjoyed our company. I bet if we had more time, we could of been there for hours, just talking with them.

Another thing that I learned from this experience is that when I do have a home, I want it to be an open place, where people can come and go-a warm and welcoming home for all. Since I have been in Costa Rica I have been surrounded by nothing but loving latinos who are overly kind in almost all aspects of their lives. It has truly taught me so much about loving people and loving our differences.

Tonight we made 40 bucks on our bake sale and 37 bucks on our garage sale--all proceeds are going straight to our outreach because some of us don't have the funds to pay, but thats quite all right because we are raising the money all together as a family and trusting in God that he is going to provide it--whoohoooo!

Tomorrow night we are going to salvation army, dont know exactly what we will be doing, but we are bringing the left over cookies to the homeless--so Im pretty pumped! ill write more this weekend- gotta soak in all the free internet time I can get right now-Ciao!