Cartago, Costa Rica

We had a language school-wide field trip last Friday, (Feb 22, 08) to Cartago.  If you are like me that name probably initially means nothing.  However to millions of Catholics in Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and other Central American countries it is a pilgrimage destination during Holy Week.   During Holy Week an average of 1.5 million people make a pilgrimage there as a penanace. When some enter this basilica, they crawl to the altar. Some buy golden body parts from local venders and lay them on the altar as a sacrifical offering in hopes for their healing or someone's healing for which they are intercessing.

My whole class had about 30 minutes to take in the beauty of this basilica.  The architectural class of this building is truly breathetaking. I chose not to "do the tourist thing." So rather, I sat on a pew and took in about 25 minutes.  I was excited to observe this window into Catholicism.  I have had classes, I have Catholic friends now, but it is still in many ways a mystery to me.  Before going in I smugly made a joke to Angela about how I wanted to video someone crawling to the altar.  I am so glad she never gave me the camera.  The picture below I did not take, but rather found it on Google. 

So I was sitting there taking in the relics, arched wood, tiled floor, brass, grandios altar shrowding Mary at the front. I observing locals praying and others intermittenly kneeling.  There was a late morning mass gathering in a side wing.  I felt estranged, unsure, happy, wierded out, and prayerful all at the same time.  And then I heard a noise.

This noise had a particular swooshing sound to it.  I had already made my mind up before going in I would not stare, and especially not "look like a tourist!"  The noise got closer and closer, but it came very slowly.  The suspense was killing me, I was already in the midst of alot of deep-level theological meditations, my senses were on overload, and my pride was keeping me in a nervous holding pattern.

Then from the corner of my left eye I saw something that has caused one of the deepest spiritual grievances in my life.  There on the left side of the aisle was an older gentleman in his 60's-70's holding on to each pew, pants legs rolled up above his knees and he was crawling to the altar on that tile floor.  Then 2 seconds later, my life is now changed forever.  A small, brown, wrinkled, dry-scaled, old latin hand reached up beside me as I was sat on the far left side of that pew.  I canted my head left and down a tad, my heart sped up a few beats as I watched the wife of the gentleman make small, feeble, painful, steps on her knees towards the altar at the front of the cathedral with a blue plastic bag slowly swishing back and forth with each of her painful, slow steps on her knees.

The total length from the door to the altar was about 100 yards.  That length makes for a lot of steps on one's knees.  About a minute later, another gentleman in his 30's came by.  About 5 minutes later another a young lady in her 20's.  Then a grandmother came,  and a few paces behind her was her teenage grandaughter .

I was awestruck.  I was questioning cultural understanding of the propitiation of Christ's work on the cross.  And what about Jesus toting the cross for these 6 folks, thus they needed not to crawl?  I had no answer.  I still am chewing on their interpretation of this cardinal theological aspect of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ for us.  But I have come to one conclusion, and it just whacked me in the face the other dayon that pew in the city of Cartago.

Watching those pass by me to the altar in this beautiful basilica thoughts flowed in my mind with thunderous, missionary power. I was mentally racing over doctrine, protestant solutions, pneumatological options..when my mind went off of the cliff.  How dare I! I know my job, my calling, my ministry, but how dare I? There in that moment I was totally condeming their practice, thinking I was spiritually superior in my orthodox and orthopraxy; but in reality my sacrifice of prayer does not exist.  For me to admit this could be absolutely detrimental to my future as an AGWM Missionary and maintain as an A/G Ordained Minister.  But before God I adimantly admit to you that I am guilty.  I repent before God for my failure in spiritual responsibilities.  The truth is that the potential for God to work through me as husband and father, muchless as missionary is totally being limited until I kill my casual spirituality and thrust my life before God in prayer, communion, and supplication.  With each step of their knees it was a like a dagger piercing my heart as I realized thta perhaps I, a missionary - and pentecostal at that, was perhaps the weakest "Christian" in the basillica at that moment.

Please do not misinterpret me.  I am not saying we have to bloody up our knees to please God or for Him to hear us - that is heresy.  What I am saying is that in the busyness of our lives, in my life perhaps we have cut off such an amazing powersource in a lifeflow of prayer, communion, and supplication to God if we will simply slow down the pace or sacrifice our time to be with him.  There is a powerful Spanish saying I have learned and putting into practice, especially with my 3 sons: "Hay mas tiempo que vida."  Which literally means there is more time than life.  Yes life is eternal, but our time on this earth is not so live life! I am choosing to live it, spend it, exhaust it with my Lord, my wife and my 3 sons.  I am listening better for the voice of God, both in English and Spanish now.  I urgently plead with you to find the deadspace in your life that you can transform into precious time in the presence of the Lord.  The Father is listening.  Jesus wants you to use His name.  The Holy Spirit is waiting.  His Word is ready to subsidze your whole spirituality with endless uses.  I extend you this invitation, will you embark?

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How can death look like this?

We had the chance on the  weekend of February 2-3 to experience some deeper tropical life where the jungle and mountains meet north of San Jose.  The way the trip was proposed to my class by our conversation teacher, Roxanna Vega a local here in San Jose, I thought that she was crazy.  Really, who wants to spend the night in place with the name "Valle de Muerte" or Valley of Death?  Missionary or not, that just sounds dumb.  To our surprise it was anything but death-like.  Of course the scenery was breathetaking, but all of us got to take our Spanish up a notch!  Roxanna's husband, Luis Antonio, has a microbus that seats 15 pax and drives it as a tourist bus for a living.  He took us there and oh by the way only speaks Spanish. Learning language in a classroom is great, but real life situations occur for which you do not own the vocabulary and you appreciate the opportunities available to study vocabulary and verbs.

I came to the realization that perhaps I am actually learning how to communicate when I was telling some of my friends about one of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Nacho Libre." Then Roxanna asked me to recount the entire scene for her husband in Spanish - and I did...with a little help! 

On a different note, I would like to leave you with this thought though.  On part of the trip we had to go fishing for supper, well did I ever catch the biggest freshwater fish of my life...a 7 kilo rainbow trout: which is 15.4 lbs!!!  Almost all of us caught a trout, even each of the boys caught a trout.  But keep in mind that 11 of 15 only caught 1.  There was so much fish, we had it for supper that night.  I even had it for breakfast the next morning with eggs.  There was still so much fresh raw fish, that we were able to provide a week's worth of fish for a local single mom!

Jesus told a few disciples to follow Him and He would make them fishermen of people's souls. On this trip we were all fishing with simply a hook, line and bait - no rods or reels.  When my fish got hooked and started swimming away the line dug down deep into my finger. And the finger began bleeding.  When I pulled this fish in, right when it got to the bank where the grass begins to grow, it got off the hook.  Without a second thought my instinct was to jump in the pond, and I did.   Immediately I grabbed the fish almost squeezing the life out of it and threw it upon the shore.  I lunged out with my boots full of water, my hands were slimy and immediately the volcanic dirt stuck to my hands when I grabbed my dirt-battered fish off the dry shore. That may seem a bit overboard, no pun intended, but that was my supper.  Quite frankly, that was my catch.  I had traveled for 3 hours, crossed a 10,000+ foot mountain, then rode a horse for 2 more hours , was at an elevation of 8,000+ feet, and I was hungry.  I had come a long way and I was not going to lose  my catch!  Friends, I want to encourage you with a thought.  At the end of the night I had an ugly cut finger, wet pants, sore back, and walked around barefooted while my wet leather boots dried out in mountainous tropical temperatures of just over 40 degrees F in a place called the Valley of Death...but I had my catch!  Thank you for sending me to language school to become a communicator in the Spanish Language so I can help communicate this Gospel to the people of Venezuela.  Each day our family is growing in the language, in the Latino culture, and developing our missionary calling.  We have so much more to learn, but we are here learning because of so many of you!  Thank you.  While we continue to grow, go places and get our feet wet searching after our catch of people's souls -  I encourage you to do the same.  I donate to 3 missionary families every month.  I pray regularly for some of my friends and fellow ministers, but that is not enough.  Jesus the Christ has called me, has our family, to be fishers of people's souls.  Accept my encouragement, go get your feet wet finding your catch of people's souls that only you can find!  Go on adventures so you can place your hands around your catch.  Follow Christ, get your hands dirty going after your catch of souls for the Kingdom of God!  Please visit our full website at www.nelson5missions.com

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Land of Pura Vida

     We left Raleigh, NC in the wee hours of January 2nd.  All 5 of us had drousy eyes and knots in our stomachs for the next few steps of God's amazing will for our lives as missionaries.  The day had some typical airline frustrations, with a major financial setback of $820 because Delta made us change our tickets due to some new western hemisphere anti-terrorism law.  But when we finally made it to Costa Rica that day, favor began to unfold right before our eyes.

          We flew to Atlanta then on to San Jose.  When we arrived at the terminal of our new home for the next year we stayed on the jumbo jet until all of the other 200+ passengers got off the plane.  We were a motley crew rag tag bunch with 3 anxious yet whiney boys who were jet lagging for the first time in their little lives.  Angela and I had to pull, carry and drag all ten pieces of the carry-on's.  Being last in line at immigration is intimidating.  First you hope they are still happy after dealing with all of the Americans, secondly you are praying that your luggage is still in the claim area!  As we drug all the stuff through the serpentine lines made of poles and hemp string  and came to the end of our line a lady greeted us with a phrase that has set the tone for this whole yet of Spanish Language School.

     "?Habla Espanol?"  Do I speak Spanish, well not really but enough to get us through the airport!  I said "Si!" and she pointed to the other line and told us to go that way.  My heart started racing because no one was in it, either God had just really blessed us or I just crammed my feet in my mouth up to my knees!

     We started passing folks by the dozens and some even shouted out, "Hey, why do you get to go ahead of everyone else?"  I just looked back and smiled with too much confidence and said that it pays to speak Spanish.  We made it around the hallway and the line was wideopen to the immigration desk.  There was no one in the Spanish Speaking lines.  Why us?  I was nervous, anxious, full of God's peace, scared to death.  I greeted the two men, handed them our passports and papers.  Slowly, one by one they started stamping our passports.  I made each of the boys walk around for the men to see that their faces matched the passports.  Minutes later with smiles the men greeted us and welcomed us to their country and said !Pura Vida!

     We made it down to baggage claim.  Our 11 containers were no where to be found.  I walked all over the place and got that really uneasy fealing.  I returned to our screaming boys and Angela gave me the look.  I put on a false face of assurance not kowing how to feel and said, "It's ok baby, it's going to be fine...I've done this before."

     As I turned around Angela and I said, "Hey look."  The baggage workers began seding out our footlockers through the oversized compartment.  One by one they were all spitting out!  Well, that was exciting.  But now there was this next problem.  How were we going to move 11 footlockers and 10 carry-on's with a 2, 5, and 6 year old?  As I started stacking the boxes and breaking a sweat I said to the Lord, "I could sure use a really big cart right now.  As I stacked the last footlockers and leaned against them, one of the airport workers came walking up.  I began thinking how he was probably going to tell us how we needed to move our stuff out of the way.  When he opened his mouth in Spansh that I perfectly understood he asked me if I would like for him to go get a BIG ROLLING CART!  I almost cried.  Si Senor, por favor!  Minutes later this blessing of God came pushing a nice big 4 wheeled cart.  We loaded it with the 11 footlockers and put the other 10 carry-ons on a standard cart.  He took us to customs.  They knew him.  They only scanned 2 of our footlockers and made us open none of them!  As for he other 10 carry-on's, they scanned all of them but only opened Angela's because it setoff the metal detector with all of the jewelry.  They were concerned that we had come to sell it.  I assured them that the reason we were here was to study language and that we are missionaries with the Assemblies of God and had come to buy from their economy not sell anything.  Seconds later were on our way.  !Pura Vida! they said.

     We made it through some curves and through hundreds of squawking people.  And there stood our reception party!  After the microbus was loaded, I tipped the guy extremely generously and we exchanged salutations and he said to me !Pura Vida!  We headed for our new home for the next year in San Jose, Costa Rica, the land of Pura Vida, or in English...Pure Life!  These first few weeks have been amazing.  We are so thankful for this wonderful call to missions, the opportunity to focus and study solely on the the language this year and those of you who have financially made it happen!   There are some photos and other scripts on our website www.nelson5missions.com.  Also if you would like to contribute to our minstry there is a contribution page with various options on the site as well.  Visit back for the posting of some of our adventurious stories.
 

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