Panamania!

I couldn't think of a better title. Sorry, guys.

This week was mostly uneventful, save one service project and a wedding before our weekend in Panama. We helped the Pavely’s do some construction on their house they’re building. I guess some people decided to bless Spencer and Vanessa with an architect and some funding for a house near the YWAM base. They wanted to use the spare bedrooms for missionaries coming through San Jose. Whoever gave them the money also paid contractors to help build the house. It’s a huge gift, for sure, because they are volunteers just like the rest of us. We helped them do some sanding and dry-walling. We also moved around a bunch of cement bags and toilet bowls to their proper places. This project was labeled as “local outreach”, which I thought was kind of strange, because it was our friends we were helping. Someone told me, however, that this is a good tool for when we go back home. It’s a really easy way to show your friends or your neighbors the love of God, simply by helping them out with big projects like moving or renovation etc.

Our topic for lecture this week was Spiritual Warfare, with our speaker Terry Keith. We talked about the realities of the spiritual world that parallels our own physical realm. These two planes are not independent of one another, but completely interactive. What happens in the physical world has a spiritual counterpart. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was our study of the devil. It was important to know our enemy, and know who we are in Christ. Satan is the ruler of this world. This authority was initially and continually given by us, men and women. It all started in the Garden, when Adam and Eve were tempted into rebellion. The simple act of disobedience was like treason; they didn’t realize it, but they turned themselves over to a new allegiance. One of brokenness and error. We gave the world to him, and it should be us who takes it back, with God’s help.

Ultimately, Satan is a liar and deceiver. That’s really all he is. He blinds people to the truth of God, therefore robbing them of their destiny and inheritance. He tells us lies about ourselves and our situations. He doesn’t want us to know who God is. He doesn’t want us to know God is with us, and God wants to best for us. If we really knew, if we really understood all this…we’d be unstoppable. We need to cling to these truths, and he cannot touch us.

Juan and Amanda got married on Friday. They’re two of our staff, who met on outreach in Nicaragua. Amanda is from the States and Juan is from Mexico. The whole base got dressed up and celebrated the marriage of our two friends on the basketball court. Both of their parents watched via skype. They were all so excited.

Everyone’s visas were running out, so we all had to leave Costa Rica for the weekend. Half of us went to Nicaragua, and the rest went to Panama. I went to Panama. We took a bus to Puerto Viejo, a little town on the Caribbean coast of Cost Rica, to stay the night. We arrived pretty late in the evening and got some ice cream before turning in for the night at our hostel. The next day we took a bus to the Panamanian border, which was quite an adventure. After getting our exit stamp on our passports, we had to walk across this sketchy railroad bridge over the river separating the two countries.

Upon arriving in Panama, we had to buy a bus ticket out of Panama to prove to immigration we weren’t staying. After that, we had to purchase a sticker before we could get our entry stamp. Val and Julia were quite dismayed, because they never had to purchase anything to get into Panama before. We also had to show them all of our money in the immigration office, which was another strange formality our leaders had never experienced. When we finally figured out all that we had to do, we got into a large fifteen passenger taxi and were shuttled to the Caribbean cost of Panama, where we would take a boat to an island called Bocas del Toro. It was huge tourist town, so we hoped to find some backpackers to bless while we were there.

Panama had such a different vibe than Costa Rica. People were really desperate for money, much more than in San Jose. It was really obvious, just looking around, that this was a poorer nation. Little kids would come up to you and offer to clean your shoes or carry you bags to make some cash. At the border, some guy was offering us our immigration papers (which were free) for four dollars apiece. Later, when we were at a beach on the island, more little kids would come up to us with these crazy looking red frogs concealed in leaves and offer to show them to us for some money in return. When we would go to shops, the vendors would get really upset if we left without buy anything. Every other local was trying to sell us drugs, and would also get offended if we declined.

In the taxi on the way to the boat, I met this guy from Spain named Miguel. He was twenty-six and traveling alone for his first time through Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. His Spanish was really hard to understand, and I think he was getting impatient with my limited abilities, because at one point he simply stopped talking to me. Miguel found some Spanish speakers to hang out with when we got onto the boat, while the rest of us enjoyed the marvelous ride to the island. The breeze was so refreshing, and it was so beautiful to watch the mainland shrink in the distance over the clear blue water.

After settling in our waterfront hostel, we took a bus to the other side of the island to go to Starfish Beach. I’m sure you’ve ever seen those picturesque advertisements for tropical islands…white sand, calm clear waters, palm trees…this was exactly that. It was honestly one of the most beautiful, tranquil places I’ve ever been to. The clouds swirled in the sun above us and the water was as smooth as glass. Sitting in the sand in the shallow waters were about a dozen red starfish. In case you missed it from my previous posts, my camera was ruined in Montezuma in a freak rainstorm. Luckily, my friend’s brought theirs…so there is some evidence on Facebook of this heavenly sight.

Sometime after we arrived at the beach, we ran into Miguel again. He decided to stay and hang out with us. This is where I was able to talk to him more and hear more about his life, with the help of my Venezuelan friend Alisabel. He was a really nice guy, actually. He had also spent the night in Puerto Viejo, but he helped a bunch of baby sea turtles find their way to the sea. We invited him to come eat dinner with us at the hostel, but after he accepted, he ended up disappearing again. We saw him the next day walking down the street, but he didn’t stop to talk to us. Bummer.

For the first time in a long time, I got to see stars at night. San Jose has such horrible light pollution. Saturday night I got to lie on the deck at night and see a couple shooting stars.

Sunday, we left early to go snorkeling with these two German ladies we met at the hostel. The older one, Renate, was the owner of a budget hotel in Alajuela and she was also renewing her visa with her college-aged intern Lisa. Only Lisa spoke English, but Renate thankfully spoke Spanish so I was able to talk with her as well. Our hostel provided daily snorkeling tours through the islands to see the lovely reefs near the shore and the dolphins in the bay. We left really early in the morning from the dock outside the hostel and sped over to see the magnificent dolphins. The bay’s waters were so still, due to the protective barrier of islands circled around us. There were families of dolphins, with their babies, swimming around the boat. We stopped at two reefs to snorkel. Our Panamanian guide tied the boat to a buoy, threw us some masks and told us to jump in. The water was really warm, and pristinely clear. There’s a whole other world beneath the surface. So much color, so many textures and shapes. The fish were almost alien-looking. I felt like I was in Finding Nemo. We even swam next to wild jellyfish.

Between the two reefs, we stopped at a smaller island to hang out Red Frog Beach for a couple hours. Curiously, there were quite a few children emerging from the jungle with leaves folded in their hands. They would approach you and tell you that you may see inside their leaves in exchange for money or food. Inside were the infamous Red Frogs. We would give them food, because we brought a bunch of snacks with us from the hostel, but they were not interested in any further conversation with us. It was very difficult to be intentional with these kids, because they undoubtedly had an objective to make some cash. They would leave us immediately after they got what they wanted, leaving mid conversation. It was such a different dynamic in this country than it is in Costa Rica.

Anyways, my Canadian friend Aryk rented a skim-board and some of us tried doing it for the first time. Most of us fell on our butts, but it was a lot of fun. Lisa joined us playing in the waves. A little before we left for the second reef, I got to sit and talk with Renate, who was lounging under the palm trees watching everyone’s stuff. She had been talking to our German staff worker, Julia, throughout the day and told me she was very impressed with the goals and values of YWAM. She wanted us to come by her hotel sometime, because there were a lot of homeless people and prostitutes in her neighborhood. Renate was not a Christian, but she seemed very interested in what God was calling His people to. Hopefully we can come by her hotel sometime before outreach to bless her neighborhood.

Aryk and I went to look for somewhere to eat for the group while everyone showered. As we walked down the busy main street of Bocas, we saw this man in a wheelchair trying to get over a bump in the road. Some female tourist was trying to help him, but to no avail. She asked us if we could help him, so we did. We got him over his bump, and wheeled him over to the place he stayed. He was obviously very tired, and new to life in a wheelchair. His name was Luis, he was from Nicaragua and he had just moved to Panama. He spoke English, but he might as well have been speaking Spanish; his accent was unbelievably heavy, and his voice was so hoarse from I’m assuming decades of smoking. He owned a boat somewhere in town, but some enemy of his pushed him off of it and he broke his leg on the dock, which was why he was in the wheelchair. He was really thankful for our assistance, expressing it wearily in a couple of fist bumps. He got to pray for him, asking God to heal him. Not sure if He did, because we had to get back for dinner, but believing in faith Luis is no longer in his wheelchair.

Some of us went to this “Mediterranean” restaurant for dinner, inviting Lisa to join us. We got to know her more over our quasi-Greek meal. Sorry, I’m down-playing it because it was basically Latin food with cucumbers and olives. This shouldn’t suggest it wasn’t delicious; it just wasn’t authentic by any stretch of the mind. I mean come on, our waitress was from New Zealand. Anyway, our new friend Lisa…she was a student at a university in Germany studying international business. She was interning in Costa Rica to get “work experience” before she graduated. Even though she was working at a hotel, she had no intention of working in the hospitality business. She wanted to work in Human Resources for car manufacturers, due to lots of problems with working conditions. Lisa thought her internship more of a vacation than work, she said. She was very excited for her parents to visit her this coming week, so she could show them around the country.

Lisa treated us for ice cream, in return for the dinner. We walked up and down the main strip, talking about life and God before returning to the hostel to listen to some live music. Some random French guy had formed a Bob Marley cover band, and were playing until like eleven at night. How random. Lisa gave us her email, and told she wanted to hang out with us again before we left for Peru. I’m really, really hoping we can go to Alajuela to bless our new German friends. Anyway, Monday morning we headed back for Costa Rica. We sped back to the mainland, took a van back to the border, got on a bus and arrived back in San Jose in time for dinner. If only it were that simple and fast. Oh, Latin America.

Praise Reports
- New revelation of the truth of God, and the lies of the Devil. I’ve got to embrace the truth of God’s presence and power in my life.
- We had a very restful and relaxing weekend, enjoying the Lord’s creation and His people.
- We got to bless Luis, the man in the wheelchair, by helping him get home. We made some new friends, who we might have the opportunity to bless in the near future.
- PCC promised me $800 in support for my outreach! My aunt also donated $100. Getting closer and closer! God is so good. Thank you so much, my church and my family, for supporting me. Two third of the way there.

Prayer Requests
- A thankful heart for the daily blessings the Lord gives.
- Wisdom for our leaders as they finish planning our outreach to Peru and Bolivia.
- Unity among our team. Pray that we could have God’s eyes and hearts for one another.
- Finances. As always.
- Rest. Rest. Rest.