Thursday

Today, our medical team saw 125 people in Grecia. It was another great ministry experience. Our construction team was rained out after several hours of work this morning. Tomorrow will give us a free morning and a half day of work in the afternoon, then we will begin preparing for our jouney home on Saturday. Thanks for your continuing prayers. Tonight, Linda Meadors will be sharing her thoughts with us.

Linda Meadors

Monday began a series of new days, when we moved out of our secure, sheltered world, and into a poor area of Guido, where we had to close the windows of our bus to prevent desperate people from intruding. We found a sweet, small church, clean, neat, and a minister's family, called by God, to touch the lives of lost people in a dangerous area. They even have a place called "the hole" where refugees live in squalor. It floods and they die. Disease and parasites come and they die. Homes are patched together with whatever materials they can find. They come expecting better and have no way to leave when they find something entirely different. But a small group of Bible students with SCORE International go, along with this small church family, in Christ's name, to help and to share the gospel. We also travel, minister, give, hope, and pray that an eternal difference has been made.

God knows our hearts and theirs. Only He can change us for all time. We thank God for His blessings and mercies as we travel to a different area of Costa Rica every day, and to different situations, always finding yearning hearts and longing souls for what Christ can give. Most of the people we came to help, left with blessings for us on their lips.

These people can't expect true hope from the nationalized health service here. Often they are told there is no room, no opening, and that someone will call, maybe. That makes it even more vitally important that we bring them the one true answer for hope--Jesus Christ. Their spiritual need is greater than the physical, and that is the main reason we were sent here--to share with them the one true eternal hope. So God pulled our team together as only He can. We've grown individually, grown together, and grown closer to God. May God be praised! Isn't He wonderful?!

One final thought--the most influential, and important, world wide web in the world is not the one that immediately comes to mind. The most important, in God's eyes, the one ordained by God, is the world wide web of Christian brothers and sisters, striving to follow the command of the Great Commission--the ones seeking to follow God's command to love one another, to share the Good News. "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister. . .". Wednesday, in Guacimo, the minister, who is himself sick with cancer, came out to pray with us as we left. He said that he was honored to be our siblings, that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, and he thanked us for coming so far to help his community. Truly humbling!

We are in this together, my family. We have met Costa Rican family, Argentinean family, Nicarauguan family, American family, Cambodian family, and others. We were sent this way through the sacrifices, blessings, gifts, and prayers of our family back home. Our Christian family is the world wide net that God loves and Jesus saves for eternity. May we always be willing to be an active part of that family, to thank God for the blessing of the opportunity to share our faith, and to bring others into the family of God. "As servants of God,. . .Honor everyone. Love the family of believers." I Peter 2:17.