My Drive to LA and Back

I did it for reasons known and unknown.  I felt like I had lost my way spiritually and needed time alone with God.  I wanted to attend a conference by spiritual warfare guru Charles Kraft.  While there I would spend time with a pastor who I hoped could help me get untracked in my spiritual life.  Some folks who care about me said I was crazy and foolish to drive a car through Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico and back.  I kept my plans a secret from my parents, who I knew would worry themselves to death, but they found out anyway.  When it was all over, God had kept me safe and sound with no major incidents.  I got the time with God that I needed, got refocused spiritually, and learned a lot about spiritual warfare that I can now put into effect in my life and ministry.

The ministry in Tejarcillos is nearly ready to hand off completely to the local leaders.  The ministry center is 95% finished.  Right now we are just working out details with the municipality's construction standards.  I help out with English, children's ministry, and am leading the youth ministry at the moment.   The one thing that our leaders lack and that I want to help teach them before handing off the ministry is this:  we need to do more to combat the spiritual forces arrayed against us and the people of Tejarcillos. 

The time I took to make the trip was well worth it, and I hope to move more fully into the area of spiritual warfare by organizing prayer meetings together with other ministries there in the neighborhood.

I hope to unpack (no pun intended!) my trip on this blog a little at a time, sharing what happened and what I learned. 

I almost made a terrible mistake by leaving without getting permission to leave the country with my car (Costa Rica is not as free a country as you might think).  Yes, you have to get the government's permission to leave with your own car!  If I had gotten to the border of Nicaragua without permission I would have been sent back home.  As it turned out, each country in turn required some sort of permission and background check to enter and leave with the car except for the US.

I left on a Wednesday afternoon after getting all the documents I needed and dealing with some ministry matters.  I got to a beach called Puntarenas just as the sun was about to set and pitched a tent on the beach.  Here in Costa Rica, anyone can camp on the beach within 50 meters of high tide.

I woke up the next day and there was a guy sitting on a log nearby.  We chatted briefly and it turned out he was homeless.  I started to break down the tent and realized we were the only two people anywhere on the beach and almost panicked when I realized he could easily pull a weapon on me.  Instead of folding the tent, I balled it up hastily and threw it into the pickup truck.  Then he approached me.  As it turned out, he was hungry and asked me for some food.  I gave him some food I had packed and he was very happy with it and went on his way.

Then I drove about three hours up the road to a town called La Cruz, just this side of the Nicaraguan border.  I camped for two nights at one of the most breathtakingly beautiful beaches I have ever seen, Playa Rajada.  We had camped there ten years earlier with the English speaking youth group we had worked with. 

I managed to get the truck hopelessly stuck in the sand.  It's pretty much a deserted beach and I had to wait for some guys to arrive to watch the sunset and drink beer.  They happened to have a Land Rover and pulled me out. 

While peaceful and beautiful, my time at Playa Rajada reminded me just a little of what Jesus went through in the desert.  At times at night when I was the only person on the beach, I felt tormented by something beyond myself telling me that something terrible was going to happen to me.  I spoke to the "something(s)" out loud in the name of Jesus, which helped, but they never seemed very far away. 

Rather than bring back pleasant memories of camping there years earlier, I was plagued by painful memories of conflicts within that youth ministry which had been ignited by circumstances beyond my control.  It was one of many hurts in my life that needed to be healed, and which God lovingly lifted from me on the trip.  But it didn't happen right then...