Bri Bri

This past weekend i went with a group of 18 students from Theos to do some construction in a little costa rican village called bri bri. this village is located on a river that borders costa rica and panama. after a four hour drive to the border we had to take a 20 minute boat ride up river to arrive in bri bri. the people here didnt wear loin cloths, but we were in the jungle, and very far away from normal civilization. These people have been impacted by flooding in the past year, quite severely, so there is some work going on there to help them rebuild a medical clinic. There was currently a group from Canada working there, from Samaritan´s Purse and a group from Denver Colorado had just left. It was fun to help with some of the construction that these groups were involved with.

I enjoy thinking that I am living in a country where I can serve people on a week to week basis that need a lot of help. These people from the US and Canada, have to take a plane to come, but I just have to drive, and catch a boat. Our trip didnt really feel like a missions trip, it just felt like a normal part of life and i think that´s a healthy place to be.

the whole group was sitting in a room, on saturday night. we had just finished up a game of charades and some of the guys started telling ghost stories. the interesting thing about these stories was that they were all real accounts of some sort of encounter with an unseen being. one guy told us about going to bed and feeling hands all over him, poking him and he couldn´t move. i didnt feel very comfortable with the nature of these stories in this group of young christians, so i decided to speak up.

i explained that the bible does talk about unseen beings- both good and bad. always, the bad beings seek to create fear or harm and always the good are working to help god with what he is doing. i explained that when jesus is living inside of us, then his spirit is working to produce the fruits of the spirit, like love, patience, self- control and joy. i also explained that as long as jesus is living in us, we dont need to fear the bad unseen beings because their power is not nearly as great as jesus power.

as i spoke of these things, i really felt like god was speaking through me and trying to mend a very delicate situation. sometimes i dont feel like god uses me very often in tangible, spontaneous ways like this, so it was really encouraging to see the result of this opportunity.