I am blogging a series of stories that comes from my experiences on my last trip to the mountains and jungles of Panama.
We left base camp heading to peoples homes to share the Gospel this morning. I found myself in knee deep mud with in 20 minutes. The rain is really making many of these roads impassable by car, horse or foot. I made one wrong step and I began to sink. With my back back on I began to crawl, literally, out of this swampy mess. When i reached the other side of the village I was covered from head to toe in mud. I was not looking forward to the rest of the day since it was only 10am.
After visiting a few homes we found a man who owns the local store in the village so we stopped to have a cold drink with him. After he stopped laughing at me for being covered in the mud he offered to show us where there was a nice clean river to wash off in. That sounded like music to my ears! It was a about a 20min hike but completely worth it.
The store owner then told us of two families that were close that he thought they would like for us to visit them. So we hiked to the top of this mountain and found the farthest home was an elderly couple. The man was 81 years old he thinks. They were both full of energy and very welcoming. After talking about everything from chickens to my red mud boots we began to share the story of Jesus with them. Being catholic they knew a lot about Jesus and the bible but you could tell that it was mostly in there head and not in their hearts. Me, my translator, and a team of 3 other local believers spent about an hour there sharing all about the love of God, the bible, and God’s plan for them before they asked, “how can we start a relationship with God?” So we lead them in a simple, short prayer and then worship and fellowship broke out in that small bamboo hunt on the top of the mountain in the middle of no where. The Spirit was there moving!
It has been a couple of days and we are going to re visited the elderly couple over the river and up the mountain. They wanted us to come read the bible to them and teach them more about Christ. They are soaking it up like a sponge and are so thrilled. They can’t read so our store owner who also came to know the Lord last night said that he would visit this area every week and bring the supplies from the store that they had ordered and help teach them the bible using our discipleship materials. He is helping them go through the first worksheet now and it is cool to see that it is basic enough that a baby christian can understand.
New believers gathering for bible reading and studying in homes in the middle of the jungles with a local man of influence leading it…that sounds like the book of Acts coming to life!!! That is so exciting! God has had his hand upon us.
The Rousehouse 