Ends bring new beginings

 God is crazy.
 
I have only been in Nicaragua for 6 days. In those 6 days my team has been through an earthquake, the volcano erupting, and last night the absolute unthinkable. Last night (Sunday night), we went to a church service in Bethel for the first time. Bethel is a community we will be in a lot, and we have been there once before for 4-ish hours to get to know people in the community. So, last night we loaded up in the big Latin American version of an army truck, with no top on it, and benches running the length of the truck. Most of us sit and some of us stand everywhere we go. That is our transportation here. So we get to Bethel to go to our first church service since getting here and start walking into church. We greet people and sit next to some different people in the community. It was very hot and stuffy in the church and in a matter in minutes I was dripping sweat. For me it doesn’t take that much heat to make me sweat, but it was hot in there. We listened to probably 2 different Spanish worship songs before finding out we would be singing in front of the church for everyone. During those songs I just kept asking God “Why are we here? Why are we in this community of Bethel? What is our purpose the next few months?”

  For those of you that don’t know being asked to sing is actually pretty typical, but we didn’t rehearse or anything, it just happened. So we sang “Open the Eyes of My Heart” in English. Shortly after we sat down one of the pastors stood up to say a few things. There are multiple pastor at the church in Bethel.  I was looking down at my bible while he was talking. All of the sudden I heard a thud, an audible gasp, and the words “EL PASTOR!” shouted from someone’s mouth in panic. I looked up to find the pastor lying on the floor of the stage unmoving. Instantly 4 or 5 people rushed to the stage, they gathered around the pastor to help by fanning his face and trying to get him to wake up. After probably 15 seconds they brought a fan over and had it on him while people still tried to wake him. At the same time the whole church was in a furious state of prayer for the pastor. Audibly in Spanish and English people were praying to God. They were praying away the spirit of death in Spanish & everyone was praying for him. After an excruciatingly long minute or two a few men carried the pastor out of the building, still he was not moving. My team kept exchanging looks of shock, concern, worry, and confusion because nobody really knew what was going on.

They continued with the service after that. They had a message from a woman, more songs, and the offering. At the end some people rushed into the church building who were outside the whole time with the pastor. They said a few words to the woman with the microphone on stage and in an instant the whole room spiraled into a state of sadness, despair, and for some Americans confusion. The word spread after a few moments that the pastor had died. In a matter of minutes there were people all around the church sobbing and on their knees praying in the front by the stage. My team is incredible because within two minutes many of us were comforting and praying over people we didn’t know and that we couldn’t communicate with. It was in a way beautiful to see my team spring to action like that and comfort people in such an unexpected and shocking situation. Remember earlier how I said I was asking God why we were there? Before anything happened with the pastor, before pandemonium broke out, and before it was anything but a typical night at church. He showed me why that’s for sure.

As I was watching people on my team lay hands on strangers, pray for them, cry with them, and comfort them it clicked. We are here to help rebuild a now very broken church. We are here to bring joy in mourning. We are here to show them that God is still here in the midst of this tragedy. The next few months are going to be intense to say the least. What happened last night goes to show that even with the language barrier, we can show great love to these people. Isaiah 61.
 
 
After we said goodbye to the people and came back to where we are staying at vision Nicaragua my team was in shock. For most people it was their first time ever seeing anything like that. We literally had just watched a man die while praising the lord. It was a hard pill to swallow and we didn’t even personally know him. I cannot even begin to imagine how the people of Bethel are feeling.