Hello All! Aren't you loving the beginning of autumn?!?! Its soo pretty and the weather is perfect!

So, I very strongly believe that God is intricately involved in the details of our lives, and that He likes to show off sometimes just to love on us. This past Friday was definitely one of those days. :)

I was scheduled to interpret at a picnic at 12:30 pm Friday afternoon. As always, I arrived ridiculously early and was just chilling in my car for a while. I was on facebook on my phone when I received a facebook message from Pastor Aldo, one of the pastors at Refuge of Hope in Pucallpa. Pastor Aldo and I had spent many evenings chatting for hours outside while the kids were playing during the month I was there. I opened up the facebook messenger app and began messaging back and forth with him. I was distracted for a bit with en email I received, and in the midst of checking the email, I suddenly received a phone call on my phone. It didn't come up as a regular phone call, but was through facebook messenger. It was Pastor Aldo! I had no idea that phone calls could be made through that app! We chatted for just a couple of minutes, but it was soo refreshing to hear his voice and chat with him! I was tearing up by the end because I was just overcome with being able to connect with my "Peruvian family" through a voiced conversation and not just text. I was pretty sure nothing else in my day could top that. But God had other plans.......

So we finished our conversation and I headed over to the picnic area where I was going to be interpreting. My co-interpreter and I chatted until our client arrived. After the initial presentations/welcome, it was just eat and socialize time, so my co-interpreter and I sat at the same table as our client and just chilled as they all socialized. We began chatting again and I was telling her about Peru when our client happened to look over and join the conversation. I quickly updated her about why I was talking about Peru, and she quickly responded that she had gone to a city called Pucallpa in Peru back in 1998/99 with her church on a construction focused missions team. I responded rather increduously, "Pucallpa??? Where/with whom in Pucallpa were you working with?" She was struggling to remember the name of the place, but said it was a School, whereas I then responded asking if it was "Refuge of Hope?" She emphatically affirmed that yes, that was indeed the place and I probably looked as dumbfounded and surprised as someone hit by a 2X4.....I quickly regained my composure and responded excitededly that I had recently spent a month there and was planning on moving to live and work at Refuge of Hope as a full time missionary. She was then equally excited and we immediately monopolized the rest of the conversation talking about our shared knowledge and connection with ROH, the people there, our experiences in Pucallpa, our churches, etc. The odds that the 2 of us would meet through work and both have connections with a remote little school in a remote town in the middle of the monstrous Amazon jungle was just mind boggling and obviously a work of God. Again, I am convinced that there is no such thing as coincidence....and I belive Proverbs 16:33 proves that. :-) We both agreed that God had definitely orchestrated and allowed us to connect that day and that we were both interested to see what may come of this new connection. We exchanged information before we left and became facebook friends before the end of the day, but I spent the rest of the day in a God-euphoric daze of admiration and love for my God who likes to show-off sometimes just to bless us. :-)

#deafministry #missions #peru #provision