Costa Rica - Mari

I don’t know about you, but to me the idea of walking up to some stranger’s house in Costa Rica and asking them if I could talk to them for a minute was a bit of a crazy idea to me at first. And I’m not going to lie, I was a bit scared to try it. Not because I was worried about safety (safety in numbers and all that after all), but because if someone came up to my house and asked me if they could talk to me, I wouldn’t be interested. And if I weren’t a Christian, I’m not sure that I’d believe someone if they told me about Jesus dying for my sins.
The thing is though, that none of what we did would be possible without God. He prepared those situations for us, and I had to learn to trust Him for that. I also had to realize that I wasn’t in America, and that people are different in Costa Rica. The first day that I had to do evangelism on my own (without another North American) God gave me an extra boost of boldness that I hadn’t felt the day before, and it was incredible.

I want to tell you guys about the very first door that I knocked on. I was with Jerry (my team leader), a translator (Mercedes) and a national (Joanna). We didn’t have as many translators that day as we did team members so we paired up. Plus I was hesitant to go out by myself on the first day. And I have to tell you that as this lady came out of her house (and eventually invited us in), I was skeptical that anything we said to her would change anything. 
Jerry did an awesome job sharing his testimony and going through the eCube and next thing I know he’s praying with Mari to accept Christ. And being honest again, I was doubtful as we left that house. I almost wondered if maybe she just said all the right things because she was being nice. While I wanted to believe that her emotional response was real, I’m a skeptic, and I was still doubtful. Well, I should learn to trust God more and realize how simple the gospel really is, because her faith was real.
I ended up seeing Mari multiple times that week because she came to our cell meetings and we made a couple more visits to her house. She brought her grandson Byron to our very first cell meeting and he accepted Christ while he was there. We also got to go through the eCube with her other grandchildren during one of the visits to her house later in the week. You could visibly see the change in Mari. She stayed up til 2 AM that first night reading her bible. As it turns out, she was reading the same passage that Jerry had spoken on at church that morning (a service that Mari hadn’t been at).

This was taken inside of Mari's house. Mari is in the light blue in between Jerry and myself. Byron is on the far left (behind the mohawk).

She was the first door we’d knocked on, and she turned out to be a huge part of my week in Costa Rica. Her grandson Byron wasn’t at our last cell meeting, so I wasn’t able to get a picture with him, but he would greet me by name whenever he saw me. On the first day he asked one of the translators what my name was and he was the first kid to remember me by name when he saw me.
Mari’s husband didn’t want to talk to us, and Mari is praying for him. He actually left out the back door that first time that we came by. If you could lift him up in your prayers, that would be wonderful. His family is going to start changing and growing before his very eyes, and I’m hoping that he’ll see God in them.