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God moment, Week 9


When I led small group Bible studies at UVa, I always encouraged the fellas to pray before they signed up for classes. I encouraged them to pray that God would open up their schedule just as He desired, and that He would guide their decision making as they chose their different classes.

I felt that God often answered those prayers of mine, but I learned of God’s provision in a whole new way during Week 9 of my stay here. Because three classes that I took during my fourth year at UVa—before I ever even thought of coming to Costa Rica—were clearly ordained by the Lord to aide my ministry down here. Which classes?

(1 and 2) Catholicism and Pentecostalism
(3) Accounting Information Systems


Catholicism and Pentecostalism

In the first week I’d been without a team since Week 1 in Costa Rica, I had the pleasure of attending classes at the Methodist Seminary where Ray (the missionary I’m interning for) is a professor. I was able to sit in on classes where Costa Rican pastors are trained to become scripturally based pastors who know the truth about both the Bible and Wesleyan/Methodist doctrine.

Some of you may already know this, but Costa Rica is a Catholic country on paper. The official state religion is still Catholicism, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who has zero ties to the Catholic church here. And, outside of Catholicism, the Pentecostal church has had quite the influence on the spiritual situation here. Ever since the Azusa Street Mission in 1906 and the leaders’ desire to spread the Gospel to the whole earth, the Pentecostal church has made its presence known in many countries, including Costa Rica. So you’ll also be hard-pressed to find a Protestant Costa Rican who has zero ties to the Pentecostal church.

Therefore, because of the dominance of Catholicism and Pentecostalism here in Costa Rica, the pastors in the Evangelical Methodist Church take many of their thoughts and practices from these two churches. Many of the questions the students/pastors asked in the seminary focused on either Catholic or Pentecostal practices. And, rather than being totally out of the loop when those questions surfaced—and having to ask Ray thousands and thousands of questions in order to slowly piece together the story of these two churches—I’ve already been introduced to all the topics the students struggle with. My classes on Catholicism and Pentecostalism provided me with a basis to be a knowledgeable student and member of the Methodist church here in Costa Rica.

What a blessing. I literally knew nothing about these churches before January of this year. And now, thanks to two classes that I signed up for before I knew I’d be in Costa Rica, my ability to minister here has been completely changed. I can listen to pastors, I can understand their struggles, and I can help them find direction in their pursuit of God’s will. Thanks God.


Accounting Information Systems

The other class, AIS, caught me completely off guard. In this class, we learned how to work Great Plains, an accounting software for small businesses. My professor even questioned me in class one day about the usefulness that this software would have for a future pastor. I told him he might be surprised.

Anyways, in that same week that I was attending seminary classes, Ray decided that he wanted me to finally put my accounting and finance “skills” to use, by helping him organize his finances for his ministry down here. So, at the advice of one of the American mission team members who came down here, we bought QuickBooks, an accounting software. Ray told me that I should learn it and then teach it to him when I had figured it out. I figured it wouldn’t be too hard (I was quite mistaken).

So we ordered this program and I opened it up to start playing with it. And, what do you know? It’s about 75% the same program that I learned in Accounting Information Systems. The same class where the professor publicly questioned its usefulness in my life, taught me how to organize Ray’s finances down here in a way that will completely revolutionize his money management for his ministry. However, if any of you are QuickBooks professionals, I could still use your help . . .

Regardless, thank you, Lord. Thank you for answering my prayers, months and months after I prayed them.

We can never know when He’ll answer . . .