Road Jes Traveled

We headed out to la playa (the beach) on Thursday evening to evangelize and to invite young people to a party that we hosted the following Saturday. This was our 3 rd  attempt to do this. The first two times had been rained out by massive downpours. We walked up and down the shoreline offering free hugs and passing out invitations to local children and teenagers. One of the boys from the Church youth group carried around a stereo so we had background music wherever we walked. It was awesome! I went into the night a bit nervous – evangelism is something I’m not comfortable with. And in America, we’d probably be laughed at and shooed away. But here on the island of San Andres, the people we encountered were warm and welcoming and pretty excited to see us. The weather was perfect and the whole night was a pretty incredible experience. At one point we took a break and walked out onto a pier. The sun had already set at this point but the sky lit up with stars. After we said a prayer as a g

There’s a giant rock in Waimea Bay that people cliff jump off of. Many of the locals have grown up jumping off of it since they were young and you can often find a line of people of all ages and backgrounds waiting for their turn off the cliff. But not me. I’ve been to Waimea Bay countless times and twice I went with the intention to jump, but didn’t. And then I told myself that I would jump before I left for the race, but I didn’t. People often use the word  brave  to describe me. And in many ways, I do consider myself brave. Many big ways actually. But there are smaller things (that are big to me) that most people don’t know about me that make me feel the opposite of brave. Like the fact that at 29 years old, I don’t know how to ride a bike because I’m afraid I’ll fall. Or that I had to hold my breath to jump off of a ledge that was only 2 feet tall today. Or that my first time camping was at training camp for the race. Or that there’s that big rock in Waimea that I keep avoiding.

One of the things that the race is pushing me out of is the desire to control my plans. Time and time again God has shown me that His plans are far greater than mine. And here, week 1, in San Andres, Colombia, is no different. My team and I have been incredibly blessed by our ministry location this month. We’ve been sent to a small island in the Caribbean called San Andres. When I say small, I mean it. It’s about 8 miles long and 2 miles wide. We could literally walk the entire island in a day if we wanted to. The sea around us is unlike any I have seen. They call it “el mar de 7 colores” – the sea of 7 colors – which is so fitting. The culture is a perfect mix of latin and islander – vibrant, casual, warm, and slow-paced. With my Latina and Hawaiiana background, many things feel familiar to me and I have oddly felt very at home since our arrival. We live on the second floor of a church called Centro Familiar de Alabanza (Family Center of Praise). It’s a modest home in the center of