4 minute read
Mission Report
Our Plan B Is God's Perfect
Dr. Brad Emde tests patients’ vision. The students finish the floor as storm clouds surround them.
not like God is going to drop a “It’smission trip on my desk!” Angela Emde, Greeneville Adventist Academy English teacher and mission trip coordinator, thought out loud. “There’s no way for another mission trip to pop up with just a few weeks left—in the middle of a pandemic!” The school’s mission trip to French Polynesia had been canceled when France closed its borders yet again, weeks before our departure. We were discouraged.
Yves Monnier from It Is Written had just called Angela with the bad news. “What’s Plan B?” she immediately asked. “Well,” he said, “there is a mission team going to Costa Rica a few weeks before your scheduled mission trip, and a follow-up team to finish building the church would be incredibly beneficial to the community.”
Thus, 38 high school students and staff went to Costa Rica to preach, finish the church, and provide free vision clinics, headed by Dr. Brad Emde, OD. There were five different vision clinics throughout the week, receiving an average of 105 patients each day. In total, we saw 579 patients and dispensed over 1,400 pairs of glasses.
Mission was coupled with medicine just as Jesus did, and we found it incredibly effective. We served during the day, and at night we invited our patients to our revival series. Upperclassmen wrote and presented a six-part series based on Steps to Christ, and the underclassmen gave health talks and Bible stories. We had internalized our messages to the point where we were excited to share what had transformed our own lives! One beloved Costa Rican friend from the meetings later told me, “I left the church when I was 15. But when your team presented the message, praise God, I came back!”
While some students worked at the vision clinic, the rest of us went to the church building site. Our goal was to pour the concrete floor by the week’s end. The walls went up despite a supply shortage, and everything was looking good—until we saw the forecast. The rainy season was to start Thursday and Friday, the days that we would pour and finish the floor.
On Thursday, we witnessed a distant thunderstorm. We prayed. As the vision team drove into town that afternoon,
God's Perfect Plan a
Community members listen to the students’ sermons.
they were getting soaked by a torrential downpour. However, as they neared the church work site, the rain suddenly ceased. It was completely dry where we were working! They passed by, and within a short distance, hit more rain again. The waters were parted, and dry land appeared for just us to work on.
Friday came, and it was time to do the floor. If we didn’t finish then, we wouldn’t finish at all. It didn’t take the Weather Channel to remind us that rain was inevitable. We began to pour the floors as the dark clouds rolled in. Halfway done, we prayed. We then worked for a short moment in the shade before realizing that we needed sunscreen! I looked up at the sky, and, while the storm was raining all around us, saw that we were working in a hole of sunshine. One student prayed aloud, “Lord, I don’t have time to stop pouring the floor and reapply sunscreen. Please move a cloud over the sun!” What did we see but a little wisp of cloud scoot across the clear sky. The blazing sun was shaded for our comfort. Not only does God care about giving us sun to finish the floor, but He also cares about giving us clouds to avoid sunburn! As soon as we closed the door of the van to leave the worksite, whoosh, all of heaven poured out. God let the rain come because we finished what we had come to do.
Psalm 127:1 summarizes our experience: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” We carved that reference into the fresh concrete floor as a lasting reminder.
On Sabbath, I preached the dedication of the new church in Las Juntas de Abangares. In the baptistry that Kiran Finley and I had built with our own hands, we had three baptisms that day!
My classmates and I learned from this mission experience that our Plan B was God’s perfect Plan A all along.
KATIE-JANE EMDE is a recent graduate of Greeneville Adventist Academy and a lover of all things travel and mission. She is the daughter of It Is Written Partners and attends Southern Adventist University.
