Safe.

The afternoon began much hotter than the morning when we left base, so I was sweating in the striped pants and black tank top that I was wearing. Rachel, Alex, and I had just finished a half logistics day planning our future debrief at a cafe down one of the side streets of Puerto Viejo. It was around 2pm, so we started walking to the basketball court where the beach meets the streets and didn’t see anyone yet, so we stood people watching as the sun hit the post card looking scene that we somehow get to call home. 

As I was probably making some side comment about an inside joke we made that day, I hear, “Hey, what’s up, we just got here. What is there to do around?”

I turned around and two guys about our age were standing behind us with hiking bags and hands full of traveling gear trying to get our attention. I was surprised by the really good english that I heard, so I asked them where they are from and what they are doing here. We learned one of them is from California and the other from England and they both met at a surf camp one year and now they are just traveling parts of the world together. They had been in Costa Rica for a while, but just a few moments before had gotten off the bus here in Puerto Viejo. We continue talking and telling them about how we ended up here, how we live on a YWAM base, and how we are missionaries. Neither of them had heard of the World Race before, so it was a cool way to share what God is doing in our lives right now.

Towards the end of this seemingly random encounter, one of the guys looked at my key necklace and said, “I am interested in what your necklace means.” A piece of jewellery that I wear everyday is a key necklace that says, “safe.” If you didn’t know, the World Race partners with another ministry called The Giving Keys. The Giving Keys is a company that provides homeless people with jobs by making and selling key necklaces with words engraved on them. When you buy one, you can ask for a prophetic key, which just means that someone prays about what word to put on it. The whole point of the necklaces is to wear them and at some point on your race if you meet someone with a story that relates to the word on your key, you can give it to them as a reminder of the Lord. Often the word can relate to your own life as well, like mine has. There are many past racers with really wild stories about the encounters from the people they gave their keys too.  

I explained all that to them, and then to my surprise, the one who asked me about it brought up a story in his own life. He told us that a few weeks earlier in some other part of Costa Rica, he bought a really cheap motorcycle. It ended up falling apart really fast, but he kept riding it despite the fact that the breaks didn’t work, the gas was leaking, and every time he pressed the accelerator it sparked. Somehow though, even in his really dangerous and stupid decision to continue to ride it, he was kept safe. He eventually sold it for really cheap and invested in a new motorcycle that cost a lot more, of course in the hope that it would last him longer. To his surprise it broke down literally the day after he got it to the extent that he had to go to a shop to get it fixed. Right after it was fixed, he ended up getting pulled over, and since he had no Costa Rican drivers’s licence, and much less any papers for the bike, the police took it away. 

But here’s the crazy part. The same day he got this bike taken from him, he randomly met an older women who told him that it was her sons birthday. He asked how old her son was and she replied that he actually died a couple years earlier from crashing on a motorcycle. 

When he finished telling his story, he referenced the word “safe” on my key again and said, “There was no way that it was a coincidence that the same day I got my motorcycle taken from me was the same day that I met a lady who’s son died in a motorcycle accident. And it was his birthday.” And I wish I remembered the word he used to describe what had happened in this situation, but the point he was trying to make was that he believed it was some sort of a divine encounter. 

In all of our conversations that day, we never asked directly, but it was obvious that neither of these men know God or are pursuing God. Yet here I am, listening to this guy tell me that there’s a reason outside of coincidence that he was alive and able to stand in Puerto Viejo and have conversation with us that day. 

How radical that we can serve a God who loves us so extravagantly that His mercies can be seen plainly in even the unfortunate events of broken down motorcycles. I believe that the Lord is so evidently chasing after this guy’s heart, he just doesn’t have the eyes to see it yet. And now that I know a small piece of his story, I can be praying for more of God in his life. I pray that in his travels, in his searching for something, and in all the places his feet take him, God continues to reveal His own heart, grace, mercy, and straight out love for this man.   

I did not end up giving my necklace away to this guy, but for all I know, the reason that the Lord so intentionally gave me the word “safe” could be to bring up this very story in conversation. Wow. I cannot begin comprehend the mysteries of a God who choses to communicate hope through those of His beloved children who don’t even recognise his Holy Name yet.