Listening to: “Steal My Show” by TobyMac
We arrived in Panama early on Saturday, May 31st. I was on day three of a three-day no food/no water fast, and I was hurtin’. My mouth was so dry, and since arriving at the airport in Quito, all I could think about was having a great big juicy cheeseburger with a cold, thick milkshake (the reason for which is because there’s a Red Robin at the airport in Quito).
Despite the burger temptation, and the fact that my third day fell on a travel day (which made things a bit tougher), I made it through. The fast gave me additional clarity on some issues, I had some really powerful prayer time, and right at the end I heard God say He was pleased with me. 🙂 I love Him so much. <3
So my big fast was over by 8:30 a.m. After getting our luggage, going through Border Control, and saying goodbye to our friends on the other teams, we headed outside to find transport. A man approached, asking if we needed a van. He was flirtatious—overly so, to the point of being annoying—but he was wearing an official-looking polo shirt with logo, and there were other guys in the vicinity wearing the same shirt. So we accepted his assistance.
Error #1: No matter how exhausted you are or how heavy your bags are, never accept help from someone who winks and kisses the air when he says he’s there to “help the beautiful Americanas.”
Turns out the guy was just a middleman who found a shuttle for us—but there were shuttles all over the parking lot, so there wasn’t much effort required on his part. He also loaded our bags (something else we could have done ourselves), and after we were in the van, he insisted he was due a tip.
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but the truth of the matter is that we are on a very strict budget for travel (probably our biggest expense). That, in addition to the fact that he didn’t do anything we couldn’t have done ourselves had he not cornered us before we reached the transport parking lot, made us somewhat reluctant to cooperate. But ultimately we did, and Brie handed him five dollars. He scoffed at it, saying he had to split it with his “friends” (the other men we’d seen who were wearing the same polo shirt as our friend).
Brie politely declined to acquiesce. His expression turned sour as our driver pulled away. The door closed, and we drove away into the sunset. Well, not sunset. It wasn’t even midday yet. Speaking of which, it wasn’t quite noon by that point, but it was nearly 90F.
Okay, okay. So, I can deal with temperatures in the nineties. Heck, even hundreds. But let me tell you: Panama is HOT. That really means something coming from me. I’m from South Texas, and I know hot. My teammate Lesa knows hot, too, being that she’s from Arizona. This heat, though—this heat, which was saturated in humidity, was so thick it about flattened us when we walked out of the airport. I don’t know how much water I drank, but I didn’t even have to go to the bathroom because I was instantly sweating out anything I put in my body.
I’m telling you, this is a heat-n-humidity unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, even in East Texas (e.g. Houston). And with our giant packs, daypacks, and other miscellaneous items (me with my guitar), we were STRUGGLING. The van had AC, praise God, so that was a huge blessing. Our driver was also very nice and explained where we could buy SIM cards for Karen and Megan’s phones. That was a high priority for our leaders, because they needed to get in contact with our host in San Felix as well as be able to contact the other team/squad leaders if something happened en route (San Felix is 7 hours from Panama City by bus).
“The mall,” our driver said, in reference to buying a SIM card. And, as it turns out, there was a mall right next to the bus station.
WARNING: The next part of this story would normally be very long, so I’m going to do a condensed, ultra-fast version instead. Ready?
Arrival at bus station/mall: bags soooo heavvvvvy, and it’s SOOOOO HOOOOOT…drag everything/everyone inside, set up camp in front of gift shop, drop bags, Karen and Megan go to find SIM card, rest of us plop down on floor…security guard comes by, says we can’t sit on floor; opt to sit on bags instead…security guard leaves, Lesa and I go to find restroom, pay one dollar to use restroom, sweat bullets inside, humidity unbearable inside cramped stall, there is soap and water to wash hands after (I like Panama already)…return to bags and teammates, Karen and Megan still not back from SIM card, so we wait…and wait…and wait…Lesa and I chat, Jaide and Brie conked out (on top of bags), people keep staring, another security guard comes by, tells us to move somewhere else, there are no Spanish speakers available (I’m it!), so I explain (in broken Spanish) that we have to wait there…security guard says okay, let’s us stay there on the condition that we’re not there all day, and we keep waiting…waiting until Megan and Karen return, which they finally do…Karen can’t reach our ministry host (phone numbers no good), we need internet…
“There’s a Crepes & Waffles in the mall,” she says. “We’re going there to use the wifi.” Everyone grabs bags, starts walking…I (stubbornly) keep mine in my airporter, thinking C&W is close. It’s not.
Error #2: When people keep saying you’re going to regret carrying around such a heavy bag and that maybe you should consider leaving behind some of the items you don’t really need (or at the very least that you should stop accumulating things…like scarves), LISTEN TO THEM.
Crepes & Waffles is on the other side of the mall (one of the biggest malls I’ve ever been in). Daypack on my back, airporter strap gripped tightly in my right hand, I drag my big backpack all the way there. The straps of my soft guitar case won’t stay on my shoulder, and the guitar ends up dragging the ground at some point, too. I’m hot, sticky, and each of my breaths comes with a gulp of steaming thick humidity along with a whole lot of effort.
Eventually we see C&W: it’s on the second floor of the mall with no escalator or lift in sight. As soon as we begin to approach a staircase, Lesa freezes mid-step and shakes her head. “No way. Nope,” she says, jaw sagging just enough to match her wide eyes. She’s not dragging her backpack up that flight of stairs, and neither am I. She, Kayla, and I give a quick scan of the immediate area—there, farther down that wing of the mall, was an escalator.
Everyone else is already heading up the stairs as the three of us recommence dragging. The sound of heavy backpacks sliding across the floor is rather distinct, and we catch several stares as we make our way to the escalator. We are the only people in this predicament, apparently. No other backpack-dragging foreigners in sight.
Fast-forward one hour: Lunch has been eaten, gallons of water have been gotten, host has been emailed, and we are officially homeless in Panama City. We know where we’re supposed to go (San Felix, which is en route to the City of David), but our host has been waiting for us to call so that he knows when to pick us up. It’s a seven-hour bus ride, San Felix is a tiny town (not even on some maps), we don’t know if we’ll have internet access once we arrive, the numbers (which Karen tried multiple times) never did work, and the host still hadn’t emailed us back by the time we finished lunch.
Thus, Megan and Karen pulled rank and made an executive decision: get a hostel for the night in Panama City and rest. That sounded pretty brilliant to me, so we gathered our bags and dragged them out of the mall.
Travel and transport are never simple matters on the World Race. Not only are you traveling with several people (we have forty-six on our squad; seven on our team; and one of the squad leaders Megan Cherry is with us this month, so that makes eight for Team Abundant Joy). There’s also all our gear, which takes up as much space as people—to put it into perspective, we had to take three cabs to the hostel in Panama City, when normally we could have done it with just two.
The place Karen found for us was called Luna’s Castle. It was a hostel located in a part of the city known as Old Town, a nice, safe, and very touristy part of Panama City—in fact, we were told the president (like, of the nation) lived just a couple blocks away.
The hostel was vintage, with dark wood staircases, contemporary paintings, and a spectacular view. From our room, we could see the skyscrapers of downtown in the distance, and within a stone’s throw was a quiet section of canal that stretched into open waters. The narrow streets outside our window were filled with Neo-Classical-style buildings that felt more French than Latino, and the view (we were near a quiet stretch of the canal) along with all the tourists roaming about made me feel like I was on a fun holiday rather than a quick stopover on the World Race.
The room itself was quite nice, though not air-conditioned. There were high-powered ceiling fans, at least, and although the heat was pretty miserable, the view and location more than made up for it.
The hostel maintained the “wood” theme with bulky wooden bunk beds built straight into the wall—ten total in our room. Each bed had a mini-curtain across the front, adding a layer of privacy for persons staying in the room, which, by the way, was mixed-gender (more on that in a minute).
The afternoon was growing later, and a few of the girls wanted to go explore and grab lunch. I badly wanted to check out a church, the steeple of which could be seen from our window. But I was way too exhausted and opted to stay behind.
Error #2: When in Panama City, don’t stay behind. Go. Go! No matter how tired you are, just go. Take my word for it.
There had been some sort of mix up with my bed assignment—when I arrived in the room, the bed number I was given still had clothes on it from the previous guest. It also hadn’t been cleaned. After reporting it to the front desk, I plopped down on the floor and started organizing my stuff. My apple cider vinegar had spilled in my backpack during the flight, so some of my clothes were wet and smelled—well, like vinegar. In addition to that, I had decided I needed to lighten my pack (by a lot), so I began sifting through the items I would and wouldn’t need.
NEEDING-N-KEEPING: long skirt for ministry; shirts; flippy-flops; workout clothes; running shoes; boots (in case we end up in the rainforest at some point); current journals…and that’s about it. It’s amazing how little you really need, especially when you’re carrying all those “needs” on your back.
DON’T NEED: Old, filled up journals; cheap-but-super-cute scarves (I miiiiight maaaybe have a problem that may or may not require prayer and a little more self-control :)); heavy winter clothes; thermal gloves/pants/socks; jeggings (which feel YUCKY when worn in hot, humid climates); pencil skirt (which I can’t wear without leggings or jeggings anyway)…the pack felt a lot lighter by the time I finished this list, let me tell you.
As I was sorting my stuff, I stretched out on the floor—just for a moment—to try and cool down. Before I knew it, I was conked out…on the floor…of a hostel…with the door wide open…and all my clothes sprawled around me.
The cleaning lady must have woken me up once she had finished, because I remember seeing her back as she was leaving. As soon as I had crawled up on the bed, I was immediately out again. I didn’t have any concept of time, but at some point I sensed a presence standing beside me. Opening my eyes, I saw a man staring at the bed adjacent to mine. He had whitish-blonde hair, and his accent sounded German. “Do you know who’s belongings these are?” He pointed. “This is my bed, according to the woman at the desk downstairs.”
“Huh? Oh, uhhh…one sec.” I was disoriented, eyes crossing and unable to focus in my haze, but instinct told me it was possible one of the girls had put her stuff on an empty bed and then forgotten to move it.
That wasn’t exactly true, as it turns out. The belongings—er, belonged—to some random girl who had come to the wrong room. Once she gathered her stuff and moved to the correct room, the guy—who was indeed German
—got settled, and I passed out again. Seems like that was sometime in the late afternoon, maybe around 5:00 or 5:30.
It was nighttime when I awoke next. German Guy was nowhere to be found, but I saw my teammates had returned from their excursion and were sleeping soundly in their respective bunks. Katie was the only one awake, though I didn’t immediately see her. My attention was drawn to a lovely glow outside our room.
“Ooo, pretty.” I’m not a hundred percent sure those were my exact words, but I do remember cooing and, at one point, gasping. The world outside our hostel was alight with golden hues I haven’t seen since Paris. The canal was lit up, too, each section burning in solid colors that changed every five seconds. The cafes and restaurants of Old Town had come to life sometime while I’d been asleep; during the day, they had been bustling with lunch- and beach-goers, but now—now, after nightfall, they were dressed up and glammed out with swanky charm, pumping Top 50 dance music that echoed through the streets before falling upon the silent waters of the canal.
I had to live it…breathe it, smell it, taste it, and otherwise be completely immersed in it. I ached to feel the lights on my skin, not just see them from afar. I absolutely needed to get lost in it all, to be so close to the restaurants my nose could guess the menus, to be so deep in the city I would be transformed into a local for a moment in time.
Dinner, I thought, gathering everything I needed for a shower. I was a walking puddle of sweat, the air so hot and thick I could have sliced it like a freshly baked pie. I can go grab a bite to eat—one of the girls’ll be willing to go with me, and maybe we can walk around for a bit after. My mind reeled with the idea. My body thrilled. I hadn’t been that excited about being in a new place since the last time I was in Eastern Europe.
Brie, Katie, and Jaide were all up for grabbing a bite to eat, but they wanted to leave right away, so I didn’t have time for a shower after all. And they didn’t fancy walking around after dinner—just food and then they wanted to go straight back to the hostel. No matter. I was too excited about the haves to care about the have nots, so I gladly let the girls set the pace and decide the specifics.
Brie suggested eating at the same restaurant where she’d had lunch. The place—I believe it’s called Reposé—had reasonable prices and a broad menu: burgers, pastas, seafood (including ceviche), and salads. I ended up going with a big, juicy cheeseburger and fries (praise Jesus for healing and deliverance!), and as we all waited for our food, we listened to a guitar duet play a set outside the restaurant.
I people-watched a lot of the time, carefully observing the guests seated on the patio. Some of those people were clearly tourists dressed in beachy daytime attire—think cargo shorts and bright, button down Hawaiian-style shirts with sunburns to match; these folks had likely been walking around all day and were wrapping up their day with a late dinner. Then there were the people dressed for a night on the town, some of whom were probably locals. I could tell because their clothes were much more stylish and far less functional than the tourists’. They also seemed much more acclimated to the heat and to their surroundings.
I always enjoy picking out the locals from the tourists, a past time that’s become something of a game whenever I’m overseas. Locals almost always have this look of…knowing. They know where to eat, they know what to order, they know how it’s going to taste—there’s a sense of nonchalance, of non-awe, in their eyes; whereas folks like the Hawaiian-shirt-man and his family are totally enthralled by the simple aspects of their surroundings, like the guitar duet, the quaint but lively row of restaurants, the Parisian-esque street….
Okay, okay. So as we were eating dinner at Reposé, I finally figured out the perfect comparison for Panama City’s Old Town: New Orleans meets Dominican Republic with a hint of old school Cuban style and a modern American flare.
Boom. 🙂
Dinner was delightful and far too short for such a lovely evening. On our way back to the hostel, I noticed a couple of the restaurants were showing sports on the television—mostly football (soccer), but at one point I saw basketball. “Hey! Can y’all hang tight just two seconds? Gimme just two seconds.”
The girls waited as I ducked inside the restaurant we’d been walking past. I squinted, trying to figure out which teams were playing on the TV. When I saw the black and silver uniforms, I smiled. The San Antonio Spurs were playing. It was the Western Conference Finals, and they were playing Oklahoma with only eight minutes left on the clock.
“Cherry!” I passed her in the hallway of the hostel. “Did you get to listen to your sermon?”
“I did. It was really good.” Megan Cherry, our squad leader, hadn’t joined us for dinner because she’d wanted to finish listening to a sermon she had downloaded.
“So, hey. The Spurs are playing right now, and there’s probably only like five minutes left now. Would you wanna come with me to catch the end of the game?”
Megan considered the proposal. “Where’s it playing?”
“They’ve had it on at a few of the restaurants in the area. I’m pretty sure it’s on next door, too.”
“Hmm. I am hungry….” She pondered the idea a moment more. I tried to seem patient, though in my head I was calculating how many game-time-minutes had ticked by since I’d come out of that one restaurant. The clock could have been down to three or four minutes by that point, but I know how long it can take to finish big games like that. Basketball isn’t like football. In football, there’s no stoppage time. The clock runs up, starting from zero minutes and going to ninety, and it doesn’t stop for anything except halftime. Substitutes, injuries, penalties—the clock just keeps going. In basketball, though, the clock stops for everything, and I knew (if we HURRIED) we could catch a nice bit of game there at the end.
Thankfully, Megan decided to go. Kayla did, too, and once they had their purses, we jetted to the restaurant next door. The game was on upstairs, and we were the only ones interested in watching it (woo!), so we had the whole room to ourselves. I was right about the time. We got there with about four minutes left, and it was the longest foiur minutes I’ve ever seen. Megan and Kayla had time to peruse the menu, place their orders, and even eat before the match was over. Granted, the game did go into overtime. But still.
After the game (Spurs won :)), we called it a night and headed back to the hostel. It was a fulfilling and refreshing night, much-needed in both body and spirit. Some people probably don’t realize this, but I didn’t pick the Spanish route when I signed up for the World Race. God did. I really didn’t have an interest in this part of the world, and I knew very little about the countries on this route before actually visiting them. And although they’ve been nice, each one special in its own way…and although my experiences have been wonderful, the ministries have been FANTASTIC, and I’ve experienced a tremendous amount of growth in a very short period of time…I must tell you the truth:
I haven’t been enraptured in a long, long time. The couple of trips I took to Europe back in 2011 and 2012 were absolutely, mindblowingly spectacular. I adore Paris, I miss Romania, and I love (with a capital JA VOLIM) Croatia. So to see all these countries in South American and the Caribbean and not have my world totally rocked (or, not by the locations themselves, that is) has been somewhat unusual. I get pumped going to new places, and there’s always something to admire in the landscape, the culture, and the people. But nothing has blown my mind on the Race….
Until I arrived in Panama.
It’s difficult to explain the wide spectrum of emotions tumbling around inside me. Panama City, with its funky architecture and contemporary-meets-classic atmosphere, totally captivated my imagination. And here, where we’re stationed in little ‘ole hokey San Felix—a blip (barely) on the map—a place where we can’t even buy decent meat and vegetables (we have to take a bus an hour to a small city called David), I literally feel right at home. We’re staying in a tiny house with no furniture, no air conditioning, and barely the makings of a kitchen, and yet I feel so at home, and so very, very content. I catch myself daydreaming of buying a little house here, one with a wraparound porch, a chicken coupe, and maybe a dog or two in the yard with a cat in the house…I could do ministry on the mountain, teaching the indigenous people and helping with kids ministry. I could lead worship—I already know three songs in Spanish and could continue learning more.
Or, if God wants me to stay in the States (which He may call me to do, and which would be equally as wonderful), I could see myself returning to San Felix for short-term missions trips, maybe even leading those trips. I could still buy the house (the one with the wraparound porch), and then I would have a place to house mission groups.
The possibilities are endless, and there’s no way I’ll be able to touch on all potential scenarios. But I will say this: I feel alive for the first time in a really, really long time. I’ve been immersed in ministry, and I’ve been putting my heart into it since the beginning. But for the last five months, I have come and go from these places and have yet to cry when I’ve left.
I am going to cry when I leave Panama. I can already tell. My world has been rocked.
When all the surrounding kingdoms heard that the Lord Himself had fought against the enemies of Israel, the fear of God came over them. So Jehoshaphat’s kingdom was at peace, for his God had given him rest on every side. 2 Chronicles 20:29
