“Jucumeros Misioneros Ilegalmente en San Jose”

Today, we were pulled over by the police.

The day started out innocently enough- we went to the Salvation Army to serve breakfast to the homeless. We pulled up and my face broke into a smile as dozens of people, who remember us from yesterday, smiled and cheered to see us back again. A short woman steped out of line and rushed to Scott, hugging him hard around the stomach, as whistles and catcalls broke out all over. Scott said, “I’m doing the dishes today, have to stay away from these women”.

Inside I got the job of serving hot dogs

after Lito piled gallo pinto on the plates.

I passed the plates off to Kendra who added a Danish,

and then Alex and Reanna took care of milk, spoons and serving

while Anna and Chove washed dishes.

We decided to sing, and when one of the homeless men left singing “todopoderso”, we thought we should keep it up. Somehow though, our bilingual versions of Mighty to Save and Blessed be your Name were interspersed with much less inspirational songs-We are the Pirates who don’t do Anything, the barney song, Los Pollitos, and Pin Pon (those last 2 are Spanish children’s classics).

Half way through serving, Lito disappeared for a few minutes to repark the car, which for some reason wasn’t supposed to be on the street. When we left to go back to the base, Lito explained, “chicos, we have to take a back way out of San Jose and avoid the town center.” I’m not sure on all the details, but apparently to cut down on congestion, street traffic in down town San Jose is limited according to the day of the week by license plates ending in a certain number, and we somehow forgot that info before leaving home today.

So, we prayed we’d avoid police detection, and set off down back roads, only to run straight into a police roadblock. Lito took off his baseball cap, pulled out his passport, and showed it to the police, while explaining ever-so politely that we were a missions group just returning from feeding the homeless, we’d forgotten all about the license plate restriction, and we were doing our best to avoid the town center. Please, forgive us. And, the officer handed back his passport, and let us go! We cheered as we drove off- God might not have made us invisible, but he gave us grace in the eyes of that police officer and we made it home without another incident.

(The title of this post means “YWAM missionaries illegally in San Jose”. It was the joking headline one of the girls imagined for our little adventure today)