Luis Palau Festival

So the time finally came for the Luis Palau Festival. We had no idea what was in store. Corey and Alex had been working on their skit and on Friday, sovaldi sale March 10th, health it was finally the big night. The whole festival was held at Parque de la Paz. There was a small field where a bunch of inflatables were put up for the kids to play. This is where the stage was for their skit. Alex was so nervous! When we got to the park he wouldn’t speak. People were talking to him and he had this incredibly serious look on his face. There was quite a crowd, sales but at this point they were kind of wandering around doing the games and checking everything out. When we arrived they told us they had changed our time and we were supposed to go immediately. Fortunately they changed things up again and we had an hour to get everyone in gear (we thought we had arrived two hours early!) I took Alex and Maggie to a moonwalk and Alex just stood against the wall while Maggie jumped all around him trying to get him to smile. I was really worried that he was going to bail out of the skit.

They started sounding off that the “mini-show” would start in a few minutes and we all made our way to the stage. There Alex sat with such a solemn look. We were doing all we could to get him to relax. One of the guys in the first part of our mini-show starting dancing around to the music that was playing. A crowd started to draw near and within a few minutes he and a few other guys started having silly dance offs. It was hilarious. I was standing in the crowd praying for the whole crew but especially for Alex and slowly during this whole impromptu dance off he began to smile. The skit went off without a hitch. It was wonderful and very impacting. I was so proud of everyone!

They said at the end of the children’s festival over 4000 kids had signed cards that they accepted Jesus into their hearts. Alex was in awe. He told me later that he was really nervous when he saw all the people, but he knew he had to do the skit so that people could learn about Jesus. I don’t know if I wrote this before, but they changed the skit so that Alex was the son going to heaven while another son took Alex’s previous role. The directors felt that Alex was too little to be the one to go to hell with the father. (This could open a whole can of worms of debate on this subject.) Anyway, when he hit the part where he ran into “Jesus’s” arms I nearly cried. It was precious and his expressions were incredible! One of the large local churches has asked the team to come in this Sunday and present the program for their children’s church.

After the children’s festival shut down was when the main event started. It was huge! Here is an excerpt from a report I read…

Luis Palau Festival Draws Hundreds of Thousands in Costa Rica
A year-long effort of more than 800 churches drew a crowd of more than 401,000 people to the Costa Rica Festival with Luis Palau this past week. For seven days, the Palau ministry spread the good news to the country’s top leadership, including President Abel Pacheco Rodriguez and incoming President Oscar Arias Sanchez, church heads, believers and nonbelievers, and even historic crowds that had heard Palau more than 30 years ago. The weeklong outreach culminated with a weekend festival at the city’s famed Parque de la Paz in San Jose where more than 17,400 individuals committed themselves to Jesus Christ.
~The Christian Post

We were amazed by the Luis Palau Festival. I’ve had trouble posting pictures, but here are links to the official website that currently has a lot of info and pictures from the festival: http://www.palau.org/ and http://www.palau.org/lpea/resources/news.php?rowid=275

God is doing amazing things in Costa Rica. Continue to pray for this country as they settle down after an intense presidential election. Lots of seeds have been planted and now they need to be nurtured and, in God’s timing, harvested.

~Tona