Can I Tag Along?

My nephew David made the ideal, last-minute case for our family picture the night before we moved to Costa Rica two and a half years ago. His deft use of duct tape and corrugated plastic perfectly protected the portrait we hand-carried on the Southwest Airlines Boeing 737.

Now that we’re settling in with no plans to continue moving for the foreseeable future, we’re thoroughly unpacking and throwing things like this trusty carrier away. (Sorry, David)

As it sits waiting to be picked up for the ride to the dump, I noticed a message on the name tag. “Can I tag along?” the little pun from Southwest made me smile, remembering the tiny catalyst that started this whole call to Costa Rica.

I was on the phone with a pastor friend named Keith Blank. He was heading to teach for a week in Costa Rica at the second-ever Vida220 discipleship training school. I questioned, “Can I tag along?” since I was always looking for opportunities to visit the country where I spent my first twelve years.

We hung up with zero intentions of me going on this trip. Until a week later, when Keith called back and said, “I know you were kidding, but the person I was bringing with me can no longer go. Do you want to come?”

Did I ever?!?

A prophetic word I had been given eight years earlier woke up in me on that trip. I knew we had to live in Costa Rica.

I waited another eight years to board that Southwest flight 112 when my family and I moved there.

As I consider where I am, still at the very beginning of our time in Costa Rica, I need the courage of the LORD and His strength. We passed through three months of language school, two years of a post-pandemic-restriction-ravaged world, an intense four-month complete house renovation, and now the waiting-in-the-unknown of the future ministry on this farm. In other words, I’m not feeling at the top of my game.

But I said, “Can I tag along?”

And I want you and your team to consider praying about taking a missional retreat trip to Costa Rica. Not because I feel like we’re ready to host you, but because I think the LORD wants me to plant that seed in you.

So I don’t know if you are waiting in the 16+ years for the LORD’s word to come through or if it happened long ago and you’re struggling to persevere. But when the LORD invites us into His work, and we respond with a feeble, “Can I tag along?” He will provide what we need!

Perhaps you, like me, need to hear the words again of the One who has invited us in the first place.

“You possess FORMIDABLE strength in Your arm. Your ACTIVITY is VIGOROUS, And Your RESOURCES are HUGE; they are IMMENSE…And happy are people who know the joyful sound, who have learned to acclaim You. They go about radiant with Your presence proceeding under the smile of Your face.”

(from Psalm 89, read by Kent Henry in his Shield of Faith: Psalm Series)

LORD, Can I tag along?

-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)

Can I Tag Along? (Nº 321)