Remember how I just posted about a story that happened to me in Nicaragua? Well, I still have around 3-5 stories to share with you about what happened in Costa Rica! I was focusing on video ministry most of the month, so I was pretty busy working on videos and didn’t have time to blog or vlog! I got LOTS of footage for my personal vlogs, so get ready for some good ones coming soon! With that being said, here is a summary wrap up of what I did for ministry during Month 1 in Costa Rica
This past month, October 5th through November 4th, I served at a ministry called Transforma, which is located in San Jose, Costa Rica in Sabanilla.
WHERE DID I SERVE?
Transforma’s motto is “love, empower, impact,” and they empower women to learn skills to be able to start their own businesses to provide for their families. They teach Kingdom values, and they focus on skill development programs, community transformation, and social responsibility.
Instead of writing about the ministry and all of the great work they do, I created a fundraising video for them (both in English and Spanish), so please take time to watch this video:
Transforma holds workshops for skill discovery and development such as sewing, hair styling, makeup, manicure/pedicure, jewelry, and cooking, and English classes among others.
This is a community with high rates of poverty, unemployment, low education, violence, insecurity, lack of decent housing, family disintegration, teenage motherhood, and many other challenges. In 2012 Sinai (the neighborhood we were serving in) was declared by the government as the community with the highest amount of underage, pregnant girls in the country.
WHAT DID MY TEAM DO?
My team and I focused on administrative tasks all month, as well as intercession and prayer. Administrative tasks looked like organization, creating newsletters, inputting data, writing down women’s stories, etc.
As far as administrative tasks go, we created lots of video projects, organized and prepared sewing club materials, organized documents on Excel, wrote down women’s testimonies, prepared Newsletters, scheduled Facebook posts, helped out with childcare, made coffee for the women, researched words for a values campaign, cleaned out closets, etc.
Here’s what my daily schedule looked like:
5:30am wake up + get ready for the day
5:45am – 6:15am sweep, mop, and clean rooms (chores)
6:15am – 6:30am make breakfast… usually mosh (oatmeal)
6:30am – 7:30am spend sweet time with the Lord (devotionals, His Word, etc.)
7:30am – 8am greeted women walking into Transforma
8am – 9am Vanessa (our host) taught the women kingdom values and/or we worshipped and prayed over the volunteers and Transforma leadership staff
9am – 10:30am The women would be in their clubs (beauty, massage therapy, sewing, entrepreneur, etc.) and we would be working on administrative projects, preparing coffee, working on videos
10:30am – 11am break (spent time with the women)
11am – 12pm lunch! (usually sandwiches, rice and beans, or fruit)
12pm – 2pm women were in their clubs and we would work on our administrative tasks
2pm – 6pm we would work on our administrative projects, spend quality time with each other, or take time to gain energy back
5pm – 6pm cook dinner (we loved making Taco Soup!)
6pm – 7pm team dinner (we gathered around a table at the end of the day… so much laughter and funny stories were shared during this time!)
7pm – 9pm team time (recap of the day, hearing where people were at, feedback, sharing testimonies, going over the schedule, Bible studies, playing cards… it looked different each night)
9:15pm – 9:30pm we went to sleep super early each night! PRAISES for this because I was wiped each night!!
We also helped out at a kid’s program on Thursday nights (through Montessori). We did prayer walks around Sinai (the community) and we did prayer and intercession worship meetings with the women.
We also had an opportunity to serve at Face of Justice (an organization that works with Transforma) on a Tuesday night where we went out into the streets to serve coffee and cookies to prostitutes and people involved in human trafficking and sexual exploitation. I’ll be blogging on this later!
WHAT DID I DO?
Alongside all of that, I was commissioned to do video ministry all month. I made 5 videos for the ministry (fundraising videos [in English AND Spanish], a welcome volunteers video, a welcome Canada team video, and a video that was sent to the Costa Rica government to help change the law!
Here are some of the links to the videos I made for Transforma: (watch the ones with *)
*Fundraising Video: Transforma Costa Rica (English): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqvPGC5GZVc
Fundraising Video (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9amizq-GcPc
*TRANSFORMA: Appeal to Change Government Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0kcJUxZFYA
Transforma Welcomes Volunteers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuLlbJl6yYc
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT GOD WOULD USE MY AMATURE VIDEOGRAPHY SKILLS TO HELP CHANGE A LAW IN COSTA RICA DURING MY FIRST MONTH OF MINISTRY?
Transforma was in the process of petitioning to change a law to make it easier for people in their community to start their own businesses. Typically, if people want to start their own businesses in Costa Rica, they have to pay a heavy startup fee and tax fees, and there are a bunch of stipulations (e.g. health code house visitations… but they live in poverty so they don’t pass health code tests) that make it hard for them to start their own businesses to be able to provide for their families for survival. SO all that to say, they showed the government the video and they took a vote to postpone the final vote till the following week. We received news a few weeks ago that the law passed! Who would have thought God would use my armature video skills to help change a law in my first month of ministry?! AND the Vice President reposted the video we made on her Facebook page! Now, a lot of communities all around Costa Rica are showing the video to their local governments to change the laws for their districts! Because the law passed, people have a “social patent” to start their businesses and not pay a fee for 6 months, have accountability with a non-profit organization for stability, and they don’t have to pass any health codes. SO COOL. God is so good!
Overall, this month was really fun! I loved the women we worked with, and I got really close with Karen (she’s full-time staff at Transforma). I feel like this month was all about building a foundation for my race. I was expecting to be stretched more, but this month was really comfortable for me. I spent most of the hours of my days filming and editing video ministry projects, I had a really comfortable living situation (beds, hot showers, and wifi), and my squad leader was with our team all month!
I’m really looking forward to this month in Nicaragua. God is in the midst of showing me a lot, and I’m excited to be stretched, learn, and grow!
Thanks for reading! I hope you were encouraged by it! If you liked it, be sure to comment in the comments below.
I have $3,041 left to fundraise!!!
Please consider partnering with me to donate $25 (or whatever amount you feel led to donate) today.
Click this link to donate: https://www.adventures.org/give/donate.asp?giveto=worldrace&desc=Kelsey%20Nerland&appeal_id=NERLANDKELSEY
Peace and grace,
Kels
