The Worker
After we had all finished carrying the palm leaves to the top of the hill, we all split jobs around the sanctuary. Some people were splitting palms in half, some people were up on the scaffolding nailing down the halves, and some were carrying the halves from being split to the people on the scaffolding. I was on the scaffolding, and I was pretty good at it. Instead of asking to switch jobs around, people left me to work up there because I was so fluid. I worked closely with one of the Costa Ricans up there, named Jose. Jose struggled with various temptations when he was younger. After coming to the Lord, he decided to help our hosts with their plan to build a rehabilitation center.
Keep in mind that the only Spanish words I know are: hola, adios, gracias, por favor, and lo siento (which means sorry, I probably have to say this one the most.) So how I got all of this information is weird, but not as difficult as I would have thought. I was able to read facial expression, body language, as well as hand gestures pretty well. Plus a few of our teammates speak Spanish, so….
Normally we have our ministry host up in The Sanctuary working with us, plus other random natives that volunteer for them. But one day, about three to four days in to working on the roof, Jose was the only Costa Rican with us. And about two hours into working, I look over at him, because I can tell that he’s hesitant about something. He looks back at me, takes off his tool belt, walks over to me, and he hands me his belt. He raises his hand, annunciates something in Spanish very clearly so that I can hear it, but have no idea what he’s saying, and before I can ask what he’s talking about, he climbs down the scaffolding and walks off in to the jungle. I had absolutely no idea what to do. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to keep working, or wait for him to come back, or what. Obviously he wasn’t asking me to wait, because it took him almost a week to come back to work. And during that week, since I was the only one that had worked on the scaffolding with Jose, our ministry hosts put me in charge of the roof construction. I seriously have no knowledge of roof construction. I had to train another member of our team to work with me, on the little knowledge Jose passed on before he disappeared, until he finally came back.
There’s No 10:15 Bus
There have been several cases in this past month where communication might’ve been lost between languages. Although our ministry host spoke very good English, there were a couple times where he failed to tell us something relatively important. Like for example, the very first time that we went to their house in town by the Church, they told us to pack for one night and two days. But three days later, we were definitely still there. Wearing dirty clothes to their Church service that we didn’t even know we were going to.
Another time being last Wednesday night, we were leaving to go to a big city where we could eat American food, and watch movies, and spend a lot of money. We have to be back from our adventure Friday night, so that we can get up early at their house to play with the kids on Saturday. Our host told us that the 3 P.M. bus would be the best for all of us, but if for some reason we miss it, there is one that leaves at 10:15 P.M. So after a fun weekend in the city, half of us wanted to take the earlier bus, and the other half wanted to wait and take the later bus. So we split the groups and did just that. Thank God I was with the group that left earlier. We just barley ran our way on to the 3 P.M. bus before it left the station. And while purchasing our tickets, we discovered that there is no 10 o’clock bus. So we called the other team and informed them. They ended up having to spend extra money for another hotel room that night, and left us shorthanded the next day during kids’ ministry.
Let’s Go Into Town
On our very last day of work, our ministry host came up to a few of us and told us that we’ve been rewarded for working the hardest. He told us that we’re going to go into town with him and we could go to the store and buy whatever snacks we wanted, and that we could ride there on the roof of his car. He also told us not to tell anybody else, so that they wouldn’t get jealous. Surely, you can see how that can go terribly wrong. Not even half an hour goes by before everyone knows that three of us are being rewarded for being hard workers. People honestly took it a lot better than I thought they would, I thought people were going to be a lot more offended for not being recognized as hard workers. But I guess by then, everyone had already realized that our ministry host is kinda crazy.
Anyway, everyone else goes back to work after lunch, and we stay, dressed up for going into town. The three of us are ready and excited to get cokes, or chips, or anything. But we end up waiting at the dinner table for three whole hours, while our host prays and talks with these other guest ladies. I guess he was showing them around the farm and sanctuary, but it took way longer than he told us. But the real kick is, when we finally did leave, we didn’t even go into Santa Rosa. What he meant by “going into town” was this little store, that’s basically somebody’s house, on the side of the road. There wasn’t any civilization around. Everything in the store was marked up too, because it was the only store around. We walked in, our host got some more rice, and looks at us asks if we’re ready to leave. We were only even in the store for a minute or so. And then went home. And everyone asks, “What did the three hardest workers get to do?” Our faces basically said it all, we were so in shock at what just happened.
