It’s 4:30 am and we’re sitting as a whole squad at the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua! My team is going into 22 hours of traveling today! We’re up at this time in order to process and cross into our second country for our second month of ministry! Crazy, time flies! So I have some time, and wifi, to catch every one up on more fun stuff from this month!
This is a picture of the Baptist church we attended on Sundays for services. They had a late service that was in English so we lucked out! The church is still growing and we were reminded constantly that it is amazing how it’s been coming back to life, more vibrant, filled with more people, than it used to be. The congregation was excited to have missionaries come to their community, especially 5 young American girls who instead of coming to Puerto Viejo to party and spend their days at the beach, are wanting to spend our time for God and help them. They cooked us a few meals here consisting of a lot of authentic Caribbean food like garlic, lime chicken, coconut rice and beans, fresh salad.
One day at the church we cleaned out the back closet and took out this drum set to scrub off the rust for the kids to use! We felt minor accomplishment in this as the drum set was pretty rusted from sitting without use for a long time but they still made joyful noises!
This is the house owned by the church that we cleaned. It’s purpose for the church is to be used to house missionaries and volunteers, but after a difficult period in the church the house got neglected. The walls and floors needed scrubbing from dirt and mold. The rooms had to be sprayed down with toxins to kill the termites, carpenter ants and spiders that had claimed the house as their own for many months. We lived in the house for the second half of our month, but we still remained inside of our tents as ants were often found tramping in lines on the floors or walls during both evening and night.
To the side of the house is this tin shack where four grown men have been living for the years that the church wasn’t using the house. Since we moved in they have been told to find somewhere else. The sad truth is they probably won’t as they are hooked into the cycle of buying and using drugs and haven’t made any attempt to actually move. The table in the background which is in the neighboring lot to the house is where men would spend their day planning out their business, drug business. We felt safe on our property and were never bothered by either. It stood out to me more so a representation of good and evil in the world. The last day we left a teammate of mine left apples on the table for the men with a note. I like to think they smiled when they read it.
This is the Casa de la Cultura which is like a community center for Puerto Viejo. We started some programs there with our host. We held music classes 3 days/week. We had a gospel night. We did free facials and massages for women in the community. We helped with tutoring in the afternoons and did odd projects to assist with cleaning. There was also a market held in the back every Saturday for local vendors! The programs we initiated our host hopes to continue to get the community more involved and give back to them.
When ministry for the day wasn’t as full as others we would pray and ask the Lord what he wanted us to do. Sometimes this would lead us to the beach and talk with tourists, other times coffee shops for wifi and random conversations, or we’d plan trash pick ups to clean the beaches that were scattered with trash after nights of parties and beach users.
Though month one is over, it is just the beginning. We are sad to be leaving Costa Rica but we are leaving with full hearts. We are not leaving anything behind as we move forward taking with us the things we have learned and the friendships we have made. Please be praying for our month two of ministry in Nicaragua!
