Pura vida is the saying in Costa Rica that you can literally say for anything. It is translated to “simple life”. Example, when a Tico (Costa Rican) waitress asks “how was your meal?” you can say pura vida. You can say pura vida to greet someone in the morning, afternoon, or good evening. You can also to say Pura vida when saying goodbye to someone.
The lifestyle in Costa Rica is very like Colorado with people very relaxed, and friendly. So this transition to this lifestyle has been an easy transition. I am going to describe my daily routine with you guys so you have an understanding what are the live conditions that I am living in. I am not completely off the grid, I have a walmart about 1 kilometer from my house that my whole squad is staying at. We have a seven bedroom house that we are all staying at (47 racers, plus 5 leaders). We have an amazing mountain view from our back deck which is amazing waking up every morning to.
5:30 am – 10 alarms all go off all at the same time and we attempt to get out of our beds to shower before breakfast. But most do not get out of bed until 6:28.
6:30 am – breakfast – this is usually cereal or an egg and a half with two corn tortillas and we eat with the whole squad.
7:00 am – devo – this is a set time before everyone leaves for ministry to get into the word. We open with prayer and then it is quiet time to spend some quality time with the father. This is an amazing way to start off any day. During this time, I journal about the previous day, sitting in front of the Father to see how he wants to use me today. The past few days, I have been working through Proverbs and have been learning how to be wise and in in Proverbs 16:9 says “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” So the Lord has been teaching me that I may plan my future but he has a better plan for me. So who knows what the next step will be.
7:30 am – end of devo – we close in prayer as a squad and the first few teams leave for ministry by bus.
8:00 am – Team Relentless prayer – This week my team of guys decided that we wanted to pray together of our day and our ministry. This has been an awesome moment with the guys being able to pray over the day.
9:00 am – time to leave – as a team we walk to ministry, we are the only team that can walk to our ministry for this month. We have about 3km walk to the Abraham Project
9:30 am – Arrival to Abraham Project – we drop off our backpacks in the clinic area. (Abraham Project is a church, an outreach, a clinic, a place where seven students can stay until they get adopted, and a school to newborns to 12 years old).
9:30 – 12:00 am – We find our gardening boss named Luis to see what kind of work we will be getting into. The past week, we scrubbed rocks to make white, we scrubbed chairs for kids to sit on during lunch, moved 400 cinder blocks for the construction workers to put up for two new apartment buildings on campus for single women, weed-eating with machetes and hedge clippers, placing the scrubbed rocks into a flower garden to make patterns and filling the gaps with smaller rocks that we hosed down for two days, and helping with whatever they through at us to help them out.
12:00 – lunch – for lunch everyday we have a sandwich which is usually a pb and jelly, ham and cheese, or a cold hotdog with a bag of chips and a fruit either a banana or apple.
1:00 – 3:00 pm – Back to work – after a nice break, we head back to work and usually back to what we started before lunch until 3:00.
3:00 – 5:00 pm – During this time, we get to play with kids from the school. We start off with a game like duck, duck, goose, or chase the gringo (north american). Then we end each group with a skit. This week our skit was about excellence. We usually have three different age groups of kids come in.
5:00 pm – head home
5:30 pm – arrive at house – shower time
5:45 – 6:30 pm – go over the day as a team
6:30 – 7:15 pm – dinner – we get to eat dinner with the whole squad, or who ever is at the house and we get to hear about what other teams did at their ministries. Love this time to be able to spend with my squad.
7:15 – 8:00 pm – Guys clean-up – we hand wash all of the dishes, sweep, and mop.
8:00 pm – worship or session – at this time, everyone is back at the base from ministry and we worship together or sit in on a lesson.
9:00 pm – quiet hours – at this time it becomes quiet hours but everyone can stay up and play cards together and fellowship with our squad. I highly recommend Spicy Uno or movies with friends.
10:00 pm – bed
This my hour to hour schedule of every day. We are all going to bed tired after doing some amazing hard work with our ministry. I am loving Costa Rica, and the community that I am surrounding myself with. Everyone has their eyes fixed on the Father and we are all growing together as a team and as a squad.
