You guys.
I am in LOVE with Vihía. As soon as we pulled up and started filing off the bus (after greeting our host family and some people from the church who had been waiting to say hey) we walked inside the church sanctuary and saw a huge sign at the front saying, in English: “WELCOME TO COSTA RICA YOU ARE A BLESSING FOR OUR LIVES.” (Cue a chorus of like 14 girls all going “awww” at the same time). Plus, even though we arrived at like 3 in the afternoon, Pastor Basilio was like, “You guys hungry? Good. Cuz we’re feeding you lunch.” Honestly, the amount of hospitality we were shown with a like 45 minute time frame is astounding. To make it all better, we all ended up having an impromptu dance party in the sanctuary that evening, complete with live keyboard and drums. It is such a strange experience to immediately let your hair down with people you met that very day, but we all just came together and danced for Jesus. (Side note: I have never seen people so clearly using dance as worship in an informal setting like this. Like, these people were praising their hearts out. A cultural lesson for me.) Basically, within literal hours we were all made to feel like part of the family here and we truly could not have asked for a warmer welcome.
On our first ministry day, we were split into three teams to tackle three jobs: one job would involve painting the roof, one would involve constructing a wall, and one job remained shrouded in mystery, the only skill requirement being that the people be “fuerte” (strong). After a brief stint with the construction team, I was pretty much immediately redirected to equipo fuerte. So, what has our job been you may ask? In a nutshell: attacking a mountain and moving it one shovel full at a time. Basically, we are given shovels, a wheelbarrow, and chisels (not hammer-and-chisel type but more like a metal pole filled with concrete with a large chisel at the end — think garden hoe but straight). The chisel people attack the ground behind the church building where the base of the mountain begins in order to make the ground soft enough to shovel. Then the shovelers move the ground into the wheelbarrow and take it to the front of the property in order to level it out and prepare for future developments like pouring concrete. While it is pretty exhausting work, we do have more people than tools which means we can trade out often enough so that no one has the chance to get totally wiped out. Plus, there is something so satisfying about breaking up and tossing giant rock with just your muscles and a chisel.
When we aren’t tackling these three projects you can also find us hanging out at the plaza just down the street, which consists of a soccer field, a basketball court, and some bleachers. Our job here is pretty much just to minister to the local kids while hanging out and playing games. Oh yeah. We also had a day where we went around town cleaning up trash. (Ya gotta keep people guessing ya know.)
All in all, there are many reasons why I have found Vihia so lovely thus far (the food is straight fire, the weather is significantly less humid, the scenery is drop-dead gorgeous, you name it). But none of these really explain why I am so happy here. The only word I can really use to make sense of my feelings toward this place is community. Living in a church sanctuary and being constantly surrounded by faithful Christians really just fills the soul. Even the vocabulary we are learning in Vihia demonstrates this (i.e. “bendiciones” is not a greeting we heard while walking around in Jaco). It is truly such a blessing to be able to partner with these beautiful Christians as we dig deeper into the community in order to deeply and permanently impact the lives here for God’s glory.
P.S. If you are ever in a location with howling monkeys, just know that they will scream at you when you go to pee at one in the morning.
