“Just be.”
“Just be? How?”
“Just be Anna”
….
“Adios” we say.
“Adios… Adios… Adios, adios, adios.” I say and my heart trembles.
“How do you say ‘It was nice to meet you?’” I ask our translator and friend.
He speaks in his jumbled fast blue of words as always. My ears desperately try to cling to what he said but I have no idea. “Oh wait that’s like someone is going to die, don’t say that.” He says another jumbled mix of sounds, that was apparently different.
“Okay again.”
He slows down and I repeat desperately trying to stick the words in my brain. Normally it would take me a day to remember a phrase like this. But I don’t have a day. My friend is walking away and there is no Hasta Mañana. I run after her and repeat the words before I can forget them.
“Fue lindo haberte conocido.”
She laughs and says “Aleluya.” and likewise. She knows my struggle with Spanish. She knows how many times I had to ask her name before I finally understood and remembered. She knows. We hug and laugh and she says some things and I watch as she walks away from the church. I met her ten days ago. Our conversations never went much past “Hola, ¿Como estas?” Because after that I had no idea what she was saying. But I tried. It was the same with the many other beautiful people that had taken us in like family.
Goodbyes confuse me. I don’t know what to say or what to do. I don’t know what to feel. Goodbyes are bittersweet and somehow beautiful. Hard goodbyes are the proof that you loved well. They are the reminder that wherever you go you leave a piece of your heart, however big or small. Today we said goodbye to the indigenous village on the edge of the mountains in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It was only ten days, but I’m different now.
We stayed in what I called the Compound. We were originally told that we would be camping in the backyard because the bunk beds in the compound did not have mattresses, but our host said it would be safer for us to stay inside. My initial impression of the compound was that it was an actual jail. It was all concrete and the windows and doors were huge rusting metal bars. It seemed abandoned. The whole place was full of dust and it gave me the creeps. I have no idea what they use the place for when the church doesn’t rent it out to host a bunch of missionaries. Despite my initial reaction the compound turned out to be quite homey. I was glad to be safely inside the Compound at night. They moved the beds against the wall and swept and we crammed our tents into the rooms.
The view from the backyard was beautiful. Every time I felt down, confused, worried, or anything, I would look out at the view and feel immense peace. You could see the sun glimmering off the steep hills in the distance. The village was peaceful and friendly. Time never felt rushed. The people were relaxed and full of love. I don’t know how but they still were always on time. Everything we did felt so natural. It rarely felt like we’re doing we were just living and being. Of course we were doing things, we hardly stopped doing things as usual, but it was somehow different. Perhaps ot was because Costa Rican culture it is never about the tasks, it is always about the people.
That kind of mindset does not come very naturally to me. I am always striving. Always trying to be better. Always trying to achieve something. I get worried and anxious and caught up in everything. In all my striving I forget what’s important. I forget to just live. I forget how to simply enjoy the moment and be myself.
Our first morning there we walked around the village with our host, the pastor of the simple one room church, and invited them and their kids to a kid’s event at the church. This was nothing like going door to door in some neighborhood back home. It was more like meeting the friends, neighbors, and extended family of our host. As we walked our translator who came with us asked us questions about how to say certain things in English and I attempted (and eventually succeeded) to learn some simple Spanish phrases such as “Dios te bendiga” and “Puede decir su nombre otra vez por favor.” On our way, we met an older couple, the man was sitting in a chair reading a beaten up old bible. They were so excited that we visited them. The man told us the story of how he fell into a barb wire fence and hurt his back. He let us pray with him, and then shared how great God is. Even through his pain, his joy was infectious and he had incredible reverence for God. He let us knock some oranges out of a tree near his house and we ate them as we walked. It occurred to me that this was sharing the gospel as we went, and it was so so sweet.
Still, at first I worried we weren’t doing enough. I worried I wasn’t being very intentional about building friendships. I would look around and see my teammates having really cool conversations and feel like my conversations were not good enough. In every moment I have a choice of what to do. I’ve often wished I could be in two places at once because even those simple choices are hard. I don’t want to miss anything, but I don’t need to worry, just trust that I’m in God’s hands and follow peace. I think sometimes I get so caught up in trying not to miss anything, that I actually miss what’s right before me in the moment. I can be intentional about making cool friendships, but I can’t force relationships to happen. I can grow as a person, but I shouldn’t need to be anxious about who I am right now. I just need to be. That is what God has been teaching me these last ten days. He has been telling me to stop striving and just be. When I stop striving pointlessly, I find so much joy, I delight in what’s around me. I delight in who I am and who God made me to be. It hit me on of our first nights there as I sat with my team, my sisters and dear friends. “My whole life I’ve been trying to be something, but now sitting here with you guys I am so grateful because I can just be myself.”
In the village, I got to just be. I lived well and experienced many things. In the village, we taught basic English phrases for anyone who wanted to learn. We helped out with the big event where this family from Korea brought Christmas presents for the kids. We hosted a kids event where we played in the soccer field. We painted the inside of the church and the tacky kitchen we called home. We helped our host and her husband make tamales. We tried fruit I’ve never heard of. We learned how to beat and toss the husks off grains of rice (well kinda). They laughed because I tossed the rice so little for fear of throwing it all over the ground. We chased down a chick to hold it. It’s feathers were so soft and it’s feet so sharp. I petted the dog and played with the kitten at the same time. My heart was happy. We dished rice onto banana leafs and enjoyed the endless hospitality of our hosts. We listened as our hosts sang and played guitar and sang songs as we continued our tamale line. We took bucket showers. We worshipped under the stars. We sat and grew as a team. I thought, dreamed, and learned how to just be. I felt exhausted and hungry half the time and my body rebelled against so many changes. We walked to corner store and bought out all the pancake mix (twice), along with whatever else we could get. We ate endless rice and beans. I felt jumpy at night, which was not encouraged by the cockroach in the garbage or the giant grasshopper thing that jumped on my face. There was apparently a barrel labeled poop, with a whole bunch of straight up poop in it right outside the compound (yeah we don’t know). We played pterodactyl. We exchanged gifts on Christmas eve and crowded all nine of us around an iPhone to watch The Grinch. We listened to the men play some indigenous game that started on Christmas Eve. They ran through the streets yelling and screaming with plants tied to their clothing and terrifying masks chasing after someone wearing a huge wooden bull costume. Also they played drums and blew on horns in the game. We played with the kids and I struggled to form Spanish sentences. I sometimes nodded and laughed and pretended I understood what people where saying to me. I shared many fist bumps with our mentally disabled friend and discovered her simple beautiful joy in music and laughter. We named all the stray dogs who wandered around and sadly fed one sick starving diseased dog some potatoes. We petted and delighted in the healthy dogs. I held our hosts kitten while it fell asleep in my arms and listened to the testimony of a dear friend who came with us to the village. We were continually blessed by our one teammate’s love for cooking. We shared all the sweet moments and sought after one another as we missed home during the holidays. We took a van to the beach on Christmas and hiked to the local waterfall on Christmas Eve. We rejoiced as we saw healing in our team. My heart broke as I prayed for a once healthy and active girl crippled and paralyzed by a tumor. I ached and hoped and loved as we visited peoples homes one morning with our host to ask if we could pray with them. The non Christian neighbors graciously tolerated us and accepted our prayers for their families and the Christians rejoiced at our coming. I will never forget the village. I will always remember the deep reverence of the people’s prayers and their passion for God. I will never forget the people who opened their arms to us and tolerated my jumbled Spanish.
“Adios. Dios te bendiga!”
***Btw, in case you were wondering, I of course do know the names of my friends and of my host, I have just decided not to use names in my blogs as a general rule. I just like it better and it protects the identity of the people I meet.***
