Today was our first official full day in San Jose, Costa Rica. Our team will be spending a few days here at the YWAM main headquarters serving the people in the local neighborhood. On Thursday we will drive five hours from the capital to Puerto Viejo, a beautiful caribbean coastal city. There we will be helping YWAM by building a compound in which they can base their ministry out of in the city. By also partnering with local churches in Puerto Viejo we can help a relationship grow between the local community and the YWAM program. But that is all still to come, and we are taking our ministry a day at a time. Today was the first real chance to show the love of God to the community. Our team went into what we were told was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Costa Rica to build the concrete foundation for a house. YWAM has built quite a few houses in the neighborhood and the impact on the community is huge! It offers a cleaner, more stable environment for a family to grow and thrive in. As we mixed and poured concrete for a few hours I was given the pleasure to watch some of the local children run rampant and watch us work nervously from around the corner. They slowly warmed up to us being there and eventually began bringing us their cats, dogs, and toys to show us with delight. After the foundation was built one of the local woman a few doors down had offered to make us lunch. As we waited for our homemade Costa Rican lunch Kole, one of my team members and an extremely gifted photographer, felt the desire to photograph the little girl who lived in the house we were building. Moses, one of our ministry contacts at YWAM, helped to translate for Kole his desire to take a few pictures of the little girl. Above is Kole walking ahead of the little star, as she reluctantly followed. She may not have been all about it but her mother loved the idea and in the end we got a few smiles. All in all our first day was amazing and seeing the true lives of the people of Costa Rica was such a beautiful gift from God.
See you guys later, Shalom.
