Hola, hola from Costa Rica! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated this blog: it’s harder to sit down and write them than I thought it would be. Before the race I thought it’d be easy to write 1 blog a week (ha!), and needless to say I’ve been struggling to write one a month. For me, blogging tends to go something like this:
Expectation: (in my head) Yes, Bree, okay, let’s do this, let’s write this blog. Let’s talk about all the cool stuff God is doing all around the world. Let’s write some words on this internet page that people are going to read! Let’s change some people’s lives! It’s your duty—no—your obligation to let these people know what’s going down on this world race.
Reality: [Opens up computer, sees that it’s dead, sees that someone else is praying/watching a movie/worshipping/eating/playing cards and promptly abandons any and all attempts to write anything]
So, yeah. I won’t lie that these past few weeks (40 days in total! Crazy!) on the world race have been a classic case of expectation vs. reality.
But in life, doesn’t it always seem go something like that?
When we left Panama and the YWAM base at the end of September, I never expected to miss everyone so much. I never expected everyone on the base to walk down to the driveway with us to see us off. I never imagined I’d have not only 20 new facebook friends, but 20 new actual, real-life friends—ones who gave me massages and Spanish lessons and inspiration and even a hat! I definitely never expected to be guests on a Panamanian radio show or to help prepare a meal for just under 60 people…but I did.
After leaving Panama, our squad headed into the beach town of Jaco, Costa Rica for something called, “Debrief.”
For debrief, I never expected to be staying at a hostel only 30 seconds from a beautiful beach, but I did and I loved it. In Jaco, we got to enjoy a few days before heading to our next ministry site at an amazing hostel with an entire squadron of 40+ people. We examined what had happened the month before and discussed how to make the next few months go even better. How to press into what the Lord has for us even harder. How to not get burnt out or burdened by the things we’d seen and done. We also talked about how to surf*
*Not really, but I did get to fulfill a life long dream of actually standing up on a surfboard. I’m the only human in all of Iowa that has or will ever subscribe to Surf magazine, and so it felt like I was living a lie to open that magazine up without having ever even been on a surfboard. Now I don’t have to live a lie anymore! #Praisehim
After leaving the wonderful, amazingness of Jaco, my expectations of what Costa Rica would be like where something like this:
So you can imagine my surprise when we roll up to our ministry site for the month and I see this:
This month, we’re in an area of San Jose called Los Guidos. If you know anything about Chicago, Los Guidos is the Englewood of San Jose…but more notorious. When I told one taxi driver in down town San Jose that we wanted a cab to Los Guidos, he literally made the sign of the cross two times and shook his head. When I make casual conversation with people on buses and what not, no one ever believes that I’m saying what I’m actually saying.
People: So where are you all staying this month?
Me: We’re staying in Los Guidos, actually!
People: Okay, okay, that’s great. So where are you staying?
Me: ….Los Guidos.
People: Oh, fabulous! That’s so nice. So you’re staying in San Jose then? Downtown somewhere?
Me: No. We’re staying in L-O-S G-U-I-D-O-S.
People: Los Guidos?
Me: Los Guidos.
People: Really?
Me: Really, really.
People: Seriously?
Me: So serious.
It’s an area that’s infamous for a lot of things, and needless to say with reactions like that, I didn’t quite know what to expect walking into our ministry site—a place they call, “La Finca.” It turned out to be a plot of land smack, dab in the middle of the slums of Los Guidos that houses a feeding center and a small church and, of course, two soccer goals.
I never expected a feeding center in a place like this, with the reputation that it has, to be called, “Las Sonrisas,” which literally translated to “The Smiles.” I didn’t expect it, but you know how that story goes by now. It turns out, what I expected to see has been the exact opposite of what I’ve actually seen, and what I’ve seen in this place overwhelms me.
The reality is, this month I’ve seen brothers and sisters holding each other’s hands and caring for each other in ways that are so much more mature and loving and careful than I was at that age. I’ve seen kids sprinting down a slip-and-slide in the middle of a rainstorm and loving every second of it. I’ve seen games of tag in the hallways of the schools and received more kisses and hugs this month than I have in the past year.
I’ve been waved to and greeted by almost everyone on the street—even having some people come out of their small homes just to wish us a good morning. I’ve seen games of soccer on the sidewalk and chickens running around on the road and girls wearing princess dresses parading around holding their mother’s hands.
I’ve smiled at people and seen them smile back. I’ve waved at people and seen them wave back. And coming to a place like this, I can say I never expected that.
Here in Los Guidos, I don’t see the darkness. I see the joy. I see God, and I feel so privileged to have seen the things that I’ve seen. So humbled to watch my expectations drift onto the floor and disintigrate into little pieces all around me.
I never expected to be able to work with a such wonderful couple, Mark and Meg, who heard a whisper from God 12 years ago that has turned into something like a hurricane. God wasn’t satisfied with their expectations for their lives, as I can safely tell you they never expected to open a feeding center/safe haven for kids to come to everyday for a hot and nutritious lunch. They probably never expected to fall in love with this place, but God does funny things when we stop expecting and just start receiving whatever it is that He has for us.
This month our team, in addition to helping out at the feeding center and loving on the kids, has been assigned to a school within Los Guidos—Escuela Sector 2, so it’s called. We were told that we’d just be helping out some of the teachers at the school, and so naturally, we had a few ideas about how that was going to go:
Expectation: (our team thinking to ourselves) Okay, so we’re just going to go into this class and just help the teacher in whatever way they need. We’ll probably chat with the kids for a bit, maybe help them with whatever homework the teacher has for them, etc., etc. and it’ll be great.
Reality: [the teacher to us] “Hi guys. I don’t know what you have planned, but you can basically do whatever you want for the whole hour and a half long class! You have something prepared, right? Some game or something?”
So what do 5 American girls come up with on the fly that the kids will not only enjoy, but that will keep them relatively quiet and also not overstep our Spanish speaking abilities (because if we can’t explain the activity in Spanish, then we can’t really do it, ya dig?)
So.
I’m not proud to say it, but we’ve been introducing all of Latin America to the beautiful game of Heads Up Seven Up. Never in one million years would I have thought I’d type that sentence out, but hey, there God is again, just sneaking up behind me and pulling the expectation rug out from under me. I never expected to watch an entire class of 40 3rd graders push all the chairs aside and grab our hands and lead us to the front of the room to watch a 10-minute dance number that they’d been practicing. I never expected the teacher to have all the kids circle up and hold our hands and pray.
And the funny thing is, I could tell you a hundred more stories just like that from these past three weeks alone.
Expectations of worship with a squadron of 40 people:
Reality:
Expectation of living with 40 people and never having one second of alone time (including never being able to go to the bathroom solo. The struggle is real, ya’ll): I MAY OR MAY NOT GO INSANE
Reality of living in close quarter with 40 people: I love it! I love hearing people’s stories and their hearts and their dreams and their prayers and their worship, and I especially love schooling them all at knockout.
And it doesn’t send there.
I never expected that I’d be the one who’d be speaking to all these taxi drivers in Spanish trying to get a group of 13 people in 3 different cab’s to a bus stop that we didn’t know the name of, in a part of San Jose that we also didn’t know the name of. I never imagined that I’d be taking shots of oregano that a teammate (so generously) offered me help me get rid of my head cold. I didn’t think I’d ever see house after house after house after house made out of tin and dirt, or that I’d see smile after smile after smile and receive hug after hug after hug while visiting them. I didn’t realize that life doesn’t just have to be all about getting from point A to point B as quickly as possible—I didn’t know that stepping outside of my comfort zone to find out more about the person on the bus next to you is always, always worth it. I didn’t believe that comparison was something I struggled with. I didn’t think I’d be moved to tears in classroom full of kids as we held hands and prayed for their teacher. I didn’t realize that the name of Jesus could hold more power in a small, dirty, one room shack than in entire communities back in the states.
I especially didn’t think that God, in one of the more feared places in all of San Jose, was going to replace my spirit of fear with a spirit of love, and of power, and of sound-mind…but He did.
And at this point, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
“Look at the nations and watch– and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.” –Habakkuk 1:5
