Last month Mighty Love was paired with Team Petrichor working with Zoe Ministries and Glory Christian School in Heredia, Costa Rica. The month was filled with so many unique experiences!
We taught English, led chapel and devotions, built relationships with the students, did park outreach, and helped with various other tasks around the school.
We slept on sleeping pads in the art room.
Enjoyed cooking our meals in a beautiful outdoor kitchen/ ranch outside the school.
(Except when the giant flying bugs dive-bombed us at night!)
We cast lots.
Kyle lost most of them. (He actually cast most of them too).
(The worst was to eat a bug that had been incinerated by the stove. Sure enough, Kyle “won.” ) 🙂
Two of our ministry contacts were Micah and Melissa Mixon and they were amazing. Micah is a dancer and he uses his talent and passion to tell people that Jesus loves them! We got to be a part of his outreach in one of the parks in San Jose. He and his friends danced to draw a crowd, then instead of asking for money, they just shared the love of God, and then they danced some more!
Here's a dance from a workshop he did in Nepal!! Check it out 🙂
Melissa also dances and one day she taught us the beginning of a hip hop routine, which we ended up performing for the Squad 🙂 It was so fun!!! Then at the end of the month, Melissa blessed all the girls with handmade skirts made from each of our our favorite fabrics 🙂 It was the most thoughtful gift ever!
It was such a blessing to work with them for the month. Their love for God and passion to know Him was fantastic and they had so much wisdom and testimony to share! We got really close to their family and even babysat their son Tyce, who is adorable, 3 years old and already dancing like his daddy! 🙂
When we were not working with the school at Zoe, we helped out with other ministries in the area. One of the teachers had an outreach to a local village teaching kids the Bible and English. We got to spent a morning with her playing with the kids and acting out stories from the Bible.
Another week we did house visits in that same village and prayed for people for healing, financial breakthrough and the restoration of families. It was so fun and we met so many beautiful people.
Another week we visited an elderly home and spent time with the residents, playing games, painting nails and drawing them pictures. One man named Francisco pulled me aside when he found out I was an artist and gave me a picture he had painted. I already sent it home and plan to hang it in my room to remember him and my time in Costa Rica. His generosity inspired me to draw pictures for others in the elderly home and for the rest of the day I asked the men and women their favorite animals and then drew pictures for them. It was so rewarding to see how much some of them treasured the small gift and my heart behind it.
We also got to paint! The bathrooms were in some desperate need of a paint job, so they gave us permission to paint murals on them! It was so fun and it made me miss painting on walls!
Jennie and I got to bake cupcakes with our friend Ashli. She and her boyfriend were raising money for a mission trip to Panama, so we did a bake sale to help her with fundraising. At her house I enjoyed some international delight coffee creamer. Man do I miss that stuff!!!
We also visited a church called New Life New Glory which is a sister church to Zoe Ministries. The church is mainly young adults and their emphasis on intercession and revival was amazing. There was also a beautiful culture of dance through worship there and I got the pleasure to watch different people worship God through movement. It was so sweet!
Over all the month was great. It was filled with wonderful people and a whole array of one of a kind experiences. (who would have thought I’d get to paint a mural on the Race?!?) It was a great way to end one leg of the journey, saying goodbye to Spanish and hello to an array of all new languages in Asia!
May God bless you richly as you live your own great adventure 🙂 Thanks for following mine!
~Chelle
