We flew into San Jose, Costa Rica and I was greeted at the airport by a North American. We jumped into his Ford truck and made our way through the city. We got a little outside the city and pulled up to a nice house with a friendly women standing at the door, saying, “welcome to Costa Rica.” They led us back to our own apartment with bunk beds and a bathroom. We sat down and got the run down of the ministry and who else we would be working with. And also, that our host used to cook at Disney World. So it’s safe to say, I had lots of good food and might have also gained a few pounds… Meet Mama Beth and Papa Bryan.
We didn’t miss a beat. We got up the next morning and met the head of Conexion Ministries. A Columbian man in Costa Rica, who spoke perfect English. The first thing he said was, “we don’t go in and share the gospel, we show the love of Jesus and when asked, we give an answer.” I knew in that moment we would be getting along great. And we definitely did. We even formed our own possy. “the Quesadillas”. Meet Jherson.
The first day here we organized medicine. I wrote on a paper hundreds of times, “Vitamin for kids. Take one each day” (In Spanish of course, though.) Then two weeks later I got to watch as those vitamins and pills were handed out to the Bri Bri tribe in an indigenous area. We drove for 6 hours to get to this site and we set up shop in a school. Sleeping on the floor in one room, distributing medicine, nutrition facts, handing out glasses, and watching kids in other rooms. This was such a cool experience for me. Watching the work we had done go full circle. We were also able to pray for a local in the village and share the gospel with him. I got to watch as my teammate did one of the most selfless things and hand this young man his Bible. I’m telling you, Satan didn’t want this to happen. Witchcraft is so real in indigenous areas and I can’t describe to you the pressure we felt as we shared, but we did and God moved. He shared with us what he believed and we shared what we believed and then were able to pray over him.
We met a sweet, sweet family and were able to be apart of helping them rebuild their house. We got there the first day and there was no roof and the back room only had a floor. We came in and walked along side of them, helping them. They had us tear down a basement wall, a fence, and carry lots of wood and metal sheets around. We did a lot of painting and lifting. I used power tools, I bent metal and learned a lot of Spanish. Yes, we all spoke english and they are spoke Spanish so there was a lot of “Emily, please. *hand motions*.” And through hand motions, broken English and broken Spanish we got the job done. This family though.. they never stopped laughing. An entire wall fell down and I braced myself for curse words and they all just looked at each other and laughed. I’m telling you, this family radiated the love of Jesus. We got to help as a roof went up over the whole house and then a wall, and then a basement, then a new fence, then a concrete wall. We didn’t just help build a house, we also built a relationship. They weren’t just people we were building a house for, they were our Tica family.
The girls on my team had the opportunity to share our testimony’s in the prison with a prison ministry our host worked at. And it was so cool to see how God used each of our stories and intertwined them to speak to every lady in the room. It was different then anything I had ever done but so rewarding in the end.
We also met another Tica family through Conexion. One night we were invited over for coffee and snacks. This sweet girl spent four hours baking two apple pies for us because it was a North American dessert.
We spent a couple days in schools teaching English.
There were lots of volcano eruptions.
And we took an adventure to the beach
This women came to Costa Rica a year ago and has been living and learning the language. She also works with Conexion. This girl is the hands and feet of Jesus. She is so selfless. She is so relational and is someone I hope to be like one day. Meet Keri.
All in all, this month has been so incredible. The friendships I’ve built and the memories I’ve gained will not soon be forgotten. The people here honestly stole my heart and I’m so sad to go. Training camp prepared me for a lot of things but not goodbyes. How awesome is it, though, that we grew so close that goodbye’s were so hard?? I hope one day I can see them all again, whether on this earth or the next. I love you all.
Goodbye.
