*Give me Grace, this was written a few days ago! I’m late on posting hehe. But this gives you a general idea of what my first month’s schedule looked like even though I just finished up at my first 2 ministries!*
This morning I woke up to 6 or so alarms going off at 5:30. But I of course snoozed until 6. I then hopped into the shower and got dressed and ready for the day. At 6:30 I headed to breakfast. Each day we have an option of either cocoa pebbles, frosted flakes or fruit loops. Some days we have eggs and tortillas. There is also freshly brewed Costa Rican coffee (yum!) available every morning for our squad. At 7 we begin devotionals! There’s something special about spending time with Jesus individually, yet all together as a squad every morning. I personally have a routine of spending 5 minutes in prayer giving my day up to God, I write in my prayer journal for 10 minutes, I read the Bible for 10 minutes and lastly I sit in silence for 5 minutes just listening to Gods voice. (Oh, and I also sip coffee during and inbetween all of these- can’t forget that hehe). After devotions, most of the teams leave for ministry but team Testify (us) and a couple other teams leave around 9:30 or whenever the van comes to pick us up. I usually spend this time hammocking, chatting with my squad, playing card games or even spending more time with the Lord.
We then begin the 15 minute bus ride to our first ministry site. We pray together on our way and then jam to some tunes. When we arrive we head to the playground where the kids greet us with hugs. Today we played duck-duck-goose, red-light green-light, and then had our daily dance party. I then helped feed the babies their lunch and laid them down for a nap. I helped finish up the dishes from the older kid’s lunch and before I knew it, it was time to leave. I grabbed the hot dogs from the bus and warmed them up in the microwave for our team so we could eat them on the way to our next ministry. We also had an apple and potato chips.
We next arrive at our second ministry 20 minutes later. All the kids are at lunch at this time so we walk around and greet them! I then spent the next 2 hours laying the kids down for nap. I sit with them and pat their backs and rub their heads until they fall asleep. This is my FAVORITE time of day because I get an opportunity to pray for them intentionally as they lay on my lap.
At 3:30 it’s snack time so I help pass snacks out to the kids and then I go to help Luis in the kitchen wash dishes. The lovely kitchen then gives us our afternoon snack of cookies and coffee. They sometimes give us cake or crackers, etc. But they discovered how much we loved the coffee and they’ve made brewing it for us a daily thing! It’s so great. I spent the rest of my time today painting the caterpillar head of a hopscotch we painted on the ground (picture bellow). My team painted these bricks outside the building and some stones that lead to classrooms. It was a successful day of ministry.
Then a taxi picked us up to make our way back to our base. Overtime we have gotten to know this guy and his story through google!! Thank you Jesus for Google. He speaks Spanish into his phone and then it translates to English and vise versa. It’s been so helpful and fulfilling to have a good convo with someone despite the language barrier. It was cool seeing him open up about how he has encountered God in his life and how Christ got him out of a hard time. He told us he would be praying for us (how cool!) Today we bought him ice cream at a place called Pops on the way home. Glad we could serve him in that way. When we arrived home, we give our taxi driver a cultural goodbye kiss on the cheek and tell him thank you. As we walk inside we greet Xenia (our AMAZING cook) the same way. Our squad has formed an assembly line and hands us our dinner. Beans, rice, chicken, plantains and salad. Dinner is ALWAYS delishous thanks to Xenia. The other night we served our squad pretending we were in a resturaunt! He had live music and everythin- plus I got to pursue something I’ve always wanted to do, be a waitress! At the end of the night we brought ”our chef” Xenia out and the resturaunt gave her a standing ovation. It was amazing how we got the opportunity to honor her for all she does for us everyday.
Tonight’s team time was blogging (I began writing this post). Team time consists of worship on Monday’s, Journey Markers on Tuesday’s (we read a passage and answer questions of reflection) blogging on Wednesday’s, Feedback on Thursday’s (encouraging each other and giving constructive criticism) free for all on Friday’s (we just do anything fun we’d like to as a team) and debrief from the week on Saturday’s. At 8 we had a squad meeting for about 20 minutes and then we ended our night talking outside, listening to music and playing star tipping! (If you don’t know what that is then you’re seriously missing out- or you’re one of the smart ones). It was a good day and I’ve been so blessed with the daily schedule I’ve had for the first month!! On the weekends it’s a whole new story with lots of rest and adventure… maybe I’ll have to make a whole new post for that one! Thanks for tuning in to a day in the Life of Emily (Costa Rica Addition). Hehe, I know, I’m a dork. Love y’all!
