Day 4: The One With The Mimes

Happy birthday Sharisse! Sharisse is my crazy awesome teammate who has a big laugh and will always tell you how it is. She loves color combinations that are ridiculous for a normal person (mainly blue, green, and purple together), watermelon, games, and coffee. She doesn't like grass, children, or feeling pressured to do anything. She does things like making sure your facts are straight when you make a claim (especially biblical), or asks you questions that are hard to ask. In short, she's a no B.S. kind of gal, and I've got a lot of respect for her because of it. She also makes me laugh a lot, but more often than not she makes my eyes roll, because her jokes are ridiculous.

Anyways, in honor of Sharisse, we spent our day with children and in grass putting on presentations :). Today was also a crazy day, and ended in two legit mime performances, Stef falling through stairs, and us finding out the organization fasts every Sunday. Of course.

We started our day with devos and breakfast at 6 am, and actually were able to kid of dress up. I can't believe I was excited to wear the gray skirt I've worn the past 10 months, because I was able to look and feel like a girl in it. We drove off the property to Los Chiles, which is about an hour away. The car stopped outside a plot of land with a structure with a tin roof, no walls, and a dirt floor. This is the church. We put on a presentation about living water, which Sharisse had put together.

[This is the church in the community we went to today]

Sharisse and Amie put on a puppet show about the topic, which ended up making us laugh more than the kids (I think it was just early for them). I helped with the icebreaker activity–which was the only activity I could remember from the short stint I had in youth group–and singing a Spanish version of "Deep and Wide." The kids also had a small snack, and after I did the dishes in a shack that had a sink. It was so old fashioned! Tony made a comment that there's a saying in Costa Rica that a woman is ready to marry when she can wash dishes, and a man is ready when he can cut down a tree and fill up a wheelbarrow with wood quickly. I told him I'm either really ready, or should be single, because we've done both this month :).

   

 

The sweetest little girl, Blanca, came up to me after I finished cleaning and told me in the tiniest voice that she didn't have the money to buy school supplies. As Americans, we get approached in situations like these all the time. They always manage to break my heart, but usually it's more beneficial to say no, because then they associate North Americans with handouts. Trust me, my heart goes back and forth about this all the time. and I think I might give something for Rosita to give to her late. I told Bianca the story that Jesus told the disciples in Matthew, about God caring for the sparrows, and how mach he loves and cares for her. I prayed over her and told her the power of prayer. It's still hard though, but I have faith God will work in that.

    

After we left, we ate lunch (a slice of avocado, one slice turkey, & two pieces of bread, which tasted like heaven because turkey/avo sandwiches are my favorite back home and they don't have turkey meat anywhere we've been) in the car, and then got internet for our first time since we got back. Sometimes getting internet is harder than not, because you see everything everyone you miss is doing, and it feels like home is closer than it is in reality (Pinterest is the worst for this). Anyways, I was really worn out after and we had another kids event to go to at two.

We got to the location, only to see that the group we were presenting to was all jr. high-looking boys playing soccer. Not the typical crowd who likes puppet shows, crafts, and Deep & Wide. So we had to brainstorm what we were going to do to switch everything up just in case. Somehow we were going to have to figure out how to cater to the needs of 20 jr. high boys, as 20-something women, in the ten-minute time period before the event started. Welcome to the World Race!

The plan was for me to do the intro icebreaker, which required the kids to split themselves up into age brackets, and if the kids looked older than they were we would continue with the puppet show. If they were older, we would move to Plan B: Amie leading a mini drama, Sharisse would lead a game, and I would teach on the passage the puppet show was based upon (the woman in the well story from John 4). I had NO idea what I would teach, nor had I read the passage recently. I was praying the boys were younger than they looked, but at the same time I was kind of excited to see how God would move if they weren't.

During the icebreaker exercise, I watched as every boy except for two moved to the side of the room designated for those over the age of ten. It looked like we were going to wing it.

We set up for Amie's short drama, and then quickly after it was my turn to teach. Bethany had one of the boys read the scripture in Spanish as I read over it for the first time in English. I still had no idea what I was going to say, and was starting to get a little nervous. I started praying over & over for the Holy Spirit to just speak, because I had no plan.

Suddenly, I had an idea where to start, and as I spoke, new ideas would open up in my mind to connect and transition to what I had just said. I would remember examples from my life and sermon I'd heard on the passage, tie in things from soccer, jr. high lunch rooms, and relate them to this Samaritan woman talking to Jesus about living water. About 10-15 minutes later, I concluded, tying things together with my intro.

I finished, and sat down in a mix of shock and adrenaline. Stef turned an was like, "dang girl, have you given that message before?" No–that was the Holy Spirit talking, no doubt about that. It was incredible–I'm still in shock about it. God shows up in crazy ways like that though! If it was me speaking, I would have made a mess of it.

After our presentation, the boys went back to soccer and we left for the pastor's house, where we practiced a song we were going to sing in Spanish and eat dinner. The service was a special event unifying 4 different churches, and it was awesome. After such a crazy day, the last thing we wanted to do was go somewhere else and perform, but the service ended up being life the dessert of our day. It included typical Costa Rican dances and songs (worship), ribbon dances, our song (which God definitely worked through again because our voices sounded much better than usual), and last but not least, two miming performances, complete with red suspenders and face makeup. But the message was great, and the service had a strange way of filling us up, and giving us energy.

    

 

At about 8:30, we called it a day and drove back home. The drive was so relaxing, and for some reason the air smelled like Seattle air, which really blessed me. We got back home, and Tony let us know everything is closed on Sundays, so we moved our rest day to next Wednesday. We also found out they all fast on Sundays (only breakfast though), and Stef fell through the stairs, bruising herself pretty badly.

Our life is crazy, but there comes a point where you can only laugh and say, oh…of course!