During our time in Costa Rica, each team has been assigned a different, week long ministry in different parts of the country. Half of the squad was assigned to go to a Christian youth camp for a week (each team going a different week). The other half of the squad, including my team, just finished our ministry. It was in the jungle village of Sibuju in eastern Costa Rica.
Coming onto the race, you tend to romanticize parts of it. You think you’ll end up hiking anywhere you go, or that your water will run out all the time, or even that you’ll sleep in a cave with bats. Honestly, it’s not like that at all. But all of those ideas did come to life in this one week. We hiked upwards of an hour into dense jungle just to have a house visit with someone. Our water ran out every night (seriously, all of it). And while we didn’t sleep in a cave, there were bats there. And that was all fun, but the most amazing part of our week was the simplicity of the people’s lives there. They almost all walked everywhere. Many of them farmed not to sell what they grew, but to eat and live. And their faith in the Lord was inspiring. It’s a very different thing, having a relationship with God out in the jungle. It’s not just something that you do on Sundays. For these people, following God is their livelihood. It’s what puts food on the table, and makes life worth living. I think they’ve got it right.
We met a woman named Nae while we were there. She lived a short distance from the road, but up a considerably sized hill. Her property consisted mainly of fruit trees and space for her various birds (geese, chickens, even a turkey). She had a small wooden house with a bedroom, a kitchen, what was probably a storage area, and a deck. She couldn’t get down her hill very easily because of her knees, however, so it was very difficult trying to get to church. That’s why we came to her, in order that the church might come to her. We talked to her about a lot, and eventually got onto the topic of her living by herself. She told us that she didn’t live by herself, but that she lived with God. And that was all she needed.
Sounds good enough for me.
