My team and I have been in Heredia, Costa Rica for 3 weeks now and are heading to San Jose for debrief.
This is the land and garden we have been staying on.
We have been sleeping in our tents and using the shed as a space to hang together, eat and hide from the rain. By the way, it’s actually pretty cold up on this mountain.
Our hosts Edger and Elena are so so sweet and they live about ten minutes from the garden.
Although we have had lots of opportunities to work with local ministers the majority of our time has been spent hanging in the garden on the land. This has allowed us to grow together as a team and the opportunity to begin a friendship with one of our neighbors who lives two fences down. His name is Wesler and he enjoys to laugh as much as I do but he thinks I drink way too much coffee. He has opened up a lot and let me in on his story. We got to read Luke 12: 22-34 and I learned a lot from listening to his perspective of the passage. My first response was to want to give him answers to all of his questions and comfort to all of his pain. His questions were ones I could not answer and his pain I could not comfort. God just kept pointing out verse 32 to remind him that He wants and Delights to give us the Kingdom. That lead to more tough topics but God kept showing him that He is good and that his kingdom is now and he is invited into it.
This is my friend Wesler.
Every day here has been completely different. Edger has given us a taste of a variety of opportunities. He is working on starting up a new school for students in the United States and Central America to explore different ministries in Costa Rica so we worked with two local students on a website for this school. My part in this was to make sure the wording of everything made sense in English and looked presentable. This is a picture of us working at Edger’s house.
We got to teach at two different youth groups, pray for people who were expecting to come to a business seminar but ended up also hearing about their identify in Christ and how they can change from an orphan mindset to adoption and sonship. (That was a very cool night)
I know Spanish the best (out of everyone my team), so often they will call on me to be the translator. I feel very inadequate but my team has been so encouraging in this. I can try to talk to people one on one in Spanish all day but when people are depending on me to be the translator, that’s a WHOLE other level of discomfort. Praise God he has been humbling me in this area reminding me that it’s not about me and what I look like but about letting others understand each other better.
We also got to work at 2 different schools. The first one was a day care and we all split up into different rooms. I got to be with one student who needed to be separated for certain reasons. He was only 2 and he had 3 times as much energy as the rest of the group. He was quite a hand full but I loved trying to keep up with him all day. He wanted a push on every single swing on the playground. Their playground sets where the plastic kind that just sit on the surface of the ground. Well, when I went to push him I wanted to show him how cool of an adult I was so I pushed the chains and held them up high so he wouldn’t swing back but stay in the air for a moment and feel like he was flying. As I did that the entire playground set moved forward with him. As I was holding up the boy and the play set in the air yelling at all the kids to come out from under it so it won’t crush them, they were running away crying. Meanwhile, the boy on the swing was just smiling and loving every minute of this exciting, awesome ride. I kind of felt like super women for a minute even though I was the one that caused the whole scene.
The second school we got to visit a couple times was a pre-k through 12th grade private school. They teach English so I got to practice some English lessons in the pre school clases for half of the day and in high school classes for the other half.
The main thing this month has been the garden. Edger has other pastors from Central America come and he teaches them about how they can grow in their own land and never have a food shortage. All they need is a seed. He taught us about Microorganism harvest and how we use the fungus and dead leaves to bring life to new soil. He is passionate about helping others see the kingdom through Gods creation and has helped us see just that.
Thank you all for toor prayers and support. By the way, thanks to all of you I am fully funded!:) Praise the Lord!
