Hey friends, long time no see!! It’s been quite some time since my last blog post. Don’t worry, I’m not STILL living in the Costa Rican jungle. At the beginning of April I said goodbye to my lovely team and flew back to the US, where I’ve been settled back in Georgia for a bit. I had every intention of posting this blog sometime in March, but it ended up being a hard and crazy month which resulted in blogging pretty much slipping my mind. Whoops! But now that I’ve been back in the good ole US of A for a few months, its about time I fill you in on what the rest of my time in Costa Rica looked like! My team and I wrapped up our two months of living and doing ministry in Turrialba, headed to the BEAUTIFUL beaches of Jaco for a few days to rest and debrief, then moved ministries for our last month as a team! For the month of March my team and I separated from the rest of the squad, hopped on a ferry, and moved to a small town called Rio Grande Paquera (Good luck trying to find a picture of it on google images haha, all you’ll find is pictures of waterfalls or of the ferry dock we left from because I mean it when I say we were in the middle of nowhere).
This month in Rio Grande was very stretching to say the least! It actually started off with a week of me being the sickest I’ve probably ever felt. No need to worry, I was better in no time but stomach problems in foreign countries sure will get ya! I turned 20 in our new jungle home, nestled right in the middle of a papaya farm. Yep, you heard that right, but no, I really do NOT like papaya… From sleeping shoulder to shoulder on the floor with ants that never hesitated to bite us in our sleep, to living in 100 degree heat in a tin roof house open to the jungle outside (and the lovely tarantulas), we learned to lean into the discomfort and embrace living in deeper abandonment. We had no access to stores, restaurants, or really anything that felt like “normal life,” other than our one little corner shop a mile down the road where we bought our fair share of lemon tea, plantain chips, and ice cream! Waking up to loud and scary howler monkeys hanging outside became normal. Oh, and did I mention we had scabies? In the jungle with no hot water or pharmacies? Yeah, you’ll just have to ask me about that one some time…
In March I lived a life so dramatically different than what I used to consider normal. It definitely took some adjusting at first, as it always does, but we all learned to embrace it in a really beautiful way. And living so differently also meant different priorities. Things like FaceTiming people back home, writing a blog post (hehe), or planning for the future became less important, in the best way possible. My team and our ministry was all I had in front of me, and I wanted to choose it wholeheartedly before I chose anything else… especially with it being my last month with my incredible team. So hopefully you can forgive me for the lack of updates during that time haha! 🙂
As hard as it is to put into words, I would love to share a glimpse into what a typical day in Rio Grande looked like for me and my team!!
5:30am – we woke up just as the sun started coming up! First things first, as a team leader I got to start the day walking around with my trusty thermometer and checking everyone for Covid symptoms. Where we lived in Rio Grande, Covid was basically nonexistent (WHAT A GIFT), but we still did take it seriously and make sure everyone is healthy to do ministry that day! Then we threw on our work clothes (same outfit every day of course) and walked to our hosts home a little ways down the road!
6:00am – we arrived at Patricia and Pastor Hector’s house for breakfast! This family served us SO well all month, and Patricia blessed us every single day by preparing our meals for us. Every meal was rice and beans, and then an extra dish of some sort! So for breakfast we also got plantains and sausage! Yay! (Now being back in the US, I can say wholeheartedly that I miss Patricias food more than anything… I would give an arm and a leg for her plantains and sausage right now)
7:00am – we started work in the garden! Not far from our hosts home is a huge garden where many of the locals work! We got to start each morning with them weeding and planting lettuce and cilantro. This time was probably my favorite part of the day. Mornings in the garden always made for good conversation with each other and with the locals! Of course it also became a game of who could escape with the fewest ant bites or sun burns 🙂
9:30am – around this time, the locals finished up work for the day and would send us back to our house! They never work much later than 9:30 because the sun gets WAY too hot to stay out in the fields.
9:30am-12:00pm – every day we had a ton of free time in the late mornings! It’s always crazy feeling like you’ve lived an entire day by just 9:30 in the morning… In this time we all took some nice cold showers to cool down and wash off all the dirt, did our Bible time, took hammock naps if needed, and would spend time just hanging out in the shade or in front of our fan! We also used this time to prepare sermons, because we each had so many opportunities to preach at services across town!
12:00pm – we walked back over to Hector and Patricias house for lunch! More rice and beans, and usually some salad and papaya or watermelon! Watermelon is in season here right now, and our backyard is a literal papaya farm so we got fed a LOT of it. During lunch we usually got more vision from Hector about where we were headed for ministry that day!
1:00pm-2:00/3:00pm – a little bit more free time after lunch! We used this time to do team time, which usually looked like a Bible study, feedback time, worship, or anything else we could come up with! Sometimes we’d also walk to our little store for a cold drink or an ice cream!
3:00 – this time changed every day depending on where we drove to, but this is when we all pile into the bed of Hectors truck and ride to one of the nearby communities tucked in the jungle or right along the muddy beaches. Everyone we met in these communities either farmed or fished for a living, and it truly felt like we were straight out of a Bible story doing ministry that Jesus did. These afternoons consisted of door-to-door evangelism with our incredible translator Elias, and through this ministry we met so many people that deeply touched our hearts. On a daily basis we were getting to encourage those who felt they had lost hope, as well as hear amazing testimonies of the Lord’s faithfulness from believers who already knew where their hope was found.
5:30 – again, hold times loosely haha. But around this time we’d be picked up again by Hector, or by our friend David who also had a car. We’d get dropped off at one of the locations where local church services are held. Around three or four times a week, we had the opportunity to preach at our Pastors services in these communities. It was such a gift to be able to share the Word with the locals while also learning so much from them and their testimonies.
8:00 – time to hop in the truck again and head back to Patricia and Hector’s house, where Patricia has already set out food on the table for us to eat! HOW SWEET! More rice and beans of course, and sometimes chicken or tuna! I’ll say it, tuna really grew on me this month because it just hit different after such long and full days.
9:00 – after doing dishes, cleaning up, and saying goodnight to our host family, we walk back to our little house down the road and get ready for bed. For about an hour we just laugh together as we barricade the doors with our spare clothes to keep the big spiders out, spray bug spray on our sleeping pads, and try and make sure the fans are pointed at each of our bodies at least a little bit. It was always quite a struggle getting situated and comfortable, but as the days went by we managed to adjust to the heat and the ants and sleep like ROCKS… And then at 5:30 the next morning it was time to do it all over again.
So while this little schedule gives you an overview of how our days were spent in Rio Grande, words can never really describe all that the Lord did and walked us through in that time. For my team, March was a month of pressing in when community felt hard to choose, learning to love each other when it isn’t easy, pushing through discomfort to find the beauty in abandonment, and choosing to pour out to everyone we met from an overflow of the Father’s love rather than from our own strength. I’ll describe it like I answer anyone who asked how Costa Rica was: “It was HARD, but it was GOOD.”
My time team leading in Costa Rica was challenging in ways I didn’t see coming, but more importantly it was a BEAUTIFUL season in ways I never would have expected. I can’t come close to capturing in words how much team Refuge means to me, and how much each of them impacted me!! (Hadley, Sara, Coryn, Daisy, Bree, and Keerstin… if ya’ll are reading this I LOVE YOU SO MUCH and I am so proud of how each one of you chose growth in this season. I miss you all tons!)
I really wish it were as easy as capturing these seasons for you in a blog post, but trust me, it really isn’t haha! If you’d like to hear more of what the Lord taught me through team leading and through our ministries in Costa, let’s grab lunch together or hop on a FaceTime call! I’d love to tell you all about it! But to wrap this up, thank you all so much for continually following my journey and for all of your support that has made it all possible. This is still only the beginning of a lifetime of following and serving the Lord wherever He leads me, and I can’t wait to see where He leads next. Love y’all tons!
Reagan
