It is hard to believe that we have been here for 3 weeks and that we will be leaving soon. The days have seemed long and the weeks short. Much has happened in the time that we have been here and we have grown individually and closer as a team.
While some may say we have not done much ministry this month, I find we have had a good balance of ministry and rest. We have learned much in our time here at Mighty Rivers and some of these lessons have made us stronger as a team and individuals.
We spent one week helping level out a patio area in the unfinished house next to ours. What this entailed was gathering rocks and dirt to make the area as flat as possible. We then were given concrete mix, dirt, lime, and gravel and instructed in the finer points of mixing concrete by hand, on the ground, with shovels. This was very hard work and while it was tiring, we were smiling and joking through the process. So I can now say that I know how to mix concrete by hand (though I would not suggest any of you consider hiring me any time soon) lol
After completing this project we began to get ready to leave. Leave you say, but you only told about one of your weeks, what did you do the rest of the time in Costa Rica? Well we did not leave the country, we just departed from our ministry site for a week to go work with some contacts our ministry host works with regularly. So we hopped in a minibus with our day packs and were driven south to the boarder of Costa Rica and Panama. We were driven partway up a mountain and then we hiked for another 10 minutes with our bags and enough groceries for the week to reach our contact’s home.
While we could not see the exterior, the interior was filled with light and the smiling faces of hosts who were excited to meet us all. They welcomed us in with open arms and made us a part of the family. The first day we split into two teams, the guys went to the school to help teach English, while the ladies stayed at the house to teach a baking class. We were very excited to teach this class and in this excitement we forgot one tiny little detail…a bread recipe. When the women showed up we went in to a slight panic realizing we did not have a bread recipe. As we began to think through our options we realized that I had a pizza dough recipe. Since this was the only recipe we had we went with it, but felt bad because we had not sauce or cheese to even stick on this pizza dough. So we taught the class and found a jar of Prego sauce which we used to top the pizza and apologized that we didn’t have any cheese. The women who had come to learn didn’t seem bothered by the fact that we did not have cheese and seemed quite excited to be learning how to make pizza dough. Our host later explained that it was very expensive to buy pizza in the closest town. I was amazed to hear this and excited at how God had used our forgetfulness to introduce a pizza dough recipe.
We spent another two days in Talamanca. These days were filled with smiles, laughter and warm hospitality. We really did not even want to leave at the end of our three days there, but leave we did with sad smiles and invitations to come and visit anytime. We walked a little ways down the mountain to a tiny village where we hopped on a school bus and headed further down the mountain so we could catch another bus to Puerto Viejo.
We spent two days in Puerto Viejo relaxing and enjoying the small oceanside city life. While it was nice to take a break and explore a costal city, it was nice to travel “home” to Mighty Rivers.
This past week we have done something different each day. On Monday we did a prayer walk through Siquirres for a few hours. It was really interesting to see how the Lord moved and reveled different things to us. I also really enjoyed being able to pray over the city as a whole as well as a couple of individuals we met and over the schools and a church located in the city.
On Tuesday we deep cleaned part of the kitchen in preparation for our departure. Wednesday we taught English at one of the local sch ools for a few hours and also weeded the garden. On Thursday we taught English at another school for a few hours to a smaller group of students. And then on Friday we divided into two groups. One group worked on the upper porch in the house next to us while another group worked on a building a greenhouse. On Saturday, we walked back to the second school that we taught English at and painted the exterior a light blue. It was fun to finally get to paint.
That is all I have for right now. We are leaving for Nicaragua on Wednesday so please be in prayer as we travel across the country.
