My team and I spent 3 days of our month in Costa Rica at my old stomping grounds, Shiroles. Shiroles is in the southwest jungle of Costa Rica and is located in the Talamanca Region. I have spent short amounts of time the past 4 years working with different ministry organizations in this part of Costa Rica so it was a blast being able to take my team there and how them around.
This month my team is doing unsung heroes, which means we travel to different locations throughout the country looking for ministries, churches, or other Christian organizations that can potentially partner with the World Race and host future teams. Since I had been to Shiroles multiple times I already had a few places in mind. I introduced my team to Pastor Molina who I had stayed with and worked with before a few times. This man’s mission is to unite the community by working with other local pastors in the area to love the locals. He does this by doing work for them, provide food at times, providing a safe place to meet, and many other amazing things, all centered around our Savior Jesus Christ. His focus is not just for the kids, or just for the youth, or just for the elderly, but he does things for all ages. During my time there I held kids camps, which included bible stories, skits, arts and crafts, games and many other things that allowed us to get the gospel across and share God’s love in a tangible way. I remember walking around to the houses and telling them that we were going to have a kids program the next day. We only got to talk to a few people and even less kids, but word spread because the next day we were blown away by the outcome. Close to 150 kids showed up and were able to hear some bible stories, enjoy some refreshments, and play a GIANT game of soccer. God is always faithful and if we have faith in him then he will never cease to amaze us. Also, we did house visits because the focus in this area is very relational. We would go to a few houses, talk to them, listen to them, pray for them, and sometimes eat with them (my favorite part :)). Along with this, we would do labor and projects that needed to be done by the families to continue to share love and show that we genuinely care about them.
While we were visiting Pastor Molina, he actually had a team with him from the states. They were working on finishing his new church building on his property that I had started a few years prior. What a blessing it was to see how far it had come and to know that I had a part in furthering the vision of Pastor Molina. The property that the church is located on has 6 new bathrooms, a kitchen, multiple rooms for teams to stay in, and a giant field for soccer or other fun things that can be done with the community. This is a great place to dig in relationally and share the great news of Jesus because the community is very friendly and will open their doors to you. Pastor Molina is a great man of God who doesn’t have many earthly belongings, but what he does have is a big heart for his community and for following Gods plan for him to bring heaven to earth in this place.
