A pearl of great price

My friend Paola works at the YWAM base in San Jose, Costa Rica. She is beginning a ministry to women and children who have been trafficked and those who work in prostitution. Recently, she shared the stories of 3 women she has gotten to know.

Let me share the excerpt of one with you:

One day after I finished working I was going home and a group of guys took me and raped me. I was only 14. After that not knowing what to do, I told my dad and he never believed me. He even told me it was my own fault. When Ana was born I decided to give her to a family because I knew that I was too young to take care of a child. . . I started working on the streets as a prostitute out of desperation, I needed money and also I felt dirty after what happened to me. . . . A couple months ago I accepted Jesus into my heart and life, and I have already seen a lot of changes. I still work in the streets but I am tired of it and ready to stop this life style. Please pray for my kids and for strength on me, and wisdom for how to make the changes I need, and for a way out of this life…

So much pain, so much despair, yet in the midst of it, hope. I'm thankful for women like Paola and the others on her team who are reaching out to people who most of the world rejects. I don't know what to do in the face of so much brokenness, but I know the One who does. So, I pray. I pray for those who already work with hurting women. I pray for myself, that God would show me what he wants me to do beyond praying. I pray for the women around the world, trapped in a world of pain and degradation. And I pray for the women who work the streets just a few blocks east of where I'll be living. I pray that if it's God's will for us to start reaching out to them, he'll show us what to do and how to do it.

Please take a few minutes to read the rest of Paola's post and pray for these women.

1 year

1 year ago today, I arrived in Costa Rica to start my DTS.

Today, I'm graduating from the Children at Risk school.

In the past year, I've been to four countries, three for the first time: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Colombia. I lived for 5 months in both Costa Rica and Colombia. I visited friends in Ecuador that I hadn't seen in years. I made friends with people from all over the world. I shared my testimony and spoke from the pulpit in Spanish during church services. I started teaching at Luz y Vida. I fell in love. I had my heart broken. I had 4 places I considered "home", places I looked forward to coming back to when I was away, places where my photos stayed on the wall, my bed stayed made, my extra clothes were stored, and there were loved ones to eat dinner with. I sold my car. I learned dozens of songs in Spanish. I learned to cook gallo pinto and make arepas. I visited more churches than I can remember.

It's been a year full of changes. I wonder what the next year will bring?

10 reasons I'll miss Costa Rica

We call ourselves “La Familia Rara”, the strange family. After living together 24/7 for the last 2 months, we truly feel like family. We have our own traditions- a song we sing for grace while holding hands, a special DTS handshake, and the way we end prayer times with a group huddle and “uno,dos,tres, JESUS!”. We have our own inside jokes (just say “fuego” and see what happens, or ask one of us to finish the phrase “donde yo voy. . .) We tease each other and sometimes we drive each other crazy, but mostly, we love one another.

Alex- We’re alike in so many ways. We even find ourselves saying the same thing, at the same time, with the same inflection. It drives Alex crazy, but I think it’s funny. She always encourages me, notices when I’m not feeling great, and asks me how I’m really doing and makes me answer. She also gives me great hugs. Her desire to draw close to God, and the ways I’ve seen her work on overcoming her own fears during this DTS are awesome.

Anna- has an infectious laugh and the largest repertoire of cartoon voices and fake accents of anyone I know. As the third youngest person in our group who is also one of our group leaders, she constantly impresses me with her maturity and ability to lead. Her passion for God and to draw others into a passionate relationship with him is a blessing.

JT- is such a servant leader. His humility and habit of being the first to volunteer for anything we need inspire us all. JT’s ever-optimistic predictions of what the next day holds (5 star hotels, catered food, swimming pools) always keep us laughing. JT is so hungry and willing to grow spiritually and has grown so much during this DTS. He and his wife are also expecting their first baby, a son, in April!

Katie- is generous and loves to share. She’s a Bible scholar- her love of learning and digging deeper into scripture and the things of God make me want to read more non-fiction. Katie is honest about her own struggles in ways that encourage me to be more open. You can also always count on Katie to make you laugh.

Lito- is a really good listener. As our only male leader, and the fact that he’s known for being serious and reflective has earned him the position of the honorary “father” of our family. He also has a goofy side though and I love the way he’s able to not take himself too seriously.

Luis- We all expect him to be an evangelist or a Pastor. Luis impresses us with his natural preaching ability, and the way he can approach perfect strangers and easily start a conversation about God. His smile never fails to make me smile in return and his craziness makes us all laugh.

Manny- is my biggest help and encourager with Spanish. He’s not afraid to correct my mistakes, but he also notices when I’ve learned something new. I love talking to Manny- he’s really animated when he tells about something that happened to him, and he’s always willing to listen to my stories. He’s really striving to hear and obey God’s voice.

Reanna- is everyone’s little sister. I love her exuberance. Her Panamanian phrases and excitement over little things make us smile. The freedom she has when she worships God and her love of prayer and willingness to pray in public encourage me to be more like her.

Rebeca- reminds me of a princess with her femininity and grace. She’s always friendly to everyone and has an ability to make people feel loved. Her desire to serve God is evident in her life, and as the youngest member of our group it’s really encouraging to see someone so young who is so dedicated to following God. I can’t wait to see how He uses her.

Rossela- is the wisest one in our group. She is good at giving hugs, encouragement, comfort, and advice. She loves to rejoice with us. Just being around Rossela makes me happy. We love to teach her new random English expressions like “gee golly” and “let’s blow this popsicle stand” so we can hear her say them in her amazing accent.

Free Hugs

This past week we've spent in Monteverde, a tourist hotspot in the cloud forest of Costa Rica. If you've heard about Costa Rica's ziplining tours, this is where they were born. It's also a good spot for tours of coffee plantations and hikes to see some of Costa Rica's amazing biodiversity.

We're not here as tourists though. Being a gringo in a tourist town, but not being there to do the usual tourist things is a bit unusual. In most of our other destinations the local church we worked with had our time booked with church services, youth activities, school presentations, and manual labor projects. Not so much here in Monteverde. We've had our fair share of church services and activities with the youth, but there is also a lot of time to be creative and reach out to the locals and tourists.

The downtown center of Santa Elena (where all the tour booking offices are, as well as more restaurants, bars, bakeries, hostels and internet cafes then I've seen in one place before) is very small, so we decided to make it our center of operations. One day we split up into groups and picked up trash. Another day we brought along a guitar and sang praise and worship songs by a fountain. Several people came over to talk to us and a guy named Chris from California even took a turn with the guitar and played "Better is one day in your Courts" for us. We started giving out free hugs too, which opened doors for more conversation.

While we were singing and hanging out, we noticed all the taxi drivers just watching us and decided it would be fun to do something to bless them. So, Friday night we cooked a big batch of rice and a pot of beans, and Saturday morning I made gallo pinto. All of us went into town, to give out gallo pinto and more free hugs. The free food opened lots of doors for conversation. There was a group of university students there interviewing foreigners for an English exam. I got to chat with one of the girls for quite awhile and shared about what we were doing and why.

The plan for tomorrow is to bake cookies and then pass them out with the gospel message in a bag. We're excited that people have noticed us and are talking about what we're doing. They're curious, and open to know more. At youth group on Saturday evening one of the girls told me that her Mom's friend, who is a taxi driver told her Mom about the group giving out free pinto. Pray that as we go back on Tuesday and Wednesday we'll be able to share the gospel een more clearly, and that people who have seen our practical ways fo loving them will be ready to accept God's eternal love for them.

Some of my favorite photos from outreach in Talamanca

Sunday, October 4

Today we officially started outreach. At 7 we were at the river loading all our luggage into a dugout canoe to start the trip to Shuabb.

Across the river and up the hill we waited for the tractor to come pick us up and drop us off at the church where we led the church service at 9.

Monday, October 5

We helped out around the church this morning, then Rossela and I headed over to the elementary school to see if they needed any help. They didn’t, but we enjoyed meeting the teacher and students.

Tuesday, October 6

Everyone here is so generous. They’ve brought us so much fresh fruit- bananas, plantains, pejiballes (the orange looking palm fruit in the front. They taste a bit like squash), lemons, and mamones (the prickly red fruit).

Wednesday, October 7

We left this morning on the tractor again. It was sad to say goodbye to the children we had made friends with.

Andy and Randy.

Thursday, October 8

Today was our free day. We went into Bribri to use the internet. Bribri is the biggest town around, and it’s not that big.

Saturday, October 10

There was extra time today for devotions and worship.

Today we went hiking to a waterfall with the church youth group.

Greetings from Bribri!

I´m writing from an internet cafe in Bribri, a small town in Talamanca Costa Rica. This part of Costa Rica is an indigenous reserve. We´ve been on outreach for about 2 weeks now. For the first 4 days we were in Shuabb which is a little community in the jungle. To get there you walk from Bambu (a town where the only phones are payphones and cell phones) down to the river. You pay a guy in a dugout canoe to take you across the river. Then you walk up the muddy hill to the road. If you´re lucky, you´ve talked to the guy with the tractor and he´s there to take you to Shuabb. Otherwise, you walk 4 kilometers to the village. We walked once and took the tractor once.

In Shuabb there is an elementary school with 19 students, 1 full time teacher and a teacher who comes once a week to teach Bribri, the indigenous language. There´s a small church and a lot of jungle. People´s houses are pretty spread out, some along the ¨main¨ road (only traffic I ever saw were the tractor guy and one motorcycle. I´m pretty sure you can´t get a car in there), some farther back on trails in the jungle.

While we were in Shuabb we spent the mornings helping with church projects- cleaning, repairing, and putting protective sealant on wood beams. We also started helping a guy in the community build a house, but had to stop since his beams weren´t cut yet. The afternoons we hid from the rain, rested, and planned for the evening. Each evening we were there we had an activity we invited the community to. The first night we had a movie night and showed The End of the Spear. The next night we had a children´s program and played games, did our favorite drama, and sang songs. We even got the adults to participate in some of the games. The last night we geared our program towards adults and had Katie share her testimony and broke into groups of men and women to share. However, Rossela and I took the kids out and played games and sang songs and told the story of David and Goliath by the light of 2 flashlights, so I don´t know exactly how it went.

The evenings with the community were really fun. We had about 20 people each night, a lot of families came back each night. It´s a very warm, welcoming culture, but the people in general are pretty shy. We couldn´t get the kids to anwer any questions during our children´s night activity! I think the Bribri culture in general is more punctual than Latin culture, which surprised me. People started showing up to our activities 15 minutes early and I think everyone was there by the start time. People kept bringing us gifts of food. Pejiballes (palm fruit) are pretty tasty. We also got a lot of mamones, which are like lychees. Bananas grow all over the place and we had 4 bunches by the time we left (bunches meaning the whole giant thing that growns on the tree). We had fresh oranges and lemons too.

Today we left Margarita, another small community, but not as indigenous or jungly as Shuabb. We spent 6 days there, working with the local church. We helped with several church services, did programs in 2 local elementary schools, helped with some work projects at a school and the church and hung out with the local kids and youth. The highlight of our time there for me was hiking with the youth from the church to a beautiful waterfall deep in the jungle. We had lunch there and went swimming in the pool at the bottom.

We´re spending the next couple of days in Volio, helping at a Mennonite church. On Monday we´ll head back to San Jose for a few days and I´ll post photos then!

Thank you for your prayers and giving!

The New Property!

We’re moving! The word on the street is that we will be moving on or before September 20. YWAM San Jose is buying and remodeling an old coffee processing plant. The building is really quirky and fun, and the property is large with a banana grove out back, a river out front, and a bamboo wall along one side. There’s also what looks like a pool that used to be used to store coffee beans before they were processed.

On Wednesday night almost everyone from the base went over to pray for the new property. We prayed, sang, and then took out our crayons and markers and got to work on the walls. We covered the drywall that the guys had just put up with scripture promises. It was so encouraging to walk around and see God’s word written everywhere. Once the walls were more or less covered, we stuck around to help a bit. My contribution was helping to hang drywall. I put in a grand total of 6 screws. Don’t laugh yet. They’re using metal support beams, so I had to drive the screws through the drywall and the metal beams and it was hard work. I was quite proud of my accomplishment.

On Friday night we all helped move heavy machinery from the current base to the new property, and then stayed to play sardines. We had so much fun, but let me tell you, walking through a dark banana grove in the dark is scary. But, now that I’ve done that, I think that I won’t find the property nearly as intimidating. Of course the dark crawl spaces and the pits underneath the floor with grates over them are still a bit scary, but hey, they certainly make the building interesting.

Poas

Yesterday we took a trip to Volcan Poas. It’s about 2 hours away from San Jose, up in the mountains. The air temperature got colder and colder as we went up. Just 10 km. away from the park, we stopped at a souvenir/snack shop by the road and bought some of the reddest sweetest strawberries I’ve had in a long time.

We thought we were going to freeze when we got out of the bus, so we decided to walk to the crater as fast as we could. The day was very grey and overcast, so we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to see the crater, since we heard that it’s often covered by clouds after 10:30, but when we got there at 11, the crater was clear. It was such an amazing site. The water temperature in the crater is about 104 degrees, and the air temperature was probably close to 50 (we could see our breath when we left), so there were clouds of steam rolling out of the volcano.

After admiring the volcano for awhile and taking a ton of pictures, we took one of the trails through the woods. The woods were actually a little bit spooky. It was dark and overgrown and foggy. But there were also a lot of neat plants- giant fern trees and bromeliads and other plants with giant leaves.

We ended our day with a trip to the coffee shop, where the hot chocolate I drank was super yummy, and warmed my freezing hands.

Small Town Living

Tabarcia seemed like a picture-perfect stereotypical Central American town to me. The town was built around the catholic church.

There were a couple of small “pulperias” or corner stores that sell everything. This particular store sold everything from machetes and rubber boots to soccer balls, batteries, toilet paper, chocolate, fresh tomatoes and probably just about anything else you could imagine.

There was the elementary school and a high school

And just around the corner from them, a snack shop that always had a crowd of students in their uniforms in front of it.

The daycare doubled as a nutrition center, and was right next door to the clinic and the red cross.

I really enjoyed the small town atmosphere. It was quiet and friendly, and after being in town only a week, we had already made friends with some of the local kids who we ran into almost every day.