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!

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.

Outreach in Tabarcia!

Last week instead of having class, we headed to Tabarcia, a small town in the mountains about an hour outside of San Jose. Isaac, who is on staff here at YWAM San Jose is from Tabarcia, and he talked to his pastor who set up the opportunity for us to come. Working together as a team all week was good preparation for outreach, where we’ll be doing the same sort of thing for 8 weeks.

We were able to be involved in a lot of different types of ministries. We helped clean, paint, dismantle cabins, cook, prepare church services, and present children’s programs. We also hung out in the plaza, played soccer with the high-schoolers, picked up trash around the neighborhood and practiced our dramas.

Here are some pictures from the week.

Me teaching Sunday school class

JT and I as Arragachito and Arragachita in our children's drama

Reanna and I in the mask drama on Saturday night.

Katie and I picking up trash

Disassembling the cabin (see the sparks flying?)

Kathia smoking out a wasp nest

hard at work

Chove, Rossela, me, Katie and Mariana in the back of a truck on the way to work.