The Beginning

Wow I can’t believe it’s been 3 weeks already. Things sure did pick up into high speed last week! Boredom is an idea that is long gone. This past week we had a group from Asbury come work with us. It was a group of kids and their parents. We did several projects, mostly working with the children here in Calle Blancos. We had an amazing opportunity to visit the local elementary school and do the children’s program for 2 days. This was the first time they have allowed a religious group to present something in their school. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a relationship between the school and the church. We also took the group to do house visits, and also to visit a squatter town to evangelize. This was such a great experience for the team to see how so many families live here. We ended the week by having a birthday party for the children in the community and over 200 people came. I believe the word to describe that day was a chaotic blessing. Anything we had planned went out of the window with that many people, however God provided and we had enough food and birthday cake to serve everyone. I’m so glad I got to share that time with the team who came!

Speaking of birthdays, I got to spend my 23^rd birthday here in Costa Rica. Saturday night at the youth group they surprised me with a cake and also surprised my by putting my face in the cake. However that was better than the alternative. I was told to be truly welcomed to Costa Rica; I had to do the tradition birthday wish. At home birthdays are accompanied by a spanking for how many years you are… Here they smash one egg on your head for each year!! I walked on eggshells (pun intended) the whole weekend. Thank goodness they decided to have the whole church sing to me instead! I ended my birthday by going to eat Pizza with Carlos and Karla. It was so great to just sit and enjoy each other’s company and not talk about things we need to do.

This week will be more routine like. I started teaching English classes at the church. I am teaching one beginner’s class, one children’s class and one advanced class. I am so excited to start teaching again! I have truly missed it. I am so excited to have another group of students, because I have missed my students from Auburn so much.

I finally feel like things are starting here and I can’t wait to see God at work in each aspect.