Costa Rica - Day 4

An inspiring devotion that centered on gratitude started our morning. As we each shared something or someone that we were thankful for there were many tears, lots of laughter, and more close bonding of our newly formed friend group.

After devotion, we had a great breakfast of cheese quesadilla pancakes, rice and beans, and fruit. The cooks clearly love us because they are treating us very well. After breakfast, once again, we divided up to serve at our two locations.

Our VBC team headed back to preschool to spend another great day with some amazing kiddos. The day included a get to know you game, music, a craft, and a Bible story about Hannah focused on the theme, God Loves Us When We Are Sad. Pretty sure our team will be very sad to leave these darling kids at the end of the week!

One of our VBC campers celebrated his 7th birthday today. He asked if our mission volunteers would sing ‘happy birthday’ to him in English. Luckily, he didn’t want them to sing in Spanish! He was beaming as he watched us singing and waving joy sticks. Then his friends and teachers joined the celebration by singing to him in his native language.

A tasty lunch of pork, rice, beans, and plantains was prepared by the staff cooks. As lunch ended rain, rain, and more rain ushered in the afternoon recreation time. The camp has a neat preschool focused playground covered in a tin roof. The downpour was so loud against the roof we couldn’t hear each other, but it did not deter the energy and fun for the 14 children or the leaders who got to spend the day with them.

The construction team headed out right after breakfast (this has kept us from having to do dishes and we aren’t sad about that) back to Santa Marta to do more stucco wall work. Before we could actually begin our journey, we had to stop and have a tire repaired. It felt a little like Nascarbecause they left us in our seats and did some crazy quick moving around, while lots of hissing noises were going on. In just a couple of minutes, we were cleared to get back on the track and start racing toward our destination.

We contractor types were pretty proud of our work yesterday and upon seeing what we had done, decided we were going to finish an entire room today! Big dreams. But we did it! There will still need to be additional coats of stucco added tomorrow, but we at least one coat on every one of those walls. Working together, we found our groove!

Just as we were really hitting our stride, we smelled something amazing wafting around our worksite. Our hopeful hearts, and trusty noses, thought fried chicken, but that wouldn’t be prepared for such a large work crew. To our great delight, it was indeed fried chicken for lunch – so delicious – rice, cucumber and tomato salad, mango slices, and peanut butter and jelly for sandwiches.

Early afternoon our VBC pals reached out to let us know that it was pouring down rain, but we managed to get the entire workday in before a few little sprinkles came our way. The rain met us about halfway back to our home away from home, but not in time to shut down our wall building production. We would have worked through the adversity, we are tough like that.

Tomorrow our teams are mixing it up a little and after a decent amount of whining about the heat and hard construction work we had been subjected to, by the end of the day our builders were rethinking our plans to switch to VBC. At this point, there are still hard decisions to be made.Details to follow.

When the weary construction team returned at the end of the day, we were once again greeted by our peers with cheers, applause, and laughter!

After quick and really amazing showers, we met in the common area to share details of our day. There was a very aggressive game of Skip-Bo going on and challenges thrown down for a Farklerematch (I didn’t cheat but there is still some doubt).

Dinner didn’t disappoint! We had rice, chicken with mushrooms, some kind of magic squash dish, and papaya. Seriously, that squash . . . I don’t normally eat it, but wow these people worked some kind of miracle with that stuff!

After dinner we had devotions, and not surprisingly, we seem to keep circling around the same themes . . . cherish the moments, give thanks, and the amazing relationships that we are building.

We are finally back in our little bunkhouse, and it sounds more like a kids slumber party. So much laughter, so much fun, and the joy of knowing that today we might have made the world a little better. It’s difficult to imagine a better way to end the day than with dear friends, looking forward to what tomorrow has in store.

Check back tomorrow for more details of our great adventure. God willing!