We´re Working

Hey Everyone! It´s about 945 Costa Rica time on Tuesday. The internet at the center is actually down, so we haven´t been able to give you any updates until today when I had a chance to come into town. The flight and bus ride went well Saturday, and we arrived at the Rural Methodist Center just in time for supper. The food is GREAT. We stopped at a little mountain-side restuarant on the way to the center on Saturday and had our first taste of Costa Rican food. They had filet minion for about $6! Juanita, our cook, does a superb job. Lots of rice and beans of course but lots of vegatable and a good bit of meat and fruit mixed in there.

Sunday we had the opportunity to join in a baptismal service with a church from the nearby town of Santa Rosa. They came down to the center and shared communion and then held their baptisms in the creek at the center. The pastor invited Lynn to help perform the baptisms so she and their pastor baptised about 10 young people and one older lady. Later in the afternoon, we worshiped with another congregation in the village of El Mirador (El Mirador is only half a mile away from the Rural Methodist Center and is basically a shanty town, but many of the homes have been rebuilt over the years with the help of mission groups and the Methodist Center) . Some of the His Image students among us sang and Lynn shared a message about David. It was a great experience to fellowship and worship with believers from a different culture. Many of the songs were unfamiliar, and most of us don´t speak any Spanish, but to know that we were worshiping the Lord with them was enough.

Everyone is having to practice a lot of patience and flexability. Most of the time we really don´t know what we´re about to do next or how long we´ll have to wait between things. Time definately moves at a different pace.

We got to work yesterday at several different sites. One group is in Santa Rosa working on a church bathroom and installing a septic system. Another is in El Mirador improving a home there that´s made of no more than a few logs and tin roofing. Still a third is working on the church in El Mirador demolishing an old building to make way for a community center where there will be a food program. While the rest of us were working in the village, some of our students played with the children in a field at the bottom of the hilside and even learned a good bit of Spanish as they got to know them. And of course, we´re having VBS each day in El Mirdor. We had probably 30 kids yesterday. Most of our people felt like VBS was chaos, but the staff here assured us that our chaos was smooth sailing compared with how VBS often goes. The kids loved it, though, so that´s all that matters. After VBS finished, Children would run up to those of us on cunstruction and show us their Bible Buddies (the plastic figures that represent the Bible Point for the day), and the boys would come up to us and give us a high-five.

Along with working pretty hard, we´re already beginning to grow a lot closer together. When you sweat together and reflect on the day together you can´t help but experience Christian fellowship.

Please continue to pray for health and attitudes. Both have been pretty good so far, but we still have the better part of a long, great week ahead of us. Also, please pray for our hearts to be open and the hearts of those we´re servering. We are beginning to see God here working in us and through us, and the potential for Him to work is immeasuarable.

God Bless!