Costa Rica-Pura Vida 2012

Ok, so I promised that I'd give you a run down of my mission trip to Costa Rica. Oh, and share some pics.
Seeing as how my only registered followers are already friends on my facebook, I'll try to share a few here that they haven't seen.

We left on Sunday (our flight was at 10:00a, so we were at the airport at 8:00a.) No real problems at either airport, our flight was great. There was one bag from the Ocala group that got ripped (BADLY) and we ended up having to find her a replacement bag while we were in San Jose.

At OIA waiting to get on the tram

 Last year, we worked at a larger church on the outskirts of Alajuela, in Tuetal.  Our work this year was at a church in the midst of San Jose. Iglesia Evangelica Metodista "Monte de los Olivos" is a much smaller church but possesses no less passion. The church building itself is over 90 years old, and has recently suffered significant structural damage from an earthquake. Needless to say, our work was definitely not lacking. Unfortunately, the permit to repair the roof did not come through in time for us to be able to work on that. So, we switched gears and worked on the interior and exterior walls.

I had told Danny to inform Pastor Gustavo that I could paint a mural for him if he liked. So, I packed in my suitcase a painting kit that I had recently been able to purchase through a generous birthday gift from a neighbor. I was actually a bit worried that the kit would be confiscated out of my checked bag. However, God prevailed, and the paint made it to San Jose.

The first day in San Jose (Sunday) we checked into our hotel, Hotel Villa Tournon, and then dressed for Sunday evening Church service. The congregation at Monte de los Olivos had changed their Sunday morning worship schedule so that they could welcome us on Sunday evening.

The Praise Team

Jr. and the lyrics

William translated

We realized that Sunday evening while doing a walk through of the church campus, that there was more work than we could ever possibly hope to finish. So the prayer is that God will bring more mission teams behind us. We determined that our main focus would be scraping the walls, plastering them, and painting them. We would also work on replacing some over head lighting, purchase beams for the sanctuary roof, put in a dividing wall for the Sunday School room/kitchen, paint the outside fence and gate, and if God saw it possible-paint a mural in the Sunday School room.

The awesome thing about mission trips is that they always teach you the wonder of patience. Whether its because you have to sit around and wait at the hardware store, realize you're missing scrapers, realize that you got the wrong type of paint, realize there is only one jenky ladder, that the overhead lights you want to buy are extremely expensive, that the walls are crumbling and will require several layers of plaster, that there's a hurricane coming through over your heads and you won't be able to plaster the outside walls, or that you have no power saw and are going to have to cut all the 2x4's for the wall with a hand saw. Oh and you have to get everything done in four days and most of you don't speak Spanish.

Monica and her "scraper"

Matt and his "ladder"

Either you spend your spare time laughing or waste it crying. We mainly laughed. And sang.

I'm going to make this a double post. So I'll finish the story tomorrow.

Lots to do. . .

So, I'm turning 30 in 21 days. Depressing.

Been working on lots of projects for the past month. The envelope project took up a lot of my time, but the rest has been filled with updating the inside of my parents house.

I haven't taken any pictures of it yet. I'll post some when it's all done, hopefully.

I've painted the walls of mom's room, and set her up with some new bookcases. All in the name of making her life easier. I've been really frustrated with the fact that there's nothing available in terms of practical furniture for people in wheelchairs. What you do find ends up costing ridiculous amounts of money. So in the end, you have to be really creative with what you can find at places like IKEA.

I love IKEA. We found two bookcases, some wall shelves, a bedside table, storage boxes, and blinds for mom's room the other day. Great stuff. Great fun for me and mom. . .not so much when I had to go through the self-check out, but oh well.

We really should go buy some stock in LOWES, seeing as how much we've been frequenting them lately. The only excuse is that mom and dad have lived in this house for twenty years and never done anything to update since it was built back in 1991. Add to that the fact that mom's wheelchair is really rough on the cabinets and door frames, and well this refreshing was way over due.

The hope is that we'll get all of this work done before the big family birthday party in June. Which is interesting, because all of our birthdays are in May. Today is actually my grandfather's birthday. Russ's is next Thursday. Mine is the next Thursday. Dad's is the next Wednesday, and mom's is the next Thursday. So, we decided that the first weekend of June would be appropriate enough, lol.

AND. . .I'm going to Costa Rica the second weekend of June. . .I can't wait. . .this will be my second trip there. . .last year I went to Alajuela in mission with our young adult group at church. This year the same group is going, but we're going to San Jose to work on a different church.

So, be looking forward to pictures of all the work at the house and of the tropical lushness of Costa Rica.

I'll leave you with this entertaining video from the Muppets new movie.

Vaya Con Dios!