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.