Memoirs from Costa Rica

I'm going back to Costa Rica this summer for a mission trip, and so this post is probably 2 years overdue, BUT I DIDN'T HAVE A BLOG BACK THEN SO CUT ME SOME SLACK!!! Ok.  NM I dug out some picture for each day.   None of them are me though. 8 days.  Here we go!! WARNING long post.  Hey dude.  I spent all morning and noon on this.  Just read it.  :P  This was a mission trip.  I gave my testimony and spoke a bunch.




Day 0 1/2

We got on the plane at 11:30.  PM.

It was pretty nice from the view, but I got one of the bunk rooms up top.  There were slugs and ..... thingys crawling on the opened-for-a-month windows.
I adjusted my bed so that it wasn't touching the wall.  I slept pretty well that night.

WOAH WOAH WOOOOOAAHH First, I must tell you something else that happened.

The church we were helping was called Sindero De Luz which means Church of light.

The place was huge.  It was like a shopping mall. On the right, there was the main worship place.  There was a cafe, and a book thing.  Two stories.  NO NO You don't understand the intensity of this thing.  We could drive 3 vans in side by side without any trouble at all. (Assuming the building wasn't packed)There were chain links and gate type walls.  Wind blowing through it.  In the back of this big room, there was a trailer building.  Yes. A full sized trailer.  A BUILDING IN A BUILDING. There's also a basement with about 7 large rooms.

The coins over there are made of plastic.  Thicker than tupperware, but still plastic.  People dropped them a lot.  I found coins.  A lot.  I could have bought a caramel flavor eraser shaped candy thingy. About 300cents on my first day.  (Don't ask me how much that is)  I gave a 10cent to Tyler, who's older than me, but not too good at finding coins.

Have you ever made a decision that you knew would screw you up, but took it anyways?  We need a little history.  This isn't my first mission trip.  It's my first OVERSEAS trip.  I went to Mexico, and I told this really really good joke.  Then on this trip, my team leader, Shawn, asked me to do my Testimony in front of 200 pastors.  2 days before the trip.  I took the opportunity.  I'm glad I did it now. Though.  Unfortunately, it was 200 pastors AND FAMILY.   Like where Jesus feeds the 5000 MEN.  Meaning more women and children.  That doubled it to about 500 people.  This pic sums up the size of the room.  Actually, it's longer than this.

I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
screwed.

 You see, the church is trying to start a Kids Small Group thing, and we were there to help kick it off.

After a speech from MY church's children's pastor, he called me up.  I did pretty well .I had some experience with talking in front of people.  ARRRRGHNOOO  I made ONE slip.  I said "growth" instead of "spiritual growth" and everyone went "ho ho ho".  After I finished speaking, I got hi5s from my team mates and sat back down.   (that was short wasn't it)
We ate tortillas for lunch.

Day 2

We went to the church service.  In the afternoon, the church had a Orientation and Leaders training. 

Day 3

animals"  I was like:

DUDE we're not in NEW YORK.  Most kids here haven't seen mountains or pet animals, and communion isn't to taste and most kids don't know what communion is and and and and and...  I decided I would carry the poster up, then put it down and not use it. (HEEECK NO)  I had the momentary advantage of speaking rudimentary Spanish, and so I used a pre-thought improvisation.  (translated)
Let's say you're going to school.  You need to put on your shoes off the self.  What would you use? 
And this kid yelled Pie!! (meaning foot) and everyone cracked up.

We went to a school in the after noon and did testimonies.

The Pastor Giovanni played ping pong with Pastor Steve.

Day 4

This lady had a pet rabbit and two chickens.

We went to an  elementary school.  And they did this cool play.  We did a mini-church service, and prayed with the principal of the school.

One funny thing that happened was: when there was at the school, there was this girl and her older brother from my team, and this kid walked up to them and was like "Chino!! sn dja nkjn dkjsna Chino
Well, the only word I caught was tu, and chino
The kids were all excited about it, and one kid walked up to me and asked  
"eres chino"  Or something like that and suddenly, I remembered!  Chino means CHINESE OHHH YEAAA.  Then I calmly explained to them, in plain english, (JK)
that my grandparents were chinese but I was American. :-D
 
It was a bummer cause the government was improving the roads around that area. Unfortunately, they did all the road-ripping at once, THEN they moved to building new roads.  So we drove on dirt alot. BTW it's the rainey season :P
 Out van got stuck, and so we walked there.

Meanwhile, the next day, we went to

 Jaco. We crossed this bridge with a TON of crocs underneath. 

AAAAHH coool dude!1!

Also, sorry that the pictures and some text is in the picture, but my dad put a security thingy on them ,so you need a password if you're on a diffrent server (or something like that)
P.S If you're wondering why I don't post pictures of me during ministry, it's cause there are a lot of 'faces' in them. It's kind of funny that you were wondering because a similar thing happened to another team member.  This other kid's mom is fluent in spanish, and she was constantly working as a translator.  The only time she could take pictures was when our team was eating.  :P  So when she got back, her family and friends thought the only thing she did there was eat. :DDDDD

We celebrated Pastor Giovanni's birthday at Jaco.   We ate pizza!! yeaaaaa Costa Rica food isn't bad, it's just its uber healthy, and it isn't made out of fat(bacon), HFCS(pretty much everything we eat nowdays)  and it was time that we ate some vegetables.  (pizza) [that's a  joke]


ARGHH this took me so long to write so sorry of it sounds detached. :D This was two years ago BTW so it has more facts than emotions. (And because I'm a guy) I'm going again on Thurday. :D I updated my testimony and stuffs. :-) I kinda cut off the end. Sorry. :-) I'll make a V2 in a few weeks! :D