I’ve been coming to Costa Rica since 2005. When I get here it feels like home! I love this place! It reminds me of the island of Hawaii, the Big Island with the lush tropical foliage and volcanoes.
We stay at Hotel Casa Franco which is like a B&B but the beds are more like nicer hostel beds. Food is great, especially Franco’s delicious homemade secret recipe jelly! And the coffee is AMAZING!
Yesterday, we started our day off with worship at Carlos’ church, known as the Purple Church to many since it used to be painted purple. Now it’s white and beige with a white ceramic tile floor. The worship band was fantastic! It wasn’t going to be an ordinary church service though. The 40 youth were on a weekend retreat too. We all got into groups and walked the neighborhood handing out devotional calendars. It was so cool! At first, I noticed that nobody was walking the neighborhood so I wondered if we were going door-to-door instead. As we started, people just appeared on the streets! Thank you God for providing people who needed this devotional calendar. We prayed with one group of people and we handed out all calendars from our group!! We asked if they had prayer requests and also invited them to Carlos’ church.
We ended church service with one of our team members, Kerry, giving a sermon, “Do you love Jesus enough to be Radical?” to everyone. Ruth sang “Mighty to Save” and then we walked to the Musanni Bakery for some delicious, fresh-baked pastries. For lunch we had homemade empanadas. WOW…they were amazing! As some of us stayed behind to help decorate for the youth returning from camp, some of us headed to WalMart.
At 3pm we had a special back to school children’s program for families of the church, ex-inmates, and current inmates. We had a very large group of people, approximately 40. They families chose a value that represents their family and drew a poster and presented it. Each family presented their core family value: communication, kindness, respect, love, sharing, honesty, faith, obedience, and family. We had a beautiful moment of prayer time with the families and prayed with one women who just found out her 24 year old nephew had just passed away from toxic fumes at work. There was a women named Ana who we prayed for. Her husband Didier is in APAC. We told her we were going to APAC on Monday and would pray with him.
We had cake and refreshments for them afterwards and also handed out a large package of school supplies. One major highlight was seeing Maria, an ex-inmate that was on a Kairos that we helped with!
For supper we had fried chicken and fries and stayed at the church for the next event of welcoming the 50 people returning from youth camp. Some youth gave testimonies, there was a dance presentation and lots of fun as they ended a camp that really impacted their lives. The theme was “No one will be lost”. Ruth also sang “Broken Vessels/Amazing Grace”.
We came back to Hotel Franco and crashed. What a blessing of a day! One of my teammates actually has major details of our day, but I just wanted to give an overview.
Missing my quilting, but maybe someday I can share how to make memory quilts with people here so they can provide an income for their family!
Happy Quilting! More to come later!
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