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2023 - Final Trip Thoughts and Reflections

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  Abigail High – My main high was getting to spend time with people and get to know them. I absolutely love people and so I loved feeling like their sister. I also loved communicating with and pouring into people and kids who didn’t even speak the same language. It seemed like a glimpse of heaven, especially with the Costa Rican worship. Growth – One thing I struggle with a lot of the time is just being myself. God placed people on this trip who helped me feel comfortable and to be able to be myself. God grew me in being able to get to know people and talk to random people which I don’t usually do, even though I want to. Takeaway – I realized I don’t treat my actual brothers and sisters as well as I do my brothers and sisters in Christ. I also saw how much joy everyone has and how hard everyone works for every little thing. It has inspired me to not take things for granted and to not be lazy. Alena High – I think this trip was such an incredible opportunity for me to grow and learn mor

2023 - Day 9 & 10 - Our Last Day and the Adventure Home

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Because our flights were cancelled the day before, the students had the opportunity to sleep in on Saturday and hang out at the house, while Senora Harrison and I (Clausen) went to the airport to work on fixing our flights. Unfortunately, we were at the airport for over 8 hours and nothing changed. Because Delta shopped out our flights to United, we were unable to do name changes, which meant some students would have to fly home without a chaperone. Thankfully our parents were very supportive and trusting in our leadership, because this was obviously not the ideal plan for anyone.  While we were at the airport a group of 14 kids went with BT and Ronny to his Saturday men's league game - Talon even got to play! From our understanding he "sold" when he was on Ronny's team, but when he switched to the other team he started scoring." After the game, Ronny took them to the mall to get Starbucks and they ran into a kid from one of our clinics earlier in the week! He re

2023 - Day 8: Widow’s Ministry, Souvenir Shopping, and our Last (?) Team Meal

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Today was our last day (or is it?!?). We started the day by heading to the Widow’s Ministry, the Bethesda House, in Los Guido. While we’ve been surrounded by poverty all week, this neighborhood is an even lower economic status and has lots of issues with drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. The Bethesda House exists to be an oasis for women who have been abandoned or mistreated and offers them assistance with food, prayer, and Bible study. They believe that when you restore a women you also restore the whole family. If she is changed, her kids and her husband (or boyfriend) will be changed too. We started off this trip to the widow’s ministry by going to the grocery store to purchase a month’s worth of groceries for 16 families. We give the kids a budget (12,400 colones) which is about $20 per family. It is kind of sad to think that we spent more on snacks the day before and that same amount will feed a family for a month. The kids all were sent around the grocery store to pick out beans,

2023 - Day 7: YWAM Service Day & Lincoln School Games

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This morning we went across town to serve with Youth With a Mission. We reconnected with them last year and it was a great experience today, so we returned to serve again this year. Abbi explains more about the experience: “YWAM stands for Youth With A Mission. This ministry trains, supports, and equips people to be a missionary wherever they go. There are bases in over 120 countries across the globe. YWAM San Jose is one of the larger bases and serves as a central hub for all the Central American YWAM bases. Currently they are hosting over 80 missionaries from 26 countries for and extensive leadership training school. “We helped this ministry by sorting and putting away wood, cleaning out ditches, washing the work vehicles, cleaning areas of the base, cleaning out under trailer houses, and making cards for their upcoming conference.” “I worked at the wood pile and it was a mess. We sorted the wood stacks into 4 separate piles depending on their size and thickness, and we created a pow

2023 - Day 6, Part 2: Games and Clinics at the Pan American School

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 After the morning clinics we came back to the house for a much needed rest, ate lunch, and did Devos for the morning. We then headed back across town (every trip we take is at least an hour in San Jose's never ending traffic) to play a volleyball game, host a basketball clinic, and play a basketball game at the Pan American School. In comparison to the school we were at this morning, the two couldn't be more different. The Pan American school is a private school for international students and their vision is to be the best bilingual school in Central America. The good thing is that playing there today and performing our clinic was a lot easier because a lot of people speak English!  We started off with our volleyball game, we warned the other coach that we don't quite have a full team and she said not to worry because her team wasn't very good. Well we switched up our lineup and played a lot better today! Kate ended up setting and Colby played opposite with Allie going

2023 - Day 6 Part 1: Soccer Clinics

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Today started with a walk down to the neighborhood school, Escuela de San Pedro de Coronado. Originally we were going to have all students on the HPS property for a volleyball and soccer clinic, but because of the heavy rains and a possibility of it raining today, we ended up going to the school to work there in an indoor space. We had the kids walk instead of drive for a few reasons - 1. It helps us understand what the kids have to do every day to get to & from school and 2. It gave us some time for a silent time of prayer & reflection along the way (and most followed through with that). It was a good choice to go to the school and work with smaller groups of 20ish kids. That was a lot of work with 17 helpers and 3 people who could translate. We couldn't imagine if we had all 75 kids up at the field with only three translators!  When we got to the school we started with the kindergartners. Ronny explained to our students that we weren't going to teach a lot of soccer t

2023 - Day 5: Rafting the Pacuare

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Today we checked out of our hotel in Limon and headed out to Turrialba to start our rafting adventure down the Pacuare River! The Pacuare is considered one of the top 5 rivers in the world to raft! It is so beautiful because you are fully surrounded by Primary rainforest, meaning it has never been touched, it’s exactly how God created it to be. It’s so incredible to see the HUGE trees and leaves, vines, volcanic rock, birds, and butterflies along the way. Everyone was in a different boat, so they all had slightly different experiences: Boat 1 - Isaac, Colby, Scottie, Abbi - The guide let us stand up a lot in the boat when going over rapids, which was fun, however he also called us the worst boat and told Colby to stop screaming when we went over rapids because she would scare the animals. Overall we were successful, No one fell off the boat! Boat 2 - Jacob, Talon, Allie, Sophia - The guide was very nice and was very fun to be around. He fell in for the first time ever and he told us th