VCHS Engage: COSTA RICA

  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...

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...

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,...

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...

 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...

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...

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 tim...

 Here are our team reflections from yesterday: Jacob - the coconut guy was really generous. We found a bad coconut and he went in his house and picked out 6 fresh coconuts to open for us. He didn't have much, so him sharing this felt like a big deal! Jake - It's just a good reminder of how big the world is. While I'm at school every day all of this is going on - it's just weird to think about.  Emily - She was just impressed by the girls and Scottie working hard at painting. They just put on worship music on and sat in it for a couple hours while working. Jose - He just thought it was interesting how the kids would just swarm around these little tiny toys - it meant a lot to them. Isaac - Thought it was so cool/interesting that we ran into Ignacio three times - once when we were painting, once at the school, and once when he was walking back from school Talon - the kids know all the celebrations of all the soccer players. Also, today reminded him to be grateful for what...

Today we woke up and headed back to the church from yesterday to continue our painting project. Because we were running late (Tico Time!) we knew we would only have an hour to get everything painted before the soccer clinic started. The kids jumped right into work. We divided into a couple teams and some of us painted while some of us picked up trash in the neighborhood. This neighborhood in Limon used to be swamp land and is still built along canals and floods often. There is a lot of trash around. In only an hour, we filled up about 10 trash bags with bottles, glass, etc. At the hour mark the painting wasn't completed so we left the girls + Scottie to paint with Senora Harrison & Emily Timmer. The boys + Abbi, Ronny (our host), Bryan Timmer, and Clausen all went down the road 5 minutes to lead a soccer clinic at the local elementary school. When we got there there was pure chaos - the kids were so excited to see the "handsome Americans". Once it settled down a littl...

After church we went to McDonald's for lunch - a very exciting thing for the students because they had seen an ad for the Kit Kat McFlurry earlier in the week and wanted to try it. The most interesting thing about our McDonald's experience was that 1. They serve fried chicken and 2. A lady came out excited to help us all order on the digital boards and she was excited to practice her English. At home do we treat people who speak another language like that? Excited to get to practice communicating with them?  We then drove down the street to the church we were going to paint, Iglesia de Dios I.D.A.I. This is a church plant from Senora's sister Irma, who has planted many churches in Limon. We arrived and quickly got to work, painting the fence from its green color to a fresh silver, and painting the building to the requested bright Papaya color. We painted for a couple hours and had fun while doing. It, but realized pretty quickly that the papaya paint, since it was oil based...

This morning we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel before heading to church at Portadores de su Gloria, the church where Senora Harrison's sister is a member. When we got there we were a little early, so we played a round of hot seat before heading into the building.  There was an usher who walked our group to their seats that were reserved at the front of the room. Worship started pretty immediately afterward and the whole service was about 2.5 hours. The initial worship session lasted about an hour and was filled with singing, dancing, tambourines, and flags. We had prepared our students that people worship God different in different areas of the world, or even in different churches, but we are all worshipping the same God, so we should be able to participate in this. As chaperones we noticed Jose go to the front to join the worshippers first, then a group of 7 other students joined him (Abigail, Allie, Alena, Colby, Isaac, Jacob, and Scottie) and worshipp...

 This year our theme for our trip devotions is "God Is...". We are learning what all the names of God mean throughout this trip. Senora Harrison started us off in the airport by introducing us to the vastness of God. She explained that because He is so vast 1 name can't contain Him. She explained that every name mentioned for God in scripture describes a different part of His character. She also talked about how trust comes from having a relationship with someone, we can't fully trust God unless we have a relationship with Him. Do we know God or do we KNOW God and trust Him. Kalei then shared yesterday about God's first name mentioned in scripture - Elohim. Elohim is first mentioned in Genesis 1:1 where it says, "In the beginning God created". Elohim means The Creator. Kalei encouraged us that if we're feeling down or off during this trip or in life we should look towards God & His creation. Jose shared this morning about El Elyon. This name was ...

Today we slept in a bit (after getting no sleep the last two nights), we packed up our bags, and we went to the farmer's market! This is always a fun experience because we make the kids try a bunch of different fruits! Some they love and some they don't!  "It was so cool to be immersed into a totally different culture, and see how other people live their lives. I have never been to something like that so I tried to be as open as possible, and I actually loved all of the fruits that I tried except for papaya ??. But other than that, the whole experience was amazing and I would 10/10 would recommend!" - Kate Phillips We then walked to the panaderia to grab some pastries and unfortunately while we there, BT got sick. Please be praying for him as he's had an upset stomach all day. We then loaded the busses again for a long ride to San Jose. Along the ride we drove through the cloud forest and were able to see a lot of tall trees and huge leaves! While we were squished...