VCHS Engage: COSTA RICA

Today we woke up, ate breakfast, and headed down to the city center in Coronado, the province of San Jose where we are staying. We started out at the farmer's market, where most of our students walked straight through without stopping at any booths because they were scared to ask questions, didn't know what kinds of fruits and vegetables they were looking at, and didn't know how to read the prices. We saw this and pulled them all back into the market and walked through the booths with Ronald, our guide, to help us determine which fruits we were trying and how much they cost. We tried guaba, pejibaye, coconut water from a fresh coconut, sapote, granola, and the definite favorites--rambutan and water apples. After the farmer's market we walked through the city center and found an outdoor workout area, where most of our students joined in on the fun and worked up a little bit of a sweat. As we were working out we heard some music, we turned the cor...

Manuel wanted to be as cool as Jacob!  Day two in Costa Rica is complete! Today was our first day of ministry and it was one we won't forget! We're having some technical difficulties with Wifi/cameras, so photos will be added soon, but here is the update! Sydney took care of the babies today!  We started the day by visiting a grocery store and purchasing food for 16 widows and their families. Ronald, our host, let us know that by purchasing these groceries we were feeding the women and children for a month. He really wanted our students to understand how important this was because, due to a lack of funding, Food for the Hungry Costa Rica had recently stopped funding this ministry and many of the women have gone long periods without food. Each pair of students was given an item to find in the grocery store and when we got to checkout many of the kids felt like we should purchase more for the families, so we were able to use our own funds to add tu na, bread, corn m...

Today was our first official day in Costa Rica! After a red eye flight we landed in Costa Rica around 5 AM and drove an hour to the HPS headquarters, where we are staying for the week. We spent a couple hours hanging out and eating breakfast before everybody took advantage of a mandatory nap time. After waking up we went through a devotion on love lead by Mr. Boer then spent some time planning for our big sports clinic later in the week. We then left to drive to the Lincoln School where the girls got to play a volleyball match against a local high school team. Our teams were evenly matched, but due to some great teamwork and determination, Valley Christian came out on top. After the match, our teams exchanged stickers and bracelets and had the chance to talk about the differences in our schools and our hometowns. Our girls were most excited to learn where we can find a sloth and where to find a Churchill dessert (basically a delicious snow cone). On a side note, the boys prov...

After several months of planning today is the day for our VCHS Engage trip to head out to Costa Rica! Please pray for our students and parents to have soft hearts as we engage with a new culture, boldness and confidence in sharing the gospel, confidence and creativity while planning and executing the kids sports clinics, and unity and clear communication between our team as we travel together the next 10 days. We will try to update this blog each day with a short summary of what we have done as well as some photos. Feel free to share this with family and friends who have supported our team both financially and in prayer! Pura Vida!