Wow, where in the world do I begin today.
After waking up to quite the dream this morning I sat down in the kitchen with my bible and a cup of coffee. I believe God gave me my scripture this morning to share with the group before we headed downtown to hand out tacks to the locals. Isaiah 52:7 "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God Reigns!" I read this and knew that we needed to go out on this verse. Isn't it so awesome to think that when we are sharing the good news that our feet our beautiful!!!! Seriously, most of us don't like feet but God does. :))
Then a little further down Isaiah says "Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing! Come out from it and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard." We read these verses and prayed the power of the Spirit before we headed downtown. So off on the bus the 31 of us went. (3 trips) We arrived in very busy downtown San Jose with 3 of our contacts. Many blocks lined with store after store. All open doors and super sweet fruit stands. We handed out tracks to everyone walking, greeting with smiles and greetings of "Hola" (hi/hello). On one of the streets we walked down, there were two very young boys sleeping on the sidewalk on a piece of cardboard. Angela teared up and my heart went out to these boys - not men, but boys. Later in the week we will be heading to another area to feed the homeless.
We bused back for lunch to the compound where we are staying. Shortly after lunch we were put to work cleaning and working on the Score Mission site. I was super excited to work hard outside, while a handful stayed in cleaning and helping the ladies in the very small kitchen they use to feed all of us. The Mission site where we are staying is all fenced in with barbed wire on top of the fence. (I must interject here that our 3 musicians are playing and I just love that, 2 guitars and one bongo drum.:)) Score International is building a new home for their full time missionary (Manuel) and his wife to stay at. So we were put to work, some sifting dirt for them to use to plaster the home with, others pulling nails from wood that we in America would just throw away, some scraping cement inside the home, one young man used the weed eater to clear the fields. (no lawn mower) So we spent most of the afternoon working around here.
Just took a break here - Manuel, the missionary just shared an incredibly powerful message to the group. So powerful - and the translator did a great job too. He is from Costa Rica, left to go to Argentina, met his wife there and the two of them came back here to serve God. With nothing but the clothes on their backs - now they are getting a new home built for them - God is providing for them.
Getting back to where I was, after our work afternoon we were bused again to a nearby grocery store to buy some serious Costa Rican coffee. Mmmmmm. I've got my share to bring home. I laughed with Remi (one of the other leaders on our team) that I felt like we were in a foreign grocery store. Ha ha - I missed my Tim to help me figure out how much money things cost but he should be glad to know that there are others that know math too. :)
I am sitting in a kitchen surrounded by teenageres talking loudly and playing musical instruments and I am loving every minute of it. Tomorrow we leave at 7am and we will be visiting two daycare centers. (Wish you could come Emily - I'll hug extra big for you.)
We closed our evening after Manuel's message to us with some of our boys sharing a devotion.
Wow, awesome young men of God. It was so amazing to spend 15 minutes in worship together. I told one young man to pray and ask God if he wanted him to become a pastor/missionary. He thanked me.
I will close for tonight.
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