Wow. The trip I just took was more than amazing!! We left the villa at 4:30am on Friday morning (ugh that's early) and headed up to El Alto to meet the couple going with us. Then we headed to Rio Grande in Paquera (I mentioned earlier the trip we took the first time, just 2 of us, to check it out.. anyway it's a ferry ride across the ocean to a small town). When we got there we settled into the building where we were going to be staying and had lunch. Then we walked down to the beach to check out where we were going to have the bonfire that we planned for Saturday night. Then we went to the field in the middle of the town to play soccer with the kids. After playing for about 2 hours or so the guy from my church basically handed me the opportunity to give the gospel. So I grabbed the wordless book colored soccer ball we had just been playing with and spouted out the gospel in Spanish! It was awesome. Then we face painted for a little bit, had dinner, and chilaxed together until bed time... which ended up being late since there was only one tiny bathroom for all 11 of us. And after 4 people showered we had to wait at least half an hour for the thing to drain enough to stand in it without flooding the floor... yeah it was quite the experience :P Then we got up at 5am sharp to get breakfast and everything ready to meet the kids in the field at 6:30 to take them down to the beach. We bought a ton of trash bags and cleaned up the beach while setting up the wood for the fire. So we spent a few hours cleaning up trash, but we also saw some pretty sweet things. We saw a devil ray swimming close to the shore and it was soo awesome!!! Then because it was getting to that really really hot part of the day we took the kids back to the town and had lunch. A few of the boys followed us to the place we were staying so we just kicked a ball around with them. Then the rest of my church showed up in the bus and joined us. Now numbering 36 we piled into the building forming a giant slumber party like setup on the concrete floor of this building.. still sharing only one tiny bathroom. While the new arrivals rested a little a few of us went down to the river to cool off in the afternoon. It was really cool. We brought the volleyball so we hit that around and played “monito” which is kinda like monkey in the middle. Then we grabbed some mangos on the way back and ate them while getting ready to go to the field for a second afternoon. At 3:30 we grabbed all our sports stuff, face paint, and snacks and headed to the field. I taught a bunch of boys how to throw an american football correctly and they LOVED it. Then we played soccer for a good 2 hours. This time we brought a bunch of little snacks and some juice to give to them. And we face painted again. By this time it was about time to head down to the beach for the bonfire. So we gathered everything and got ready. When we got there the fire was started and we sat around on logs. Four of the people in our group gave a testimony, three were short and the last one was more of a message about the love of God intertwined with a testimony. It was soo good!! He did an incredible job. And he had a gospel invitation at the end which rocked. And in between all of these I played some Spanish songs :) That was fun. Then after all that we lined the kids up and gave them a final gift: box of crayons, tract, snack, and a toothbrush. And we got all the adults together and gave them a ton of clothes that a bunch of us from the villa had gathered to give away. Then most of the people went back, but about ten of us chilled on the beach for about another hour enjoying the AMAZING night. There was a full moon, bonfire, beach, perfectly clear sky... yeah. It was amazing. I just sat on the beach for a while wondering why God chose me for this amazing opportunity to be in Costa Rica serving like I get to. Then we headed back and began the long shower process :P After another wonderful night on the concrete, we woke up to a Spanish song playing from the phone of my pastor's son.. at 5am. We all got up, packed, cleaned the whole building, picked up the trash, ate some breakfast, and headed to the other beach (a privately owned beach that we had access to for our last day just to enjoy). The bus ride was pretty crazy but we made it. This was Sunday so we just got to hang out all day on the beach. We played some volleyball in the waves, soccer on the sand (I scored a goal against ticos by the way!!), and some people got to go fishing. They went shrimping for bait, then out to catch fish. They got about 40 I think so it was a pretty successful day. The rest of us got to go on just a boat ride. The driver took us out around a few islands and stopped a couple times for us to jump out and cool off. It was sooo nice!! I stood on the front like Titanic :) Then we cleaned up and got everything on the bus to head back home. The bus almost died going up the hill to get back on the road and then hung the whole back off a cliff trying to turn around.. yeah I thought we were gone... but we survived again and made it to the ferry. We had lunch at the ferry station, enjoyed the ride back, and then had about a 3 hour ride back to the villa from the ferry. I got to sleep on the bus which was really nice and that was the end of our missions trip. OH! And I totally forgot to mention the fact that one of our guys had to go to the hospital in the middle of the trip! He had an ear infection that got really bad Friday morning. But by afternoon he had gotten two injections and antibiotics. So by mid-day Saturday he was ok. Thanks to our Healer!! :) It was soo amazing and God did some super cool things!! I loved it :) Then I spent yesterday sleeping in, relaxing, reading a LOT, and playing ultimate frisbee to unwind from such a busy week followed by a crazy weekend.
