Jez's Costa Rican Diary Part 1

Hey everyone, rather than emailing everyone what I've been up to I thought I'd just add it on here.

I've been in Costa Rica for a week and a half now and am having a rather good time! It took about 24 hours from leaving my house in Sunny Tunny to arriving at our accomodation in San Jose. We are living in a Bible College at the moment, in a rather 'interesting' area of the city...it's not the sort of place you want to be out in after dark!

We went to bed pretty soon after arriving and the next morning began our orientation and found out a bit more about what we would be doing. The land we are supposed to be building the church on had not yet been purchased so we couldn't begin on that, so instead visited a volcanically heated pool and did a bit of sight-seeing to get over our jetlag.

On Saturday the rest of the team went and helped to set up a fiesta organised by a local church to celebrate Colombian independence day, whilst I spent the day in bed, feeling pretty rough as I came to terms with the local cuisine! By Sunday I had recovered enough to go to the fiesta and we spent the day helping out there and then clearing up afterwards. There were a few thousand people there and the day was really successful. The next day people phoned up the local Colombian radio station to say how good it had been to have the English there and what a good job we'd done so that was really cool to hear that we're being a good witness.

On Monday we started painting the library in the Bible College, a seemingly never ending task! Costa Rican ladders are unsafe, their paint is too watery and it is a bit of a challenge to try and get more than one tin in the same colour...despite all of this, the end is in site and with a final bit of floor scrubbing to go we should finish tonight!

Tomorrow the plan is to visit Los Guidos, the communtiy where we will be building the church when the land is purchased which will be quite exciting, and then we have our first Costa Rican church experience to look forward to on Sunday...as well as (a no doubt interesting) meal at one of the church members' houses.

Early next week we head to a very poor and rural area called Naranjo for a week, where we will be doing kids work with a local church and building a house. We have had some training in Spanish songs to sing with the kids, but as yet none in house building!

After that the plan is to work in Los Guidos for a few weeks on the (hopefully by then purchased) church building site, before a brief team holiday and returning home to see you all!

It would be great if you could support us by praying for us:

That the land does get purchased soon

That whatever we are doing out here God uses us to impact the lives of the lcals

That the team continues to get on so well

For safe travel throughout our trip

For continued protection against illness and injury

and finally that we occasionally get fed something other than rice and beans!

The official team report can be seen here.