Outreach!

Well guys, it's almost Christmas, and I can officially say that enjoying 60 degree weather while staring at Christmas lights is incredibly odd. Very nice, of course, but definitely one of the stranger things I've experienced thus far.

DTS is going pretty well, we are learning a lot and have almost reached the end of lecture phase (two more days!!). This means the next step is outreach. Our group is going to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras for a total of six weeks - leaving the 28th of December and returning to Costa Rica on February 16th. We will primarily be working with kids ministries, meeting with permanent organizations to help them with their programs. Right now all of us are helping prepare dramas, clown skits, and crafts in order to have a head start. Our DTS will also help the organizations with any cleaning or work projects that we can.

Basically, we are very excited for this opportunity to travel and support long-term missionaries. But we are also rather worried because we haven't raised all of our funds yet and there's only a week left. We still need $3500 in order to send all of us. In the large scheme, that's not very much, but in such a short time... God will provide, but last-minute is always hard. If you would please consider donating, that would be amazing. Follow the link below, scroll down to "current students," and write "DTS outreach."

http://ywamheredia.com/donate-now/

Also, we need prayer. So much prayer. This adventure is going to stretch my team of introverts so far out of our comfort zone, and while we are excited, we also recognize that this trip will be a challenge. Please remember us in your prayers as we start packing and preparing.

Prayer Requests:
- Group unity
- Ability to successfully show love
- Courage and safety
- Creativity and initiative within the group

Thank you so much!
- DTS Heredia, 2015

DTS 2015

My DTS - Nine girls, three guys (including the adorable married couple). Plus our three lovely leaders and you have our group of fifteen!

A Day of DTS

Friday was a perfectly wonderful day. Got up at 6:15 to feed to chickens and ducks, discovering that the female duck was not actually dead but just sitting on eggs in a dark corner. After grabbing my first cup of coffee, it’s time to practice Spanish for a bit (El elefante come una fresa. Las fresas son muy ricas.) Then it’s off to a nice breakfast of baked oatmeal, which after a few weeks of trial and error is finally cooked through.

By now, it’s 8:00 and the schedule for several complicated reasons has once again shifted. Time for class an hour earlier than normal! But that’s all good and class is over at 10:30, leaving time for a second cup of coffee before afternoon activities that got moved to the morning. Because following a schedule is for whimps and North Americans.

Ok, 12:30 lunch time, except twenty minutes late because someone forgot to get our awesome and over-worked cook a helper for the morning. So after helping serve, I scarf my food and head downstairs for some much needed introvert time. But on the stairs, I encounter my leader’s 12-year-old daughter, who’s having a really hard day and just needs to talk for a bit. I can do that! Until I see my friend sitting on a bench looking like she just wants to cry. We talk until it starts to rain, heading inside so I can change my clothes to work in the garden for a couple hours.

Chore time for me is from 2:00-4:00pm, with rotating chores every month. This month I get to be in the garden with two lovely ladies, making time to talk over the day as we pump water into the aquaponics system. Of course, one girl only speaks a little English, and it can be a bit difficult to communicate exactly what our leader told us to do for that day. But all good! Communication practice is always useful.

After thinning out cilantro in the multistory garden, my friends and I head back to the main house to change. I’m excited to do my laundry and spend some time watching a bit of tv, but I notice that my Spanish-speaking buddy is practically in tears. So I follow her into the bathroom and then sit with her as she cries silently for an hour. Not much I could do except provide a constant supply of hugs and Kleenex.

Ok, now its 5:00 and time for my one-on-one with an older volunteer on the base. With all that’s going on, I have decided I need as much guidance as I can get. She’s been working with YWAM for years, so we discuss what my priorities are as a DTS student and how to hold me accountable.

Finally dinner at 5:30. Time to eat and socialize. It’s not until 6:30 that I finish a nice chat with my DTS leader and head downstairs, hoping for some actual quiet. Thankfully, no one particularly wants to talk to me, so I get to read for 30 minutes. For once.

But the day is far from over. Next the whole group piles into the van, filling it to the brim with 16 people, and head off to the base leader’s house for some bonding. Popcorn, coconut pie, and chatting filled the next three hours, leaving us to fall into our beds at 10:00. Supposedly, but of course the 8 girls sharing my room need to chatter for a while before sleeping.

Then my alarm shakes me awake at 6:15 to go feed those chickens and start a new day of adventures. Welcome to YWAM.

Off Again! But this time with newsletters, hopefully.

There’s this funny thing about making plans – they have a distressing tendency to blow up in my face. For the past two years, I’ve wandered from place to place, always planning to return to the Seattle area and settle down. Instead, I’ve bounced around from Seattle to Oregon to Montana to Seattle to Costa Rica and back again. After my latest adventure to Costa Rica, I swore up and down that it would be my last trip. I had begun to get a handle on what God wanted to do with my life, and therefore I would finally get myself a real job and a real apartment. You know, pay bills and so forth. Like a proper adult.

But I’m still not ready to settle. The Environment and Resource Stewardship (EARS) allowed me to begin seeing a larger world, introducing me to the power that God can have in others’ lives, but a simple introduction hasn’t been enough. My experience with Christianity and God has been very small, and frankly, rather damaging. Most of the time, I have seen Christians only talking about God changing their lives. However, at YWAM I have encountered people who want to be a part of the kingdom Jesus describes so vividly. Now, I’m heading back to Costa Rica in six weeks to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth with a Mission (YWAM). It’s the same base that I worked with when I did EARS earlier this year.

As I head off to DTS, I’ve decided I want others to be more involved in my journey. In my past travels, I rarely made the attempt to share the knowledge I gained or the bits of God I’ve discovered. I do not want anyone to misunderstand my thoughts. Some of my most important friends are non-Christian and many have been seriously hurt by the church. I never want to contribute to that pain or align myself with the parts of the church that are so seriously broken. Following that line of thought, I have no desire to make my Christian friends feel criticized as I question my faith and the meaning of Christianity in my life. Therefore, I tried to keep much of my story to myself. After all, how can I possibly describe seemingly small experiences that had a large impact on my life? How could I get others to see how God works in little things when I just barely believe it myself?

I want to invite all of you to follow my wanderings as I prepare for DTS. Unlike EARS, DTS is designed to stretch the faith of students and help them discover where they fit in the world. The course is divided into three parts: knowing God, knowing yourself, and finding out how you fit into the world. This is all covered at base during the first three months, then we go on outreach for another two months. Outreach, in my single experience, is a combination of trying to serve others and learning from mistakes, all the while trying to figure out what God has to teach. In total, it’s about five months of travel and spending time with God.

During this trip, I’m going to try sending out a monthly newsletter. While I have my blog, it doesn’t have the accountability I apparently need to keep writing. If you want to receive updates from me, facebook me your email or simply shoot me a message at jessiekbyron@gmail.com.

Please keep me in your prayers. My story is only a small part of the world, but sometimes the little things can have an impact. My greatest hope is that DTS will teach me how to show God’s love to others. 

Costa Rica Reflections: RICE

Costa Ricans love rice. Or lots of them do, apparently. At base, most meals have rice included. Gallo Pinto, the national meal, is a lovely combination of rice and beans. Rice is just the food. Everywhere.

I love rice.

I came home and cooked rice.

Rice is the best thing ever. Especially rice with coconut oil.

Rice made a particular impression on me, particularly because most of my team seemed to find it impossible to be ambivalent about rice. They hated it or they loved it, no one seemed to just vaguely appreciate it.

So my impression of food in Costa Rica, fair or not, was "YUMMY RICE."

Costa Rica Reflections: A Word from God

Janurary 28, 2015

My friend said he had a word for me: God will build my faith. Not only that, he is not demanding my faith, but inviting me to learn more about him. It's gonna be an interesting 6 months.

I reacted as any well-bred lady would: punched the ground and wandered off in tears, without letting my friend finish his sentence, of course.

A little bit about my emotions when I got to Heredia. The Christianity I learned as a kid had transformed itself into some complicated guilt tripping thing with a God I didn't particularly want to know. Also, the church, while occasionally supportive and wonderful, had an irritating tendency to emotionally hurt my friends. Between my former youth pastor, my parents, and some of my friends, I could see that Christianity wasn't worth leaving, but something had to change. Going to YWAM was partially a search for a different Christianity and partially the hope that God would start talking to me.

To sum it up, me and Christianity were having a bit of a conflict. The very last thing I wanted to hear was to "have faith." No, I wanted Christianity to just make sense, like magic, without work. I'd made the first step, gone to a different country, and planted myself in a place for him to show up. Instead of seeing signs and miracles, I worked through a number of smaller experiences with God. From reconciling my views of the Bible to taking more of a leadership position on outreach, I began to learn how a strong faith could affect my life.

When I heard my friend's words back in January, I doubted they would ever mean anything. Now I think they sum up my experiences quite well. More on that later.

Costa Rice Reflections: Unofficial Team Rules

One of the running jokes (and challenges) for our team was the lack of structure. All of us were as stubborn as hell and didn't take well to any sort of authority. So at the end of outreach, some of my teammates and I created this list of unofficial rules that we had dedicatedly followed throughout the trip.

• Be on time for meals (and everything else)
• Make time to do your devos
• Don’t put boogers on people
• Be present for team activities
• Make everything difficult for everyone
• Have as few rules as possible
• Discuss poop and beards at least once a day
• Eat as little rice as possible
• 1. Hate on pancakes and hotdogs
• Talk about food for at least an hour per day
• Keep at least one person out of the loop
• Change the schedule at least once a day (preferably more)
• Have one or more deep conversations per day
• Always blame an imaginary person (preferably Ashley or Trevor)
• Don’t forget Dave
• ALWAYS carry extra toilet paper

Costa Rica Reflections: Introduction

After 6 months of traveling, I'm finally home again! Wifi was awful in most of the places I stayed, so I completely neglected my blog (and facebook and talking to people in general), but it's time to start up again.

For the next couple weeks I'm going to be posting a variety of stories from Costa Rica, though not very many pictures since I didn't take any and I haven't bugged my teammates into giving me theirs. Still, there are many thoughts and reflections that I would love to share with you. God has been doing a lot in my life and I've grown more than I thought possible back in January.

An overview:
I spend 3 months in Costa Rica learning about Environment and Resource Stewardship (EARS) before leaving on outreach. Outreach was a 3 month phase where we (theoretically) applied what we learned during our lectures. Our destinations were Panama and Columbia, and we spent time with a total of 5 indigenous communities working with local churches. We had 9 students, though sadly one of them couldn't make it to Columbia with us, so we ended the trip with 8 of us. A lot of our work was geared towards teaching environmental stewardship and Biblical worldview principles. As usual on a mission trip however, we spent a great deal of time playing with kids and just talking with the community.

My team! We ate lunch in Peru one day - it was just a boat ride away from the base in Leticia.

Chicken Death

Welp, I now know how to kill and pluck a chicken. Next week I'll figure out how to gut one. Dead chickens are actually more entertaining than you'd think. And they don't smell awful.

Life Skills

The past two months have been filled with so much learning. I can now use a drill, milk a goat, explain the process of a biodigester, complete a short conversation in Spanish, clean wood of bark, identify the basic differences between pvc pipe fittings, and build a composting system. For me, that's a lot more hands-on knowledge than I've ever had the opportunity to accumulate. Kinda, pathetic, but celebrate with me guys!

However, mostly I've been learning about community, especially how to actively participate rather than simply watching. My fellow students have supported me as I attempt to lead, allowing me opportunity and fixing my mistakes when I fail. Even as we are struggling with frustrations about our upcoming outreach mission to Panama and Columbia, we continue to laugh together. Every one of us comes from a different background, but that just means that we each have a lot to learn about each other. It feels as if every week someone is teasing me about reading so much, but at least once a day I'm snarking at my gun and beard obsessed friends. Seriously, beards. Who knew you could talk so much about them?

I definitely did not expect to learn so much about community while being in the EARS school, but I think that these experiences will shape more of my life than any practical knowledge I get here. Though, it is great to actually feel as if I could implement some of these sustainable development tools - either as teaching tools at home or in the mission field. I needed the practical knowledge before I can make a difference with my own gifts, so EARS has been perfect for me. Occasionally frustrating, yes, but that's part of any school.

Celebrating birthdays. Birthdays = cake, so they are kinda the best days. Except our teachers get annoyed because we all end up late for class or taking a very extended break.

Sleeping in class - all of us in solidarity

Somehow we always end up having massage trains in restaurants. I'm not sure how it started, but it's kinda hilarious.

Traveling to the beach. All the time. 

This is Fast Track, one of my new favourite games. It involves teams, lots of yelling, and a great deal of killing the other players.

The newest big thing on base is the ropes course. It's a bunch of different elements designed to encourage team building in a variety of ways. This particular one, the flying squirrel, had all of us on a rope hoisting the person on the other end into the air. It was definitely fun both running the other people up and being flown into the air. 

Aquaponics

This week my class is learning about, and helping build, aquaponics systems. It's a sustainable system that hooks a fish tank up to growing beds, using the water and nutrients from the fish tank to nourish the plants. It wastes less water, uses a small spaces, removes the need for chemical fertilizer, and produces both fish and plants for people to eat. Really pretty cool, though I must admit at this point I only understand the basics. If you want to know more, contact me at the end of the week and I'll probably be able to tell you much more!

Here are some pictures from the beginning stages (courtesy of Ms. Gloriann). I'll post more when we're done! Hopefully that will be at the end of the week, but it depends on when we can get all the materials.

This is the grow bed in it's initial stages

We divided the big bed up into 6 smaller sections. The pump that bring the water from the fish tanks to the plants will most likely be in the middle so that the water is more evenly distributed.

We're working so very hard! See, we even managed to keep a plant alive. Not really - I'm not sure what type of plant it is or who planted it. It might be a weed. Or spinach. Kinda smells like spinach to me.

Market Day

Every Sunday there is a farmer's market in San Rafael - the town at the bottom of the mountain. So much fun and so much fruit! Would you like 20 oranges? Well, that'll be $3 please. A coconut with a straw to drink the milk? 60 cents. How about a carrot as big as your forearm? Or a zillion green mangoes? Or fresh honey in a recycled whiskey bottle? Yeah, you can find all of that.

Overview of the market.

I love oranges. All the oranges. Every day.

Fresh pupusas. 

It's bigger than my hands. And mouth. And head.

Pictures courtesy of Meghan :-)

Missions

There are Christians that spend much of their lives shouting, "Yes Lord, send me!"

Yeah, I'm not one of those.

Throughout my life, I've repeatedly asked God to tell me to do anything but a) become a missionary and b) go serve in Africa. Welp, it looks like my group is headed on our missions outreach to Kenya and/or Malawi. We will be deciding for certain next week. More details to come!

With my luck, I'll spend most of the time preaching.

Gifts

Christians love to talk about how each of us have gifts given by God, both spiritual gifts and skills that was use in our everyday lives. I've always thought my life would be defined by finding these gifts and then finding a suitable way to apply them.

Funny thing is, I don't actually like many of my practical gifts. Sure, I can do math, but I don't enjoy it. Yeah, I can write a research paper, but why would I spend my life on theoretical knowledge?

I do enjoy writing, music, relationships, building, etc. The list goes on. Naturally, I have little talent for any of these things.

One of the ideas that I'm learning through YWAM is that you can, to some extent, pick your own talents. The human mind is one of God's greatest gifts and I get to choose how to use it, which tends to result in a great number of failures. Life is failure, however, and then standing up again. So if I want to learn to garden, then I can try, and probably kill a great many plants (sorry in advance). If my heart's deepest desire turns out to be raising goats, well, there might be lots of temporarily unhappy goats in my future. If I love to pass my knowledge along to others, there will certainly be many confused students wandering around at first.

Finding that one natural gift might not be my best option. After all, think of all the adventures I would have missed while hiding in a library. Then again, there may be many adventures left for me in libraries, who knows?

Lizard!

Everyone needs more lizards in their lives.

Double-Digging and Zai Holes

Every week we have two workshops teaching us the practical part of sustainable development. In this case, double-digging and zai holes. Sounds thrilling, eh? Actually, these techniques are pretty cool because they help rejuvenate tired soil as well as increasing crop yields. This is wonderful for farmers with very little land or who have been growing cash crops without resting their soil. Great stuff. Very easy and effective - really the main idea is to add compost for nutrients and then learn how to apply the compost correctly.

Learning how to double dig an existing raised bed. Basically you loosen the soil and add compost. 

Digging a Zai Hole - 2' by 2' by 2'. We filled it in with layers with fresh manure, compost, dirt, and dry materials. This nutrient rich and light soil can increase yields by 3-4 times the normal compost and dirt in the double-dug beds. It's a bit more work, but it wonderful for wakening up tired land.

Plants! We put some baby zucchini in our hole. Hopefully they will do well. I like zucchini. 

Visitors

Last week my class headed out to one of the poorest communities in San Jose. Most of the people living there are are Nicaraguans, probably illegal immigrants. Our teachers are part of a ministry called Homes of Hope which has built a number of houses in this community and they wanted to show us the difference it can make in a family's life.

We weren't there to do ministry, just as visitors to understand the meaning of extreme poverty. I'm not particularly proud of our excursion, since I don't think any community should be used as show and tell. However, our teachers seemed very at home with the people we visited and everyone was very welcoming. If the same thing had happened to me, I don't think I would have been nearly as forgiving. 

That being said, it was amazing to see the difference a single house can make in this community. Just look at the differences between a Homes of Hope house and it's neighbor.

The yellow house on the left was built by Homes of Hope. They didn't paint it bright yellow, the family did that themselves. Our teachers thought the colour choice was pretty funny.

Right next to the train tracks.

The entire neighborhood looks like this - it was pretty intimidating.

Settling In

This week has been quite an adventure, both good and bad. Luckily for me, I've had a lovely week, though the base has been in chaos with two volunteers going to the hospital. All is well, but one man almost died of a heart attack, which shook all of us up quite a bit. He's up and walking around already, which is amazing given his condition, and we are all extremely grateful.

Other more interesting adventures include attempting to learn to dance latino style. I fail. What are hips and how do you move them?

My first real football match! They whistle instead of booing, which is hilarious. Also, I didn't get a good picture, but there was a section of the stands that spent the entire game jumping around and chanting. That's an hour and a half of dedicated cheering. Ohmygoodness, so much noise. The local team, Saprissa, won and watching the crowd celebrate a goal was definitely the highlight of the night. The mascot is a purple monster and I have no idea why.

The stadium in San Jose

And the goats have finally decided they like my friend and I milking them, mostly because we have gotten much more efficient. Goats and chickens are highly amusing to me, but finicky enough that I am content not to be dependent on them for my livelihood. My respect for farmers and ranchers is growing by the minute.

Milking Vanilla - definitely my favourite goat. It's actually pretty fun.

Practical Learning

In the past five days I have:

- Learned to milk a goat

- Made friends with three lovely cats, one of whom just likes me because I help milk the goats

- Investigated the murder of three pullets, apparently a daring crime by a weasely-type creature

- Fed the adult chickens as well as the slight creepy ducks, who have been charged with the brutal drowning of a turkey

- Learned how to make good soil out of composted goat poo and rice hulls - it's all about the poo, fyi. Great for growing things. Though the compost will pack down too far, so you need rice hulls or straw for aeration.

- Learned that some cultures are actually accepting of Christian tracts. I didn't believe, but some others of my school handed them out and I saw people reading them. It was so odd.

- Watched Solly the dog bully the horses

It's great good fun! My Spanish is improving daily and I'm enjoying talking to so many people with different backgrounds. 

There are also lots of birds, though I haven't gotten a chance to go birding yet. So far the highlights have been a summer tanager, rufous tailed hummer, and blue gray tanager.