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.