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.