Pre-trip and Day 1, March 8th

The night we left our house it was snowing and the snow was piled so high on the sides of the road so we decided to take a picture hoping it wouldn't be there when we returned. We flew from Des Moines, Lynn took us to the airport thankfully and my gramma picked us up in St. Pete. The next evening, we met up with the CCH group at Wildwood and drove down to Miami to await our flight this morning.

We all made the flight, no one had to ride with the luggage either!

We arrived in Costa Rica safely (picture out the window of the plane above) and all of our bags came with us! We also had no problems through customs or immigration. I was really nervous to ride in the taxi to the ministry house, but much to my surprise our driver was awesome! When we arrived, we had sandwiches for lunch and some bean dip to go with it. Spencer, the main man at 6:8 briefed us on some of the culture, places, and things we should and should not do.

Then we walked to the park (pictured above)and bus station and took the bus down to Aurora where we were to teach English and have community activities for the kids. We went on a prayer walk and stopped to pray at the school, community center, and then walked on down into the valley where the houses seemed to be stacked on and against each other. Most of the people in this area do not own the land their "houses" sit on. The put up houses and in the rainy season, they get flooded out, or sometimes the government comes and bulldozes their houses to the ground. Went all the way down to the last house on the left where José Antonio lives. José is about 5yrs old and he has a brain and heart condition. When we arrived he was wearing a dish towel for a diaper and a shirt. His mother was holding him and we came down to pray for him. Natalia and Carolina both prayed for him in Spanish, which Spencer said doesn't happen very often because most teams do not have fluent Spanish speakers with them. We were so blessed to have them there with us.

When we arrived back at the mission house, we had a few minutes of down time, then met downstairs for dinner. Miriam the house cook was "pretty much amazing," (in Becca's words). We ate pork chops, onions, rice and beans, garlic bread, yucca, and grape-chocolate cupcakes. The meal was of course complete with Lizano, a special salsa made in Costa Rica!

After Dinner we had our group time with Spencer, worship with Jason the intern, and Duke gave us the message. He was speaking from 1Samuel using David's life as an example for us, and what we could learn from his triumphs and mistakes. We headed upstairs for the night, and us girls definately talked awhile...

There was also a beautiful sunset to finnish out the start of a beautiful week!