Costa Rica Day 6 (Justin)

Hola everybody,

Today we started off early with a breakfast of Costa Rican eggs and the now-customary pieces of toast and bowls of eggs. After getting ready for the day's VBS (the Prodigal Son) we loaded up in the bus-van and went to the Obando's to pick up Jessica and Celeste. We also loaded the rest of the VBS supplies, said a quick prayer over the van-bus (because there was apparently something leaking and none of us wanted to end up stranded in the mountains) and headed off.
The drive was awe-inspiring, with cliffs, rivers, jungle, and, of course, mountains and valleys in abundance. We had to all get out of the bus-van and walk across a sketchy wooden bridge while the van-bus went along unencumbered. The river below the bridge also happens to be the one we will be rafting on Friday (I am sooo excited about that, by the way).
Once we arrived at the school we unpacked in a rush and practiced our puppet show to the best of our ability. Kate gets a shout out for reading the long story in spanish for the kids. Kacie, Corrie, and I actually puppetted (I don't know if that is actually a word, I don't think so...). After some minor changes, we had six stations, a watercolors station, a banner station, a snack and snack bag decoration station, a necklace station, a mask station, and a coloring sheet station. It went relatively smoothly with around 80 kids in attendence. Afterwards we packed up and had lunch on the soccer field.
After lunch, we went and got the high school students and all went back to the soccer field where we played baseball for and hour or so. The teens said they hadn't played before, but we have our suspicions about a couple of them. Following baseball we entered into a soccer game, boys vs. boys and girls vs. girls (I should note that the guys had the field and the girls had the small area outside the field). Despite the guys not really wanting to pass to us less skilled players, we had a ton of fun. Pretty soon we had to head out before the rains came and made the mountain roads dangerous.
We rode back telling riddles, jokes, and some other games. Everybody pretty much crashed when we got back. So we have been being calm and preparing dinner (Costa Rican rice and beans). Not even kidding, I have to go because we are getting ready to eat.

Dio te bendiga (I deny resaponsibility for spellings in spanish),

Justin

P.S. Hi Mom, I am still doing great even though you haven't heard from me :-)

Worship in Costa Rica

at worship on satruday and sunday - on saturday we rented out the community center and well over 125 people showed up on both days - we worshipped for hours!!! Dancing, listening to Marlon's sermons, people witnessing and a church youth who gave his life to Christ. God is awesome and hard at work through Marlon and Jessica. Here's a couple of videos first one on the plane, second one is worship in the community center of one of the local towns

Day 5 - (Bobbie!)

Hola everyone! This is Bobbie.

At this moment we are at the Obando's, preparing for VBS at a school later this afternoon.

We're going to be teaching the story of the house on a rock, with stations including painting rocks that say "Jesus is my rock". We're all extremely excited to get to work with and meet more chrildren. Making new friends has been a pleasant suprise on this trip for myself. Even though I can't speak a word of spanish! You come to realize that there is more to making connections with people then just verbal communication. Simply sharing a smile with a kid or an adult at one of the church services can make my whole day. 

Keep praying for us! :) We have very long days and need all the energy we can get, as you can see.

 This trip has been simply amazing and I feel very, very blessed to be able to be in such a beautiful country doing beautiful things for the Lord. Everything has gone so smoothly, please pray that it continues to go that way. 

Well, that's all for now. I need to go help everyone prepare supplies for the VBS.

P.S. Mom and Dad - I love you! Don't turn my room into an office or something. :)  

Costa Rica day 3

Hi all from Costa Rica this is Corrie writing for the whole team. Today was national rice and beans day so we got to start the day out with a great breakfast of what else but rice and beans! All the schools were out for the holiday meaning we couldn't do vbs, so we decided to do some hiking and shopping on our free day. We hiked fairly intensely from Marlin's mother's house to a passionfruit farm that is owned by one of the Obando's church members named Yolanda. She was so sweet and let us try many of her amazing fruits she grows. We passed some crazy dogs, a wild horse, and a breathtaking waterfall on the hike to her farm. After hiking we ventured into Turrialba stopping first at the walmart to exchange money (they are very picky some of us couldn't even exchange at all!) and then went into the town to shop. Unfortunately because it was a holiday most of the stores were closed so we settled for pizza and ice cream instead. We decided to call it an early night and came back to the hotel early to play games, swim, and relax. Today we got to witness God's love through all the beauty he created in the world around us. It's amazing the detail he put into the beauty of the earth, and it was done all for us. We are looking forward to a great day of vbs tomorrow! Love from the whole team to all those back home!

Hello Everyone!

This is Kate just saying hi from Platanillo, were today we had sunday church and our first VBS. Both of which, Chirst presented himself in small and big ways. We kicked off church with some dancing and music, followed by Marlin's touching sermon about how love is everything (Psalm 63) and if you don't have love, you don't have anything. (Thankfully Jessica was there to translate the whole thing for us..) After the sermon, they played Revelation Song in spanish, which was a blessing because we could sing along in english! Then along came the VBS, which Morgan, Bobby, and I lead today about the Good Samaritan. We began the VBS with reading the story in spanish performed with a puppet show! It got lots of laughs! Next we began activities, which included a coloring books and beaded prayer bracelets. Some of the hits were the help your "Vecino" or Neighbor which was lead by Justin and I, where kids paired up, blindfolded, and sent to find the tags. Another was Kasey and Corries game, where you passed yarn around, into pretty designs. ( See pictures above (: )  But a favorite of all was the hand banner, where everyone had the opportunity to put their hand print on the banner and then deorate it. The banner will be hung in their church for everyone to see. The moment that affected me the most today was when a woman hugged me and said "Thank you for your love." Hearing her say that after Marlin sermon about love, I knew God had brought us here for a purpose (obviously.. He always has a purpose for us...) but that the purpsose was for us to show how to truly love your neighbor but also how to love God. So today all kinda came into play, from Marlins sermon, to our VBS scheme, to my own personal experince, everything revolves around love, but most of all Gods love.  

PS: Morgan says hi to her family!!!
Have a super awesome blessed day!
Love, Kate and everyone else!

Costa Rica Mission Trip 2011 : day 1 and 2

Hello everyone, this is Kacie speaking for everyone today on our mission. Yesterday we arrived and took a long drive up to our bed and breakfast but it was absolutely worth it because the place is beautiful! we are going to try to attach some pictures so hopefully you will be able to see. Also last night after we dropped off our bags Marlin and Jessica took us to a night high school, which was new to us, and went class to class having marlin talk to them and translate some things we wanted to say to them encouraging them to come to our skit we will be perfoming tonight. just some minor backgroud, the kids at the night school can be any age so basically a 40 year old can show up if they want to get they're high school diploma. So basically we were interacting with people of many ages, but they were mostly teenagers. The sad thing is most of the kids we talked to spend they're time in between classes getting high or smoking. Jessica and Marlin told us that they do that basically to avoid their actions and be distant from God. So were hoping we can reach through to them tonight and the rest of the week. Today we speant most of our time preparing for our skit tonight and getting together supplies for tomorrows sunday school. We are reallly excited for this skit because it is very deep and we are hoping that tonight the teens/kids who show up are moved by it. So that is all for now, sorry for the long novel haha. We have to go rehearse the skit now so keep us in your prayers! and someone else will be on tomorrow to blog about what new things have happened:) Audios!

Getting ready to go!!

We spend the late afternoon packing the vbs supplies - what fun! We packed one bag for each person, perfectly enough weighed each bag plus one bag of goodies for the Obandos -