Our first work team

Happy New Years to you all. We are so grateful for each of you that join us in prayer and support. We have seen some amazing things transpire in 2014 and we look forward to a great 2015. Please let me know how I can be praying for you. Each morning I prayer for as many as I can remember and I would love to be praying for specific things.

Our first Work team
We just ended our very first work team here in Costa Rica and it was an amazing time. We were asked a few months ago to host a service project for a couple of families coming to CR. They wanted to come on December 26th and after some prayer I felt like the Lord wanted us to grow in some ways so we decided to agree. Like always, when we say yes to what the Lord has for us great things happen and this was no exception. I thought I would recap a bit of what took place over the four days they were here.

There were two families of five, the Crawfords and the Mays, with kids from ages 13-19 they were both from Austin and both were very familiar with Young Life. We ended up having many mutual friends and it was great to have visitors in from Austin. Both were great families and we had a wonderful time getting to know them. A couple of the kids organized a clothing drive and they showed up with 6 huge duffel bags full of clothing and shoes. The clothes will go to bless the less fortunate in the school where we worked.

Our task was a pretty huge one if you ask me. We were going to refurbish a couple of bathrooms and repaint an entire gymnasium floor. We scheduled three work days and we were joined by some leaders and kids from the area Vida Joven club. Vida Joven has club in the gym and the bathrooms have always been an issue because they were kind of nasty. The gym floor is concrete and was a mess with paint flaking off across the entire surface. The gym is typical of Costa Rica it is a large cinder block building with a slightly raised metal roof. The neighborhood we were in is called Invu and is in Alejuela, Costa Rica about an hour from our home. My partner in this caper was Nati. She is in a development role here in Costa Rica. She did an amazing job of scheduling and organizing the trip. The school is for 900 kids that all live within about half a mile from the school.

Work days were so good.

We started early each day. We were up and at breakfast around 7 and on the work site by 8am. Our first day consisted of cleaning everything. We cleaned the bathrooms and scraped about 500 pieces of gum off the floors and walls. WOW. There was a crew in each bathroom and by the end of the day they had the ceilings painted. We sanded and swept the gym floor and rinsed with water. Next we placed some muratic acid on the floors and rinsed that to conclude the day in the gym. We prayed the floor would be dry the next day and we would be ready to paint.

The second day was painting day. Both the bathrooms were painted including the three showers and two small toilet rooms. In the gym, we got the main areas of the court painted with one small issue. We ran out of paint for a second coat so we would have to do the second coat on the same day we painted the lines.

The third and final workday we painted some benches and the sink areas in the bathrooms and taped and lined the entire court. I can’t say enough about the team and the effort they put in. I never heard anyone complain. I think we were all a little nervous about the lines but in the end they looked amazing.

We had fun too.

We did not just work all day and go to bed at night each night. We did a different activity. The first night we decided to head out to the bullfights. Now the bull fights here are a little more rodeo and a lot less blood and gore. Here it is more bulls picking on the humans. We watched a couple of guys get tossed around the ring and called it a night. The second night we played soccer. We rented a small indoor/outdoor soccer field, which is big here, and we divided the Vida Joven kids and the two families of kids and did a round robin tourney. The last night was my favorite, we went to a Vida Joven home and enjoyed some pizza and music. We heard the moving testimony of one of the Vida Joven leaders, a couple of the kids in the families and one of the VJ kids sang some songs. Just as the last song ended some neighbor set off about 10 minutes worth of fireworks. God is good. Our last night we were joined by Carl and Alissa Cooper from our Young Life community back in Austin! They were going to lead them on the adventure side of their trip and we enjoyed a nice dinner overlooking the city of San Jose together.

We accomplished a lot. The kids of that school will be blessed. The kids that joined us were blessed. The families were blessed. For me, it was something that has been years in the making. I went on my first mission trip in 2009 and it radically changed my life. I met Jesus in a tangible way through the people of a foreign country, through events that seemed to be manufactured by a living God. One of the things I talked to the kids about on this trip was looking for things that are the same and things that are kind of different. How often do we realize that we as people are really the same? Our environments are different, but when you look down deep into the heart of people, we are the same. Same for thousands of years. I have been given a desire to read through the old testament. Those people did and made the same mistakes we are making today. The kids here face some of the same issues kids in the states face. They all have a desire to be known. To be loved. To give and serve. I love that I was again part of seeing the Lord move. I get a smile on my face when I think that more kids from the states will come and get to know some of these wonderful and amazing kids here, be friends, and celebrate differences and all the ways we are the same.

Blessings.

 

jimmy