Day 35 (28): So. Much. Food. ...and so many answered prayers.

Sorry I skipped yesterday!

I was super tired so I just went to bed. We had a really good day though! We went to Heredia and had lunch with the Diaz family. They fed us chifrijol, which is a meat (chicharron) and bean (frijole) dish. There was a lot of it. It was really, really good. I played Uno and Dominos with Carlitos, who is probably like 10. It was really nice, because interacting with adults is harder than interacting with kids. I stole a lot of his dominos, but he stole them all back, so....it worked out.

Yesterday, after lunch, we went to the mall and hung out with the students from H@ngout. Thank you so much for praying for the students to come and our schedules to work out! I thought we'd probably have just 1 or 2 students come, but we had 13 people there. There were, like, 5 or 6 students, which was amazing. I think they were there mainly to see Grace and Isaac (visiting newlywed couple from Indiana), but this was, for some of them, the first time they'd been in person in over a year. So that's exciting. 

We stayed really late at the mall. We hung out with the Lagos after everyone else had left. We got on a bus and came back. I don't remember much after that. I fell asleep in a chair.

Today was a day, too. We slept in, which was awesome. We walked to a nearby park to have a picnic with a few friends from the church. It turned into a really big party hangout thing. It was fantastic. We ate some kinda tasty pasta thing. Loved it. 

Many much games were played. We threw around a football, kicked around a futbol, threw around a frisbee, and I think played cards? Idk. I am so tired. I played some futbol and almost died. But, there was one epic moment where a player from the other team was going to score and I slid in front of him and blocked his shot. It was amazing. I was so pleased with myself. The player was Derek. He's 13. So... I showed him. 

I actually spent most of the time playing with Derek and then with some other kids that were in the park and wanted to join. Again, playing with kids is a lot easier than talking with adults sometimes. 

Though I did also get to talk with some adults, too. I had a great conversation with Derek's dad about his life story and hopes for the future. It was really cool. I remembered why I like talking to adults. I think it was a really good community moment for this church, and I felt really blessed to be a part of it. 

We had been praying for the weather to be nice, because it's been raining SO MUCH here lately. We got stranded in the mall yesterday because of the rain, though that turned out to be good. We were really worried about our picnic though. And it rained....all around the area we were in, but not in the park. There was some kind of weird wind pattern that steered the storm literally right around us. We could see the rain and thunder and clouds and stuff, and it was just cloudy enough to be cool outside, but still bright and dry. It was amazing. 

Our picnic lasted most of the afternoon. I got covered in mud (from yesterday's rain) and sweat and the tears of defeated children (that last one isn't true). So, we went and I took a shower before going over to have dinner at Georgen and Josue's (Derek and Reychel's parents) house. 

Dinner was really nice. We had a bunch of really tasty foods. I'm not really sure what all of it was. We watched the Copa America futbol game. Derek showed me all his toys and video games that he's super proud of. We talked and hung out... again, really good community. I'm not sure, but I think this has been really, really rare in this church during COVID, but there have been three fairly large gatherings recently, which I imagine feels very refreshing. 

We've been being fed so much food. We're gonna have to try to find ways to eat all of our food before we leave.

After dinner, we Uber'd back to our Airbnb and watched half of a movie. Then the Lagos joined us and we had some really good and serious conversations about partnership and the future and how we feel this trip has been. We're gonna try to write up a report for them soon (1 for the CDI and 1 for H@ngout) that summarize how we feel our work here went, and how we feel like their ministry here is going. That's exciting, because I was planning on doing something like that anyways. We watched the other half of the movie after we prayed and they headed back home. I like them a lot.

Tomorrow we'll get COVID tested and head back to the CDI. We also have some important conversations and things to figure out tomorrow. 

PRAYER:

- for more good community events for this church
- for Costa Rica to be able to open back up soon (especially the Universities)

- for our team to all test negative (not worried though)

- for wisdom in some of our pre-departure decision-making

- for wisdom and faith as the church here figures out the future of things at the CDI

- for our transition out here and back into life in Texas (i can already feel things trying to grab my focus)

Pictures:

Nope.