Costa Rica STT

It's really interesting to me that memory and smell are connected. My memory is not very good, and neither is my sense of smell. I wonder if there's a connection there. Did you know you can work out your nose to improve your sense of smell? I didn't. Anyway, all that to say, I'm pretty sure I  will , however, always associate the smell of tea tree oil with Costa Rica.  That was more words than necessary to tell you that we're spraying tea tree oil on basically everything. But, it's been a long time since I was concise. My head is really sunburned, y'all. Did you know tea tree oil can help soothe sunburns?  Ok, today: Tuesday. Long day at the CDI. We got up early and got over there with our sandwich supplies. The first round of kids showed up and we started doing the stuff. Today, first round, I worked pretty closely  con Diego . He's fun, but it is very hard to understand when he speaks, so I do a lot of trying really hard, then just end up smiling or re...

I felt like I was sleepwalking most of today. Not really sure why. Maybe tired and sore from yesterday. That, combined with the White Rabbit title, makes it seem like this is going to be about drugs or the Matrix. Sorry to disappoint. It was a good day though. I woke up and ran to the Sabana park. It's just under a mile, so when I reached the 1-mile mark, I sat and thought at God for a while. But, doing that just led to me feeling more insecure and stirred-up than I wanted to (which probably means I really need to have some stuff pulled out of my heart). I walked back home, so I don't get to give myself credit for the 2 miles I was supposed to run today, but that's ok.  I got home and took a shower, then took a nap. Around 12:25, Matthew, Katie, and I got ready to head to the CDI (Izzy was meeting up with Ana Raquel!). We walked over, and started getting stuff set up for the kids. I got to talk a little bit with the bigger kids ( Angel, Erick, y...no se ), who were there e...

...just, not our plan; God's plan (pauses typing to pull up Spotify and listen to Drake). Ok, so the plan for today: -7 AM lice killing with Tannia y su madre -9AM hiking with H@ngout students -3 PM lunch with Tannia y su familia -6PM dinner as a team I woke up a little before 7, then we had breakfast with Tannia y su madre , they made us tacos, which are apparently called gallos  here? it was really, really kind of them. After we ate, Tannia's mom took a hair-straighteny-iron thing and straightened everyone's hair (well, those that have hair). This mercs all the lice and eggs and stuff that are in your hair. She said everyone's hair was really good; she only found a couple of eggs (ew). There'll be some pictures below, but it was fun to see Matthew with straightened hair.  This process lasted until about 9:30, at which point we found out that most of the H@ngout students were unable to go hiking today, so the only one who was free ( Alan ) was chilling at Lagos and...

Well. It happened. It's no censure of your prayers, but we got lice.  So,  t e c h n i c a l l y, it was never confirmed that I had lice, because I shaved my head before it could be thoroughly re-checked, but I totally did too. I'm like 87% confident that I found egggggs in my hair. Ew.  Rewind.  Today started off well, just a normal, nice, relaxing Saturday. I went for a run (3 miles, what) and then took a shower and we had a brief planning session with the team. We decided, just to be cautious, we would take all our clothes to the laundromat and use a dryer instead of air-drying them in the apartment. Dryers kill lice. Then , we realized that our dear hosts, Lagos and Ana Raquel, have a dryer at their casa . So, our new plan was to send Katie to do laundry with them and the rest of us would go get groceries. This felt a little weird  The plan for the evening was to get dinner with Matthew's old Spanish tutor, Ingrid . You may remember her, we got dinner last ...

Well, that makes 2 weeks, folks. that's 20% of our trip. Today I went for a run, but without music, since my mp3 player was in a bad mood. It was an ok run, felt uncomfortable, but good. I made a running schedule the other night, I'm curious to see if I stick to it. It'd get me up to 5 miles by the end of the summer! Afterwards, I sat and worked on the teaching I'm supposed to give on the 10th. I posted my initial notes here. It's very short. It needs work. I also don't know whether to have bullet points in a notebook, or the whole written-out thing on my phone or in a notebook or.... usually, in English, I just write it out and then make bullet points for a HG teaching and the one time I shared in church. Anyway, nervous. Worked on it and it feels better though.  Afterwards, I read for a second and got a little nap in. Then, had a meeting with Lagos, Ana Raquel, and Katie to talk about how things were going. It was a generally encouraging meeting; they are very...

Here's what I have so far, needs some tweaking, grammatically and content-wise. If I wanted to follow the preaching formula, i'd start with a funny, relevant, and poignant story, but i'm bad at remembering stories from my life. It also looks kind of short, which makes me nervous. Especially since I talk fast. Oh well, it's a good start. 2 weeks left.  Originalmente, yo pensaba que la sencillez era un estilo de vivir, pero, como es con todas las cosas en nuestra fe, la cosa más importante es el estado de nuestros corazones. Mi corazon existe en uno de dos estados: La sencillez o la duplicidad. Esta duplicidad nos llena con preocupación. La sencillez significa que solo tenemos un enfoque en lugar de cargar el peso del mundo y la sencillez es paz en lugar de preocupación. En Mateo 6, Jesus dijo que no debemos preocuparnos sobre nuestra comida ni ropa en la manera que lo hace el mundo, ni preocuparnos por mañana, pero que busquemos primeramente el reino de Dios y su justici...

How was that for a fun title? It were a good day this day today. I'm in a weird headspace though, so this might be short, might be weird, no telling really. What an adventure. We have fun though, don't we? Woke up, had a breakfast apple. Decided making lunch was more effort than was merited by the idea of being fed. We walked to the CDI, as we do. We got there a little late, as we do on Tuesday/Thursday mornings.  Today is the last CDI day of the month (which reminds me I should send out a prayer letter/email thing sometime next week), so they had a party to celebrate all of the May birthdays. This is a very clever way to both be able to celebrate the kids, and also not worry super much about remembering all of the birthdays and paying to celebrate multiple times a month and letting the lessons be derailed. So, for the party, we had cake and ice cream and pizza. We almost didn't have pizza, but I'll get there. What that means is that we gave the kids a ton of sugar and ...

Today was a good day. Lots of small, but significant things happened, as I think about it.  This is a long and unrelated parenthesis: (Usually, when I say, "The Turn," I am referring to the moment in the timeline of a homegroup member when they "get it." The way our college homegroups are designed (in healthy operation), new people are welcomed in with a lot of love and focus on them. That's because we love them and want to see them fully step into our spiritual family. Part of that full involvement often includes a moment when church (homegroup) stops being about what they get  out of it, and starts being about God himself .  When that happens, a few key things change. Rather than only sharing or praying during worship when they feel like it, they start sharing for the sake of honoring God and blessing others in the group. Rather than only valuing homegroup for the love they receive, they begin to look for opportunities to love, serve, and welcome other people....

I don't have a theme or anything in mind from today, so let's just see what comes out.  Currently listening to Maverick City's Spanish albums  (2nd one is linked, 1st one is better, imo). Best worship in Spanish that I know. Though I'll take suggestions. You should listen to it if you haven't. Ok, so we started early today, headed to the CDI, got it set up and the kids started showing up. We flowed pretty well. Constanza , the teacher lady, did a lesson with the kids. I'ma get things out of order here, but we did the English lesson and devotional and played together and worked on homework. So, the usual. Difference today was Lagos and Ana Raquel had a meeting and weren't able to be with us, but it all got done ok.  I really enjoy doing the Bible stories with little kids and with doing homegroup with college students, but anything in-between I get nervy and unsure what level to engage with them on. So, I felt awkward at least with the older students. Today, I...

I'm pretty independent by nature. It's something that I really like about myself, and one of the top 5 lessons I am grateful I learned from my parents.* Every strength I have, every strength you have, also has a weakness on the flip side of it. A shadow side, if you want to sound edgy. Strengths and weaknesses are just flip sides of the same coin, and it usually comes down to context. I think any and every weakness, temptation, struggle, whatever...reveals a strength and inclination a person has that has just been warped and twisted or is in the wrong context. And vice versa. "Be careful if you are standing firm, lest you fall" says Paul. Every strength in the wrong context or with a little tweaking and twisting, becomes a weakness.  So, all that to say: my independence can bite me in the butt sometimes, so I'm very grateful for Teams. I try to push back on my independence by being invested in teams, but that only works sometimes. Some teams I am on, I am not a ve...

For years, I decided the American Evangelical Church had gotten things severely wrong with respect to the concept of sabbath. I've had many conversations with people who have listened to some podcasts by John Mark Comer, or other popular pastors and speakers about the right way to do a sabbath (it's ok, don't worry, not about to come at any of them). I felt very confident that we had gotten the idea of sabbath mixed up with ideas on healthy self-care.  Boundaries, rhythm, self-care, and the like have never been my strong point or made much sense to me, but I recognize I am too far to one side of the spectrum. However, most people seem to me to be too far the other way. American Christianity seemed (seems? I'm writing in past tense, but...) to have turned sabbath into a way to make following Jesus comfortable and possible in one's own strength. If my sabbath consists of me sleeping late, eating some good food, spending time with friends who only build me up and don...

 Hello amigos , You won’t read this tonight, since we have no internet, but I will still write it now. I want to start with an addendum to yesterday’s post. We met with the church, remember? Matthew jumped in and played keyboard for their worship team! I was chilling, worshiping, enjoying it immensely, and then I saw something. I looked at Matthew while he was playing, and saw that he was watching the guitarist’s fingers while she played. I thought to myself, “There’s no way he is looking at her fingers from his keyboard and figuring out what chord she’s playing and then just matching that on keyboard as they go along, is there?” So, I kept worshiping and then asked him about it later. And he said yes. The homie was playing keys in time with the guitar while figuring out the piano buttons to push by looking at which strings someone else was holding on a guitar. Anyway. So, today. sabado . I woke up and didn’t go for a run, but instead took Cassidy and Tesla to the nearby la...

Today was a really good, albeit long, day.  I started by going for a run. I ran to La Sabana , the huge park we walked to for worship the other morning. It was a little closer than I thought, but I got 2 miles in total, which was nice.  After my run, I found this in my room: What you're looking at is candy and a sweet note for me, sent by Alexis. What a way to start off a day :D We went as a team to get breakfast together and talk a bit about how the trip had felt so far for the two who are going home soon. What they shared was really encouraging and helpful.  In the early afternoon, we walked to downtown San José to go to the mercado central  with a few H@ngout students. Jose Carlos y Antonio  guided us around and helped out soon-to-return-home teammates find some fun things. Tanya  joined us, también . We also got to have some good conversations and make a little but better connection with all three. It was a lot of walking, but it was raining a LOT...