Day 22: The Twenty-Second Day
Well, I think today marks the halfway point of my time in Costa Rica this year.
I'm very tired. It's 3 AM here (Matchbox 20 would be lonely). I can't decide if today warrants a long post or if it's smarter to make a short post and just go to bed. I guess you already know where I landed, though I don't yet.
Tuesday means CDI and Bible Study.
We left the house when I wanted to today, but we still didn't beat Diego to the CDI. We got there and got set up and then, you know, did CDI things. Everyone on our team did a great job today. Sheryl led the Devotional and really engaged well with both sessions of kids. I think they're starting to absorb some of the stuff we're throwing down with Respect. Izzy did great leading the English Lesson with me and she feels ready to start doing them on her own (which is exciting because English-in-Spanish is so confusing to me). Matthew engaged well with the kids in active ways that I'd much rather not; walking them to school with Izzy and then Sheryl, and doing a planking competition to get them moving.
CDI today was definitely long, because two sessions. But, we survived. More than that, I really do think we did well with the kids today; being loving and engaging and having good situational awareness. Lol, one funny moment was when Doña Maria (o quizas Georgen) dijo (not to me): "Sam era mucho mas gordo el año pasado, si?" That's a very Spanish question. I mean, she's not wrong.
"Wow, 7:30-4:30 in just 2 paragraphs! I bet this will be a short post!"
Oh, you silly person. That was only the first 9 hours of the day, I've still got 11 to go!
We Uber'd home and got started prepping for the Bible Study. Matthew had some crazy plan for an epic meal, so he was in Chef Mode in the kitchen. No chef hat, but that was all that was missing. I got to talk a bit with Alexis, which was exciting, especially since last Tuesday we didn't really get to talk. I really like her. This will be expounded on in a little bit, I bet.
People started showing up and we hung out and chatted for a while as Matthew finished up (with assistance from Ana Raquel and Sheryl). We had a bigger group than last time and *gasp* we had both men and women come this time. Crazy stuff. Oscar, Josue, y Karen came, which was exciting, since we've gotten to have some good spiritual conversations with them (fútbol game and Monte de la Cruz "hike").
Y'all, Matthew's food was so flippin good. I won't even say anything else but that. It was so good. People were blown away.
Eventually (8:30) we started worship. We're trying to introduce a more homegroup-style worship time, where we can share and pray and all that together. It's seeing varied success. I think the bigger group size today made it a little more tough for people to open up and share.
The Bible Study itself was really good. Ephesians 2 got us into everything from "What happened to non-Jewish people who lived and died before Jesus?" to "What does it mean to be God's temple?" It was really good and kinda scattered discussion. For a while, it felt like I overshared again (I may have), but eventually a lot of our group ended up participating in the discussion in some way or another. Sheryl got us through all the DBS questions (i think) and cast some vision for other people leading in the future.
Have you ever read 1 Peter 3:18-20? What about 1 Peter 4:6? I think they're the same topic, but I could be wrong. It's pretty spicy and weird stuff.
Around 10 PM, the discussion ended and people just chilled for a while. I said hi to Oscar, who was beside me and thus began one of the crazier conversations I've had in a long while, which is saying something. Oscar y yo talked about a million things. It started with him basically asking (after our Ephesians 2 discussion), "salvation can't be that easy, can it?" We talked a lot about what Jesus says about counting the cost before following him and what James says about following God and works vs. faith. We talked about Romans and 1 Corinthians, about Job and Ecclesiastes. Almost everything he shared somehow managed to line up with a verse in scripture. Praise God for bringing the verses to my mind!
Ultimately, the biggest concern was that we can't just half-heartedly follow Jesus. He felt like too many Christians just live however they want and don't really follow Jesus all-in, and he wasn't wanting to jump on board with something like that. He also felt a fear that he might fail God once he started following him and fall away.
Apart from scripture, almost everything Oscar said made me think about Alexis in one way or another. I said to him at least 10 times in our conversation (it became a joke eventually), "Pues, estoy por casarme, y este me hace pensar en...."
We talked about things like, it's really easy to get married, you just sign some papers with some witnesses and you're good. But, that doesn't mean married life will be easy or that you'll get it right. I told him that (similar to how he feels about God) I am terrified of the amount of hurt I will cause Alexis over the course of our life together. It's the scariest thing to me. I will fail her and that will hurt her deeply. But, that doesn't make the relationship not worth having.
We talked about my |Absolute Value Theory|
-when mediocre things go bad, they're only inconvenient (a rotten banana is a sad thing, but meh)
-when good things go bad, they're much worse (a broken friendship is really hard)
-when amazing things go bad, they are terrible (bad marriages, bad church experience)
We talked about whether it's appropriate for followers of Christ to have a lot of money and about the influence money can have on us (we landed on: it just turns up the volume of whatever is already playing in our heart. Selfishness becomes crazy indulgence, hatred gets empowered, love becomes outrageous, life-changing generosity).
We talked about life paths and passions and what it means when things don't work out. I got to share how blessed I feel that God led my life (including failed church plant attempts, failed mission-work attempts, and a lot of hurt) to Alexis and how blessed I feel to get to look forward with her.
We talked about Joy, Identity, and Purpose (which I think are deeply related). We talked about what kind of husbands and dads we wanted to be. We talked about the Bible and about how relationship with God needs heart and mind. We talked about the historicity of Christ and the veracity of scripture. We talked about doubt and baptism and culture and hurt and soul-fulfillment.
In all of the things we talked about, we were circling the gospel. The end of it all was, "God has a good plan for us. God made us and knows what we need. God is patient and he wants to talk to us."
I got distracted a few times tonight in different circumstances thinking about how much of a miracle it is that Alexis and I ended up together when and how we did. We connected because she came to Costa Rica, but she only came because she thought we were still working with women coming out of prostitution, which we only did for one year. We met at a time when I was convinced I was never gonna get married (and I was pleased about that). We met at a time where everything about me represented threatening things to her. We met right before a ton of big shakeups in my life that left me open to change and God's leading. There's a million things that just blow my mind about how God brought us together. Maybe some day I'll be able to express it well.
Anyway, evetually, Oscar headed home and then I did a million dishes. I was 0 help in preparing food, but I can handle clean-up pretty well. As we've seen before, that led to a mini house-cleaning sesh and now here I am. Very tired at 4 AM with a 9 AM start tomorrow. It's choices like these that lead to my soda and caffeine problems. I really do want to run while I'm here, but I don't think I'll have time. We're not getting a lot of chill time and I've got other things to do when I get it.
-for the Spirit to move in the students' hearts here!
-for the CDI kids to do well in school (it's tests next week!)
-for our team to walk with Jesus
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