a little update…

Hey guys!! I’m alive!! A quick little update for you all… I am in Costa Rica in a little town called Turrialba. I am here with 12 other amazing people who I now get to call family. We are extremely spoiled here by our ministry hosts, they are so loving and treat my teammates and I like family. I couldn’t ask for anything better. An average ministry day for my team and I starts off with Julio (our cook) yelling “Listo” at 7am, this lets us all know he is done making coffee and breakfast for all of us. We then start work at 8am and work until around 3 or 4 pm which is a series of different projects for local churches. This can look like painting, building fences, mixing concrete for the sidewalk and other things like that. After that we spend the rest of the day exploring the town we live in, getting to know locals and eating dinner together every night. Sometimes days can get repetitive and sometimes it can be hard eating and sleeping on the same floor in the same room as 12 other people; but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

“You don’t realize what I am doing but later you will understand.” John 13:7. My sister Rylie wrote this scripture in the back of my journal before I left and there is none other that so perfectly describes what I have been walking through. It was quite a long journey to get where I am now, that’s for sure. The first month was incredible but also pretty rough.. I was exposed to covid, visited the urgent care and the hospital, was sent to the middle of nowhere in Georgia instead of overseas, found out Nicaragua (where I was supposed to go) was a no go, and constantly asked myself what in the world I got myself into. In those hard moments it is so easy to get angry and want to give up, but something I have learned is if you push through you will see God was working all along. Sometimes you just have to be patient and then you’ll see a little more of what He was doing. This is such a beautiful realization, when some of what you thought were your lowest points but now are things you would never want to change. I’m not saying sun poisoning, going to the hospital and spending 3 days in bed are things I want to experience again. But looking back at it I can now be thankful for it happened. I can now see how God wanted me to rest and feel loved by Him and all my teammates. I have never felt so loved – people brought me snacks, cards and took time to talk to me even though I was pretty loopy and probably didn’t make much sense. On this trip, slowing down to rest is pretty rare, so even though the circumstances were not great, I really needed the rest.
Another realization is looking at being exposed to covid and how that changed all of our plans. If we had gone to Nicaragua on the day we expected, we could have been stuck in the country, split up, or sent home. I would have never gotten the chance to live the amazing little life I have here in Costa Rica.

We are staying here until the end of the month. I will let you know in my next blog where I am/ what I am doing next!! Well there is my quick, grammatically incorrect, well overdue rant. Thank you for praying for me! I will update my blog more regularly and keep you all posted 🙂