The Costa Rica Mission: Perspective

Day 5: July 16, 2012
Today was a nice relaxing day for me. I still woke up and had to help out with breakfast and later had to help with lunch. But then for most of the other activities that day, since I wasn’t scheduled to go and help, I would go home and rest instead. It was good to have a more relaxed day. I even had the luxury of being able to take a nap! And it was good to Skype with Mom and Dad for a while. 

During some of my free time today I was sitting on the balcony of my house. I noticed a neighbor man saying something or other to somebody. I don’t know what it is about language, but it can be such a barrier between people! In that moment I realized I was looking at that man almost like he was an alien, or like he was completely foreign to me. I realized I’ve been seeing a lot of the Ticos that way. I don’t just mean “foreign” in the sense of having a different skin color. I mean he seemed like a completely different species in some sense, he seemed almost unusual. I started to think about why that man and many other people seem so foreign to me just because they speak another language. I know that they are people just as much as I am, but it’s so hard to remember that when I can’t understand what someone is saying or why someone is doing a certain thing. My prayer is that God will not only give me a heart for these people, but that God will give me HIS heart for these people. I don’t want these people to just be a face in the crowds of Costa Rica. I want it to hit home that these are real people just like me. There’s nothing unusual about them, they’re just different. But they are exactly the way God created them to be. It’s all about perspective.


But later in the day, after dinner, I went with the team to go do some evangelism. Originally we were going to go a park, but it was dark and the park is known for being dangerous at night so not many people were there. Instead we relocated to a plaza outdoors in San Jose. One of the staff members had some of his friends doing hip hop dancing so that we could attract a crowd. Once we had a lot of people, the team split up and started talking and attempting to evangelize with people there. I didn’t do any evangelizing myself, although Christine was able to pray with a young man. So that was good! She seemed confident that he understood what she had told him. But what really struck me about San Jose was all of the homeless people that would just come right up to you and ask for money. I’m used to seeing homeless people in the city. But the ones I’m most used to aren’t so bold as to come right up to you asking for money. But what was even more of an eye opener was that there were children walking around to us trying to sell things like coloring books or other things to try to get money. Children! I wonder if I will ever truly understand how blessed my childhood was compared to those of so many other children around the world. The only time I ever sold anything as a kid was when I set up a lemonade stand at the end of my drive way for fun! I never had to try to sell things in the middle of the city to strangers because I needed to make money. It helped me to get some perspective.


I guess a lot of things in life or in this world all come down to getting some perspective.

 This is my house in Costa Rica. That's the balcony I enjoy sitting on when I have free time. Many of the houses have bars in front of them like this because theft is such a big problem here.

This is a stop sign in Costa Rica, I just get a kick out of them, maybe because it's different.