Recap of 2nd Week of Summer

So, let's see how much of this I can actually remember now. The second week of groups that I helped host fell between July 4 and July 11. Myself, Missy, and Julia co-led a youth group from Kingwood Vineyard in Texas. There were about 20 people in the group. On this particular week, I was teaching The Family drama and I got to actually teach several people from the Kingwood group. It was a great time getting to know them that way. We left on the 7th to visit the church we would be working at for the week. It was close enough that we drove there at the beginning of each day and returned to the base each night. The church was called La Comunidad de Amor (The Community of Love) and it was located in San Francisco de Los Rios, about an hour drive from the camp. The pastor there was great. His name was Gonzalo and he tried speaking English with us which was always a lot of fun. Between my little bit of Spanish and his little bit of English, we were usually able to hold a conversation.
The first day we got there, we did a tour of the neighborhood where we would be working. It was a little hike from the church and was actually a very poor area. Gonzalo and the church really wanted to reach out to the community there. As we were walking closer to the neighborhood, Gonzalo whispered to me that at night, the taxi drivers wouldn't even go down to the area we were walking into because it was so dangerous. Real comforting, but now you get the picture. Oh, and I forget if it was that day or not, but one day we actually past a guy doing crack on the side of the road. Yeah, so that was where we worked. We ended up having lunch late after the tour. We ended up just sitting on the front porch of the house of one of the members of the church who just opened it up to us on the spur of the moment. After lunch we had some free time and ended up asking a couple of Tico guys if we could join them in a pick-up game of soccer in the field next to the house. I love the openness of Ticos to allow strangers to come in and join them in whatever they are doing.
That evening we ordered pizza and we hung out with the youth group from La Comunidad de Amor. It was great to see the two youth groups interact. We played some typical Costa Rican games with the youth which turned out to be Jacks and Ping-Pong. While some of the youth new some English, it was amazing to see how we had a blast despite being different and speaking different languages. They taught us how to play some games they enjoyed, like Jacks. We got to teach them a different type of Ping-Pong game that we knew. Neither group was better than the other, but we could teach each other new things that we didn't know before. That night, we took the group out to Pop's a famous Costa Rican ice cream place and had our debrief time with the group sitting out on the stairs in front of a bank. There were several 13 year old kids on the trip and this was the first night I was surprised at how much they were able to learn and share even in a group of older youth.
On Sunday, we attended church there. The group performed both of the dramas they had learned, The Family, and The Champion (based on Carman's song except in Spanish). Then for the afternoon, the youth went to different homes of the members of the church. The Pura Vida staff, got to go out to eat at a seafood restaurant together. I had a whole fish for lunch, that actually still looked like a fish, until I devoured it.
On Monday we started with our service project and worked on it each morning Monday thru Wednesday. This project was to repaint the inside of the church and the railing outside the front of the church. It was an easy project for the group to work on together and yet it was something the members of the church were incredibly grateful for. We worked on the project until lunch time each day. Then we had a chef who attended the church who made some great Costa Rican lunches for us each day. Well actually, the first meal on Monday was a little hard for some of the members to swallow, literally, just because it was not something we usually eat in the U.S. In the afternoon we traveled to the neighborhood we toured on Saturday and held two Vacation Bible Schools on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. We were exhausted at the end of each day from working with the kids. One of my favorite times each day was craft time. I loved just sitting and watching the kids work. And the number of youth in the Kingwood group usually fit perfectly with the number of kids that came for each Bible School session, so they could work one-on-one.
Each evening we rode our bus back to the base. It was at least an hour drive, plus we picked up another team at a different church on the way back. It was amazing to have that time to talk and just hang out together. I kind of wish we had an hour long bus ride at the end of each day with all of our groups.
On Tuesday evening, the other group that we usually picked up was staying at their location for a cookout that night. So we came back early and had a family style dinner here at the base with the group. Then a bunch of people played basketball outside and I hooked up my MP3 player to one of our speakers and we rocked out while we played. Chico and I played two other girls from the group and got whooped. In my defense, the girl I was guarding had a scholarship to go play college basketball. But we had a lot of fun.
On Wednesday, we were able to finish up the painting project in the morning. Then we went and did the first Bible School time. Instead of a second Bible School that day, the church had planned a special event for the Kingwood group. Some of the kids from the church dressed up in typical Costa Rican dress, the girls with flowing ruffled dresses and the guys with bandanas and fake mustaches. It was so cute. They performed several dances for us and then gave us each handmade gifts.
By then, the bus was there to take the group off to their vacation day, which meant the staff had to head back the base, because the next group was already there. But I was excited, because it was my Bible Study from back home in Virginia that was the next group I was leading.