Family Time

What's one of the best things about an internship with eMi in the Costa Rica office? Being a part of host family! For sure! I have been blessed with such a generous and loving host family here in Atenas that treats me as one of their own. Yesterday we went down to San Jose to meet the extended family. The five of us pile into this little green honda hatchback, Wesley (my host dad) says a prayer for our safety, and then we set off on these crazy Costa Rican highways that cut through the mountains up, down, round and round. Heidi (my host mom) wouldn't let me eat much before we left so I didn't get car sick, but that was quite alright because our first stop in San Jose was breakfast at the Ferreria, which is a name for a large outdoor market full of fresh fruits, veggies and more....yumm! We picked up some freshly made Gallo Pinto (Costa Rican rice and beans) with eggs and this kinda strange fried cheese, and had ourselves an authentic Tico breakfast picnic. It was delicious! Then my host brother Stephen took me for a local's tour of San Jose. Churches, pigeons and colonial architecture pretty much sums up San Jose. It was a lot of fun to explore the city and continue to practice my Spanish! Later we returned to the grandparents house for a birthday celebration! I met aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, family friends and their household parrot. Yes they had a parrot, and this parrot talked back! "Hola! Hola" It squeaked it a pitch I can't replicate. Let me tell you it's pretty entertaining to have a conversation with a parrot. Back in the living room we all crowded around and sung Happy Birthday (or Cumpleanos Feliz) to Heidi's dad. Besides the Spanish and other cultural differences, I think its pretty cool that we Americans and Costa Ricans both circle around a cake and sing and celebrate the person whose turning another year older. I also can't say how blessed I feel to have this opportunity to be a part of this family for a time and get gain some insight on a culture different from my own. It was awesome and totally exhausting day. I also feel so blessed to have an awesome family back in Colorado. Lately there have been a lot of wildfires and last week there was one was within a few miles of my house. I have been thinking and praying for you constantly family! I praise God that the fire is almost contained now and did little damage to our community. While I am totally loving every minute here in Costa Rica, I am looking forward to spending some time with you guys this summer and my friends in PA! I have been real busy lately trying to finish up that last details of this church project and I have been bad about keeping in touch and posting on this blog. You all can be praying for the work here in the office, that God would be establishing the work of our hands and helping us finish these projects before the other interns and I leave for the states. I'll post more updates soon! Pura vida! :)

Stories and Rice

No matter the context life seems to center around meals. That was the case on our project trip as well. The team and I would work from sun up until way past sun down, but we would always take breaks for some delicious Costa Rican food. I think the meals were my favorite part of the project trip. This was our time to interact, one on one, with the members of the church we were serving. Again I was blown away by the generosity of everyone. They would always say that their house was our house and continue to thank us for the design work we were doing for their church. You could tell it meant a lot to them. During these meals we would ask them about how they found out about the ministry and what they liked most about the church and what they would like to see the church become. They've got big dreams. Dreams to become the center of change in their community. Dreams to run afterschool programs for youth and a daycare to give single moms a helping hand. Dreams to one day have a congregation of 250 believers and growing in the Barrio del Los Angeles. Dreams that are completely attainable through the grace of God. We also had some members of the church share with us their testimonies. I remember one house in particular, Don Angel was sharing how God had transformed his life by helping him overcome alcoholism and a dire health condition. You could see the intensity of his love for God and how real God's grace was to him and his family as he shared his story. Across from me sat his wife, welling up with tears as he was telling us about God's work in their lives. It was truly a beautiful story of restoration. I am so thankful for this time to serve La Iglesia del Nazareno. It reminded me of the importance of an outward focused church focused on making an impact for the sake of Christ in their community. I'm looking forward to all that they will become in the coming future.

The Project Trip

What a beautiful week! This past week I was in San Jose with a team of two other architects helping design a church facility for the Nazarene church in a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Currently they meet in this small sea-foam green home on Sundays. The church now packs 60 Costa Ricans into a retrofitted living room as they sing songs and preach the word of God to the community. They are located in a suburb of the city called "Los Angeles" and I was blown away by their heart to reach out the their community and transform their neighborhood for the glory of God. They already have a bunch of youth ministries and service projects but are struggling to accommodate all the people they would like to serve. So that's why they called eMi. An architect from the eMi office, an architecture professor from the states and I worked intensely this past week to create a masterplan of a new larger church facility for this ministry, as well as classrooms and support spaces to host the events they seek to have. Here is a picture of us with the ministry at our presentation at the end of the week. Believe it or not I actually presented my part of the project in Spanish....poor Spanish...but Spanish none the less! I will have more posts coming about this week. Too much happened to sum up in a single post. I learned so much about the bigness of our God and feel blessed to have a glimpse of his work in San Jose, Costa Rica!