| Orion's Belt, or Home AgainFirst off, the mountains are wonderful. They are undervalued as everyone goes for the beaches, but I spent all of my time in the mountains. San Jose, Heredia, Alajuela, Fraijanes, Coronodo, San Isidro, the shanty town of las pinas..... I suppose I should begin at the beginning on what drove me to give up the holiday time and go to Costa Rica. Guys I know some of you don't believe or don't want to believe God exists, but I know He does. Plain and simple like your forehead. And I also know that despite all the messed-up-ness in the world, He is full of Love and Mercy and Ulitmate Goodness. I think the badness is on the part of our own selfishness. SO in view of all this, I wanted to go somewhere and do what I did in Europe, meet other people. and offer them my time and my hand and my help and my love and if they cared, my God. Jose Marti has a poem about offering frienship, its called "Cultivo una rosa blanca." Sorry to you guys who can't read spanish. And so I did. I boarded a plan in Philly, went to LA, met up with about 80 people who feel the same way I do, and together we went to San Jose Costa Ricea. While there, we stayed at a school. Eight girls to a room. 2 showers. 4 toliets. Need I continue? Every day we went to forgotten dirty shanty towns in the mountains and spent hours playing and singing with children while their parents trash picked or used substances to try and forget life. My heart was torn up. We went to community centers and did the same thing. We painted fences for the people of Fraijanes, we scrubbed amd cleaned churches of different denoninations, we even went into a Male Penitentary, where there were 5 guards standing between 20 of us females, and exactly 100 male inmates, most of whom had killed some one (the guards told us we enter at out own risk). We saw every man but 3 make a decision to follow the Jesus of Bible. Even 1 guard. It was earth shattering. Then the chaplain of the prision lead us in a 2 hours worship service. We went into parks and played soccer with kids and taught them new songs, we went into orphanages and spent the afternoon playing with 20 kids, each with an amaing story. Guys it was temendous. I saw God in the faces of the people there. Now I can understand how people like Mother Theresa and Angelina Jolie and Jim Elliot could have such a drive for the forgotten masses. They are human too. I encourage everyone to spend time doing something that benifits other people other than your selves. I believe when you help other people, God is there. I spent the week reading the Bible stories of Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Mary Magdalene, these people in these stories (which I know to be true) dealt with God. And then they turned around and did something about the experience. I'm not a country person, nor do I know much about stars, But on New Year's Eve, I saw Orion's belt. Its the first time I had seen it. And the moon was beautiful and the clouds were lazily drifting over the mountains. It was perfect. Truely, God is good. |
tired 