Dearest Friends and Family:
Here is my update on my experience in Costa Rica. I’m sure the prayers of my faithful friends assisted the team in staying healthy and safe. My connection to the team was easy and traveling alone manageable. If you have been to my facebook, you have seen the pictures of the ‘fun’ times.
As I reflect the first thing that makes me smile is that 36 team members lived together, worked together and played together well for 2 weeks despite our humanness. I think it’s very hard to quantify what God accomplishes because we see such a small part. We were 3 teams- the children’s workers trained teachers and worked with the children. The construction team completed the ceiling of the celebration center at the camp. The medical team ran the clinics with doctors, nurses, 1 EMT and helpers.
Our team leader gave this report:
Teacher’s trained: 57 Total
Children ministered to in Children’s Ministry: 367 (Orphan Home ministry and clinics)
Medical Clinics: Between 100-110 patients recorded as being seen daily in clinics held (aprox 800)
Paraiso Centro Church: Reported back 25 people accepted Christ. Many more were prayed for and counseled.
Circus Church: Reported back that also about 25 people accepted Christ.
89 people recommitted themselves to Christ. 140 people requested a pastoral visit to there home. David the local missionary reported, “This January was a complete success, the focus was more spiritual than medicine. Katherine and I believe that the human body can not be fully healed, unless there a true encounter with Jesus Christ. In total 201 souls were won for Christ, an outstanding job by all the medical team members who stepped outside the box to minister to patients."
So I will share a few stories. The first is about being flexible- I had many opportunities to practice this. One of the more common tasks was to count pills into a little bag- very time consuming but we had to ration the medications. It seemed like such a simple task but became complicated when trying to locate medications out of a bin or unable to recognize the names of medications because they were in Spanish. After putting the pills or liquid or cream in a bag or bottle, then it was labeled in Spanish. Sometimes our days were longer then planned due too operations or travel distance. Early on in the trip one of the construction workers sliced open his hand. We were so tired after the workday. Another nurse and I assisted our doctor in locating a place (camp kitchen counter) to suture and find the supplies we needed. Then we needed lots of prayer despite our best of care. Our patient was high risk for an infection since he did not keep the dressing dry. I was thrilled to see how well the wound healed without complications.
Oh yes, had the creature comfort test. How about 4 women sharing 1 bath? Or how about the 3 nights in the hotel with no hot water and roaches roamed the floor at night. 1 clinic site was so hot, we melted. One day my lunch disappeared and food ran out at dinner.
I appreciated the gifts of other teammates, enjoyed getting to know them, marveled at the patience of the patients we came to serve, was blessed to worship along side those who spoke a different language (it works to sing in two languages), and God’s special gift to me was letting me listen as teammates talked, being awed by the beautiful country and getting to know Amy. Amy is awaiting her support so she can be a missionary in Costa Rica. While we came to serve, the church people served us lunch and gave us smiles and prayed for us.
I'm very grateful for the experience.
Thanks for reading and sending up your prayers! char
