Day 45 – Painting

The team started the day off by going to the Saturday Morning Market and passing out free juice and invitations to the new Celebration Church! They really handed out a ton of invites! Hopefully we’ll have standing room only tomorrow…

After the market, we headed to the church where the team finished up most of the painting in the sanctuary and then moved to the hallway and the children’s room after lunch. At 2pm there was a Women’s Ministry meeting in the sanctuary and more than 25 women were in attendance! It’s great and amazing how much this community needed this new church… It seems that so many people are excited to get involved here (and in need of a safe place). Jorge is going to start opening up the building one day a week for the local teens to come and practice their break-dancing (break dancing is really big among the youth of Costa Rica right now…?). Hopefully, that will serve as a good outreach for the youth.

Yesterday, Jorge went by the school to speak with the Principle again about the Soccer Camp as the Principle never called him. In classic Tico style, rather than just say “no”, he tells Jorge to come back on Monday and he will give him a decision then!!! How stupid is this?!?! Now I know that different cultures have different customs about non-confrontation and about “saving face”, but I think it’s ridiculous. Jesus said: “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ be ‘No’, anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” – Matthew 5:37

Anyhow, since we got the hint that the school doesn’t want to work with us, we decided to go door to door. Yesterday, Jorge signed up 25 3rd Graders from Juan Pablo so I headed up to Jasmine with Dave and some of the RCC Team and we signed up another 12 from the mountain neighborhood.

This evening Bonnie and I did “God the Potter”. I was a blast as always, especially since the presentation turns out differently every time! Tonight, I threw a bowl at the floor and shattered it to demonstrate a pot exploding in the kiln as a result of our impatience. It’s so hard to wait on God’s timing sometimes, but when we rush things, we not only harm ourselves, but those around us as well.