Costa Rica 2002

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Tuesday, September 24th, 2002

The baptism from the night before kept us all up very late and so we slept a little later on Tuesday morning. Still we were all up around 8:00 AM. This was partly due to the fact that today was the day that the local grass cutter came around to trim the weeds behind the house. He could have done the whole job with a lawnmower in about 10 minutes, but since he only had a weedeater it took him about three hours. For breakfast we ate some of the fruit that we had purchased at the grocery store the day before. Anones are Maritza's favorite fruit and they are definitely unlike anything we have in the U.S. The outside looks like an Artichoke. The inside looks like a Pineapple. But they are soft and taste kind of like a mild but overripe banana.

That baptistery water from the night before had proven to be VERY cold. So cold in fact that Moises had to hold down the foot of Geral because he was having leg cramps and his foot was popping up out of the water. So Tuesday morning we looked into the possibility of getting some type of heating element for the baptistery. The bathroom showers in Costa Rica, at least in the poorer areas, have special heating elements on them that allow one to heat up the water as it flows through the shower head. At first we were thinking of purchasing something like this so we went to the local (within walking distance) hardware store and asked them about the possibilities. They didn't have anything short of a water heater and that was going to be too expensive to put in because the plumbing was not in place to do something like that. So we were referred to another hardware store. We decided to go into San Pedro and do some more looking. We went to True Value and some other hardware stores in the area and we finally found what we were looking for, a small heating unit that would circulate the water and heat it up. However the cost for this device was too high so it was not purchased.

Our plan for lunch was to go to Porfirio Cordoba's house. Porfirio's wife, Carla, made a wonderful chicken Lasagna, salad, and vegetables. The nice thing about the Lasagna was that it had Cilantro in it. This really changed the flavor. We also had at their house with the salad, Salsa Rosa. This is a kind of dressing that you can put on the salad. It tastes kind of like Thousand Island dressing, but it was much better. The entire lunch was DELICIOUS as was everything we ate there.

After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon just talking with Porfirio and Carla about their work for the church in Costa Rica. Porfirio is the local contact for World Bible School. He receives the Bible correspondence courses for that area via mail and follows up with contacts there. He does this work for all of Costa Rica, so it is a full time job to keep up with the requests. Porfirio gets his support from the Western Hills church of Christ in Fort Worth, TX. As of the year 2003, Porfirio works under the oversight of the eldership at the Berryville church of Christ. We had coffee that afternoon as well and cookies as is their custom. Of course it rained most of the day that we were there.

We decided to head back to the house around 5:00. We walked as Porfirio's house is just about a block away from the church building. The rain had let up by then and so it was a pleasant stroll. When we got back to the residence part of the building, we visited with the children a little. Moises Jr. played his drums for me. Sara played the piano. Both seem to be quite talented in musical ability. We spent the rest of the evening preparing for our gospel meeting. I studied and Rusty put together some notes for the events of the day. About an hour before each evening service started, we would start driving around to houses and picking up people who wanted to come to the meeting. Many of the members of the church do not have cars and if they want to come to worship, they walk or ride the bus or take a taxi. Mostly they walk. So while we were renting the car, we would serve as a shuttle service to take members to and from their house to the church building. We had to make at least two trips and one night three trips to get everyone to the building who wanted to come. Each time we were able to squeeze about ten people into a seven passenger vehicle. Making all of these trips usually delayed the start of the service until about 7:30, which everyone seemed to be OK with. The concept of time to these people is regarded a little different than our concept of time. They are much more laid back--not in thriftiness or in work ethic for these people were very clean and worked very hard, but in fellowship and Bible study they seemed to want to spend as much time as they could with one another.

We were a little nervous this evening because our translator came a little late. He had had a hard time getting onto the buses and had been delayed because of this. We decided that for the next two nights we would go pick him up instead of relying upon the public transportation system. Tuesday night was Rusty's night to preach and he did an excellent job. As we mentioned before, the theme of the meeting was "Be ye reconciled to God." Rusty spoke regarding what God has done for us in providing for our reconciliation. God has envisioned a plan. God has enacted a plan. God has encoded that plan. At the invitation, Rusty gave the plan for man's salvation. Although there were no visible responses, the message was VERY well received. We visited with the brethren after services for a while and then we loaded everyone back up into the car and repeated our earlier shuttle service, but in reverse order. It was 9:30 by the time we got back to the building and we had planned on going out for Pizza that night. So we got everyone in Moises family, Rusty, and our translator, Walter, into the car and headed for Pizza Hut.

The folks at Pizza Hut were a little surprised to see us coming in so late, I think. We came in and ordered three large Pizzas and three pitchers of soda. I have to mention that this was the first time that Maritza had been to Pizza Hut in the past eleven years. Can you imagine not going to Pizza Hut for over eleven years? So, they were just thrilled to go. These large pizzas were not like our large pizzas, however. They were LARGE pizzas. Each one must have been over twenty-one inches in diameter. They were huge. We had plenty of pizza leftover for breakfast for the next morning. It was pretty late by the time we left Pizza Hut, but we got back home and tucked in for the night and rested well.

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