Saturday - Adventure Begins!

It is 10:30 PM Sunday evening. We have had an amazing two days on our mission trip to Costa Rica. We left very early Saturday morning. Our day started in prayer as we all met at the church at 6AM. There are a total of 14 members on our team. We all had our own carry on bags in which we packed our clothes and personal items. In addition we each had two bags that we were checking for the flight. So we checked a total of 28 bags that contained supplies for the children’s ministry, construction, painting, and a night of appreciation for each of three groups - youth, men and women. Praise God that all the bags arrived with us safely. We have all been working for months planning these lessons for the children and the dinners and evenings of appreciation for the groups mentioned above. Some very special supporters were at First Baptist to see us off. Thanks to all of you who got up very early on a Saturday morning to come and pray with us and send us off .

Our day yesterday consisted mainly in traveling. We arrived in Costa Rica at 11:45 AM after a flight that took about 3 ½ hours. We gained two hours coming here as their time is earlier than ours in Atlanta. Immediately after claiming our bags and going through immigration, customs, and security we all gathered outside and waited for our vehicles of transportation to arrive. It is the rainy season here in Costa Rica. So the sky was overcast and the humidity felt like about 120%. But it was not raining. We loaded up into two vans and set off from San Jose to Dominical which is about a four hour drive. However because of the rain some of the roads we would normally take had been closed due to mud slides. So we had to take a longer route that meant an additional two hours of driving. This route also took us up and up into the mountains where we saw some breathtaking scenery whenever we got a decent break in the cloud cover. Our ears were popping and at times we actually seemed to be driving through the clouds. The visibility was at times very poor. One of our team members described this part of our trip by saying he was able to tell that the only thing between us and a unquantifiable drop off the mountain was the narrow two lane road we were traversing. We abruptly stopped in the midst of the clouds and virtually out of thin air an open walled building appeared. The building was perched on the side of the road defying gravity. This was a small roadside restaurant where we stopped for lunch. We can tell you that Costa Rica unlike Atlanta has not been experiencing a drought. This country is beautiful, vibrant and full of flowers and plants that grow to amazing heights. Everywhere you look you see God’s handiwork in their beauty. After lunch we continued on our way to Dominical. We eventually left the low lying clouds and were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery we saw along the way. Costa Rica doesn’t exactly have the highways, interstates, or bridges like we are used to in the states. In fact most of the roads are two lane and pretty narrow. All of the bridges seem to be single lane. That means that traffic can only go one way at a time. Most of the time when you get to a bridge you must wait a few minutes for the traffic coming from the opposite direction to finish crossing before the line you are waiting in gets to cross. Obviously this would never work in the states but it seems to do fine here. On the final leg of our trip the road was no longer paved. The best way to describe it is it was full of bumps and holes. We all got a workout just by riding in the van. The road was very dark as there were no street lights and we met numerous tractor trailers while riding on it. There were people living in very small houses /shacks along the road. During this time we had to make a rest stop and the only place open along this road was a small café. The restroom facilities were separate from the café so we all had to take a walk in the dark to find them. As those of us who took advantage of this break soon found out you had to share the restroom with a spider who was about as big as a soccer ball. But at least he appeared to accept our presence and didn’t make any sudden moves. We all felt a lot better when we loaded back up in the van. Now we could once again handle the bumpy road . This portion of the ride lasted about an hour and a half. Finally around 7PM we arrived at our destination in Dominical. We all gave our driver Jorge a round of applause for his excellent driving and then we thanked God for our safe arrival.