Costa Rica report

[Sherri]

We got home late last night from Costa Rica - actually six of the nineteen of us who went. The other 13 were coming home tonight. I didn't want to miss two Sundays. We were having a huge Victory Sunday today, where we rented the chapel at Union University so we could for the first time have all our people together in one service. It was awesome!!

We went to work on the Abraham Project, which is an orphanage and daycare connected with a church there. I have pulled muscles this past week that I didn't even know I had!! I am used to sitting behind a desk, so any physical work is a stretch for me (literally!). I spent the whole first day in CR sanding sheetrock in the orphanage home. I was so sore I could barely move by that night. The next day I spent all day pulling nails and staples out of used lumber, which was actually kind of fun but hard work. The other days I varnished and sanded cabinets, closet shelves, and stairways, etc.

The last day I was so tired and all that was left was painting the exterior of the building and cleanup duty. I happily volunteered for cleanup, since I'm a horribly sloppy painter. I thought clean-up meant sweeping with a broom and pan. WRONG!!! It meant carrying a whole room full of lumber across a muddy field and around two buildings to the wood shed. I could only carry three or four big boards at a time on my shoulder. Talk about hard work!!!! It took me hours to empty that room.

Besides building, we got to teach an English class to adults, teach daycare kids, attend the Sunday service and also a youth cell group that night, feed a thousand meals to Nicaraguan refugees that literally live in a coffee field (no houses), and just a lot of devotions, testimonies, etc. It was so anointed all week and so uplifting. We all cried like babies when we had to leave, even the men! We will definitely be going back next year.

All of the native workers on the project have such amazing testimonies about salvation and deliverance from drugs, immoral lifestyles, etc. One man had just given his heart to Jesus 22 days before and had been totally set free from a horrible life. They spoke no English and only one man on our team spoke any Spanish, so it was interesting. We had to do everything through a translator. The Abraham Project is right in the middle of a horrible part of San Jose, but it is gated and secure. It has all been built debt free, and is all built from donated used lumber. It is amazingly beautiful!

I will try to post a couple pics on here, and more when I get my DVD where our leader is compiling all of ours together. I didn't take my camera very often because mine is too big to fit in my pocket and I didn't want to get it stolen. The first picture is our group before we left our church; I'm on the far left. The other one is the home that we were building, when it was just primed before it was painted.