Costa Rica Day #3

Alright, since I had such a LONG post on Day 2, hopefully I can keep this one short. Wednesday was a very chill day at our apartment. We just spent the morning doing our own thing, spending time with the Lord and with each other. The only real plans we had for the day was to go to a Bible study in Coronado. Brooke, Megan, and Pati have been going every week to this Bible study at a guy's house. Last night we had 25 people there! The atmosphere of this group was so fun to be around. They all live around each other and most of them go to the same church. They are best friends and they love studying the Word and worshiping together. They were also very welcoming to Gabrielle and me and were very helpful with trying to help us understand what was going on. The majority of them spoke all Spanish but there were a few that knew a little bit of English and when that wasn't good enough, Pati would help us out! It was really neat to see that relationships that Pati, Brooke, and Megan had already made with the guys and girls at the Bible study. They were all so excited to see each other. 

We started off the Bible study with a game that I still do not understand the point of...we split up into groups of 4 and, of course, our group of English-speaking interns was all split up. So we started by naming our groups by colors. I did good with that, I remembered my colors! Then the game was basically like a call and response with jumping and shouting in Spanish...awesome. So our leader for our group gave us hand signals so I would know what to say when haha! I just shouted when they shouted and jumped when they jumped and listened for another group to say "VERDE! VERDE!" But even still, it was so fun to be acting crazy and just playing around with everyone in the group despite a language barrier. After we played the game Pati made us sit by someone we didn't know, turn around and stand back to back, then try to remember what they were wearing. Once again, I was thankful for my basic Spanish vocab. I remembered the guy was wearing un gris chaqueta y los azul jeans, so I squeaked by on that game as well. 

Then we all sat down to listen to Pati bring the devotion. This was such a neat experience for me. Even though I could not understand the words she was saying, I was so focused and attentive the whole time. The Spirit was speaking through her and, I know this sounds weird, but I still got something out of the message. When we read Scripture, we passed a Spanish Bible around the group and we all read in Spanish. It was just so neat to be studying the Word with these people, with my brothers and sisters in Christ. After the message, one of the girls led us in worship, another AWESOME experience of worshiping the same One True God in multiple languages. One of the songs we sang was Set A Fire by United Pursuit Band. While most of the group was singing this in Spanish, several of us were singing the same song and worshiping in English. I know I keep saying how neat of an experience this is, but it is just something you can't understand until you experience. Our God is just as much the God of this city and these people as He is the God of my hometown and my friends at school. So after a time of praise and worship, we hung out for a little while, ate some delicious cookies that I helped "Chef" Megan make earlier that day. Here in Costa Rica, they do not bake cookies except for very special occasions, so they devoured the ones that we brought! They kept saying "THESE ARE AMAZING!" with very heavy Spanish accents, haha! 

One of the guys at the house we were at gave us a ride to the bus station and then we rode the bus back to our apartment. On the way, Gabrielle and I were talking about how it was so neat to see that the fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ is the same everywhere. The interactions are the same, the jokes are the same, the relationships between God's children are similar in every culture because we are all part of the same family and all serve the same God. It was such a cool picture of how Heaven will be, EVERY tribe, EVERY tongue singing praises to our God as ONE body and ONE family.

So that was my day #3, simple but incredible. I am so thankful to be here.