Pura Vida.
The start to my year of traveling. Duke Wesley Methodist Fellowship travelled to Alajuela to work with Costa Rica Mission Projects, started by a Duke alum, Wil Bailey. We spent the week working with the staff at La Iglesia Metodista, putting up the walls of a 3-story stairwell. Scaffolding? Held together by fireworks. Harnesses? Ropes made of duct tape. Safety goggles? Why bother. We spent 10 days learning about tico time, playing the ugliest game of soccer I’ve ever had the joy of participating in, worshiping together, comiendo, “mission tripping” while painting in unventilated closets, swimming in bathtub-warm and crystal-clear water, watching some of our group’s first Pacific sunset, and practicing our Spanish with Julio (si…un momento), our contractor, and Steven, our incredible guide throughout the city. On New Years Eve, we stood on the third floor of the church and watched thousands of fireworks light up the sky across Alajuela and San Jose. It was breathtaking. All of it.
I’ve been on mission trips before. I thought I had “built relationships” on these mission trips, because I had gotten close to poor children in the slums of Mexico and had put them in my profile pictures. Then I went to Costa Rica, and I learned more of what it meant to have a mutually-beneficial mission relationship. We ate meals together with Pastor Douglas and his family; we invited our church staff to ice cream each night, and included them in our Bananagrams and acoustic Old Crow Medicine Show covers. It was only 10 days, and I don’t want to sound all end-of-summer-camp nostalgic, but we truly did develop lasting relationships in Alajuela, if only because we worked with each other instead of for each other. There was nothing we could truly “fix” in 10 days, nor did we have the authority to decide what needed to be “fixed” as gringos from up north. We could only do what was asked of us, with Julio there to teach us how to put up sheet rock as we taught Steven the English he wanted so badly to learn. We were there for each other, praying with each other and learning about each others’ unique cultures. At the end of the trip, sitting around a cande-lit feast that they had spent hours preparing, Douglas explained that no American group had ever eaten with the church staff before; they had stayed separated, unattached, bonding only with each other. We were the first that felt like family.
Costa Rica was beautiful. But I don’t just mean for the sunsets, or the hundreds of floating lanterns, or the lush forests, or the clouds. I mean for the relationships we built. For the love that was shared in just 10 days time.
NOTE: Photos courtesy of Christine Delp. (apologies for not bringing my own camera to this one.)
Katherine Gets Lost 