Day 1--60 Degrees and Concrete

Dear Everyone,

We made it to Costa Rica safe and sound Tuesday evening after an enjoyable 4+ hour layover in Houston which was made all the more exciting as a few of the students found the comfort and relaxation of those enormous massage chairs...you know the ones...like in the mall where you put in a few bucks and it squeezes your claves mercilessly and massages your back with what feels like 2 steel lacrosse balls being jammed on either side of your spine.  You might want to ask your student how much they may have spent on that luxury.  Brett and Tammy gave it a try as well.

Anyway, we woke up sometime on Wednesday around 6 or 7 am and then ate a wonderful breakfast at the hotel (rice and beans, eggs, bacon, cheese, a few got a waffle etc...) We were awakened also to the beautiful Central American sunshine that just hits different (and burns different) than the sun in Ohio.  We headed out to the church, La Vina, for an orientation and walk around the community.  The town, Anonos, as you have heard, is a very poor community located on either side of a very strong rushing river.  Homes are built up one side of a mountain and then you cross the river and there are homes built up the other side of a mountain....more like a big hills.  Many of the homes are made of cinder block walls with corrugated metal roofs and dirt/concrete floors, which sometimes, if the river gets high enough, water flows into their homes.  

Our day today was probably one of the hardest days of work any of us have put in.  Your kids worked extremely hard.  Some of our crew likes to work out on a daily basis and they believe that those workouts are sometimes very tough.  Well, they learned that there is a huge difference between a hard workout lifting weights and actually working hard carrying heavy weight.  This is where the title of this blog comes into play.  Imagine having a wheelbarrow, which is held together by zip ties, filled with 2 80lb bags of concrete mix, and then walking with that wheelbarrow on a walk that takes at least 10 minutes, typically more.  AND, along that journey there, it is blazing hot and sweat mixed with sunscreen runs down between your fingers which are slipping off the metal handles.  You can't really let go, because it might end up rolling itself down one of the 3 hills along the way taking out a small child or a car or a guy on a motorcycle on its way down the hill, some parts paved and some a rocky wet mess.  Those hills are maybe 200 feet long and at a 60 degree angle.  That's not a joke.  Now, sometimes, the wheelbarrow was filled with 2 bags of concrete, but most of the time it was filled with dirt or wet muddy rocks.  We did this from 10am-4pm over and over and over again (guys and girls both did this).  Sometimes the trek was not as long and we were at another worksite which was closer, but it was the entire way a very steep hill and then down some stairs...yep, with a wheelbarrow.  And if you know, you know, it makes the Worthy sleds seem like a walk in the park.

Oh yeah, did I mention that those who didn't have a wheelbarrow (there were only 2 of those) carried 5 gallon buckets of sand or wet muddy rocks.  These were first carried in one hand, then after you could hold no longer, you hugged it with all your might, and then, if you could, you heaved it onto a shoulder until that hurt too bad and then it was back to carrying it with one hand and repeat all down those same hills.

Sometimes we had a break from carrying and helped lay concrete to the outside wall of a home that gets flooded every time the river rises.  Lots of dry joints and we used nails as re-bar, and added huge rocks that Wenton retreived from the riverbank after climing down a 12 foot ladder and then back up again with buckets of rocks.  There were times that some of us dug rocks out of the ground so there was space to lay concrete.  Sounds like fun huh?

A few of our ladies got to touch up some murals, one of which is on the road affectionately known as caca street.  There are lots of stray dogs and cats who live on that street.  One of our students counted 29 different cats.

All of us were in the blazing sun.  All of our arms hurt.  No one got hurt and no one complained or argued.  Honestly, it was a glorious day of hard work.  It was that kind of work where if you stopped, it was harder to continue again, so we just continued all day.  I, Brett, have been to CR 4 times over the past 15 years and this was the hardest day of work, by far.  One of our students' watches said that he was on his feet for 12 hours straight.  That was pretty accurate.

Pray for our soreness to be gone in the morning, Pray for more hard work by all of us. Pray that God uses us in the lives of the people here.  I have to say, that one of the greatest blessing so far on this trip is having my wife Tammy with me.  In 22 years of full time youth ministry, she has only been on one mission trip with me.  This is her second, and she speaks fluent Spanish!!  She is a life-saver here in CR.

And you know what...we might just need those massage chairs again on our way home in the Houston airport.  haha.

If you are wanting pictures of this hard work for proof, well, there aren't too many.  The kids don't have their phones with them and if any of us had a phone to take pics today, they would have ended up broken or lost in the concrete. 

Pastor Brett