Gifts & Fiesta

While Rev. Sarah, Mike and Amy presented gifts from St. Mark's; Pedro, Roger and Omar arranged for a Mariachi Band to send us of in style. The prescence of joy and faith was felt by everyone.

Although we lost internet access during the middle of the week we continued to do great work. 3/4's of the group worked @ Santa Cruz in Guacimo and the rest @ San Lucas in Germania. We completed our work mid-afternoon on Thursday and celebrated with the congregation.

And the day had begun with Rev. Sarah giving us a prayful start and meeting a new friend.

With the Mission Team returning from a good day's work and effort, Rev. Sarah treated them to Costa Rican Ice Cream at Pop's which was thouroughly enjoyed by all.

Jean-Claude and Philip began tiling the kitchen at St. Lucas while Liz, Tracy, Hartley and Jane continued to paint.

On site @ St. Lucas in Germania Jean Claude, Liz, Jane, Hartley, Tracy and Philip are joined by some of the congregation painting and tiling. They were treated to Aqua de Coconut as a special treat.

Left is Kelly smoothing out the concrete for the sidewalk. Below Greg and Amy are making sure it is level.

Mixing concrete on the floor was a new experience for us all. The group worked very hard and developed quite the system for efficient work.

Several of the men dug a trench for the new fence. Here Jeff is digging and Scott is fighting with a rock. There were quite a few large rocks and some type of container unearthed by their work. No worries - they got it done!

With the drawing almost transfered, the wall is starting to take shape. The youth will begin the color paint on Tuesday.

Daphne began transfering the beautiful drawing done by Evelyn Fisher. This took some calculating and input from several people, but the end result is clearly worth the effort.

After a long days work, we are headed back to the hotel. The mood was uplifting and spirits were high with the amount of work we accomplished today.

Amy rolling an outside wall of the church.

Tracy putting the finishing touches on the window.

Good work being done by Sarah, Liz and Philip.

Cindy and Rustin putting a lot of sweat into the moving of the blocks. Rustin, Vince and Jeff kept trying to one-up the other. This was Rustin's 3 block run. Rustin made the last run a 5 blocker!

After a church service this morning led by Father Pedro of Santa Cruz and a wonderful lunch prepared by the women of the church, we began our work. We painted the outside of the church. We leveled a wall to prepare for new materials and removed an old barbed-wire fence. A daunting task of moving many cinder blocks to the back of the church was also a major task.

Here are a couple of shots of the rainforest. It is rainy season and Saturday presented itself with a pretty typical day - rainy!

The group waits for Roger and Omar outside the airport. It was starting to rain, but that didn't dampen our spirits!

Hmmmm.....This is something that should definitely go in my journal.

Kate and Wes listening for the next security reminder for safe baggage - was that? # 19?

Is this our bus?

This is the group before we left.

Yes Deacon Jane, we've only just begun.