End of Team #1

So, it's Sunday now and the team from Washington left on Friday night. Here's a quick recap about how the rest of the week with them went...

Although most of the work that we did was construction and building the house, we had one opportunity to go to Guarari, a very poor neighborhood in Heredia. A local church was putting on a kids program and I went with some of the youth to play with the kids. I spent alot of time with this girl here, talking to her, practicing English with her little brother, and playing with her little sisters.
After they did a puppet show about Jesus, we got to help hand out food to the many hungry little children and their families.
Back at the construction site, there was plenty of work to be done. Many days I was the only translator on the site and worked alot in that. Especially on the roofing day. It ended up just being me, the Costa Rican construction guy named Memo, and an American man from the team up on the roof - I was there to tranlsate between the two of them who actually knew what they were doing. But eventually Memo was like, "Get this girl a hammer!" I guess he figured if I was going to be up there, I might as well be working too!

Hammering in drywall for the roof

Putting on the roof, just me and Memo

Here's a look at the house, somewhat of before and after shots...

This was taken on day 2 of construction

This is the beginning of the last day of construction (I dont have a final picture yet because we left after it was dark)- by the end of the day there were doors, windows, electricity, and was painted pink!

The last part of the constuction team brought tons of work for both them and me! In addition to roofing, I sanded, used a power saw, put up siding and painted.

Shannon and I, working hard

We were finally able to hand over the keys to Miriam, an older woman had prayed for years that God would provide a house for her and her family. What a blessing to be able to be a part of that prayer being answered. She has 14 children, but will only share her house with one daughter and her granddaughter.

Miriam, the very happy new owner of this new house, Brandon, the team's youth pastor, and Alvaro, the YWAM leader

After a long week of work, the team had a free day at the beach, and I was very happy because I got to go with! We visited the same beach that my team went to in the spring, Jaco beach on the Pacific side. On the way there, we stopped and got out at this bridge where we got to see crocodiles in the river!

Although it was overcast, we had a fun day at the beach. We took the team to the airport on Friday night, then Saturday and Sunday were pretty quiet on the base. Saturday I did laundry and then at night I went to Alvaro's church for their youth group. He and some other guys from the base played music to lead worship, it was really cool. Then today I went back to his church for the service and then back to his house to eat lunch with his family. This afternoon we have alot of work to do for the next team that is coming tomorrow night. This Canadian team has 31 people, so we have to figure out what outreaches we are going to do with them and also how we are going to fit them all here! Hasta luego!