Bocas del Toro, Panama

This weekend I had the awesome opportunity to visit another YWAM base, in Bocas del Toro, Panama. It was quite an adventure... Shannon and I left with a Canadian couple from the base in Heredia at 4:45 am in order to catch the bus at 6am leaving from San Jose. When we arrived to buy our ticket, we were told ¨Standing room only¨ What?! The bus ride is 5 1/2 hours long! (That was my thinking process) So we bought our tickets ¨de pie¨(standing), and about 5 minutes later, I hear a ¨psst¨from the ticket booth... there was someone who wasn´t going who had already bought a ticket, so the teller switched it with mine. Eventually before we left, we all had similar situations, and ended up getting seats.

Once we arrived at the border, we had to get off the bus and go through immigration on both sides of the border. After going through the Costa Rican immigration, we walked across an interesting bridge to get to Panama...On the Panama side, we had to wait about 45 minutes before the line started moving because the officials were ¨out to lunch.¨ Latin America is funny like that. Following that border crossing we got into a rather beatup van which was our ¨taxi¨to the boat dock in Changuinola, Panama. However, when they went to shut the door, it fell off! So after re-attaching it to the car, we were on our way for a 1/2 hour to the boat dock. When we arrived though, there was a boat that was just leaving and they said the next one didn´t leave until 3:30, an hour and a half later, booo. But we ended up playing Uno with some of the locals, that got quite a kick out of the game (Our favorite was when they played the ¨Eskip¨ card, as they called it) We got on our boat later and headed down a river through the mangroves before we got into the open ocean. We arrived to the town of Bocas del Toro on Isla Colon, where we took a water taxi to Isla Bastimentos, where the YWAM base is. Overall, it was over 12 hours of traveling, but when we arrived, it was totally worth it...

Here´s a view from the porch of their house- gorgeous. After walking up about a hundred stairs, we got to their house, which is pretty much just carved out of the jungle. They are just starting out as a YWAM base, right now living there is just a couple, their 3 high school kids, and 3 of their friends. The island they live on is perfect and isolated, actually Michael Jordan just bought a house right down the water from them. Their house was built by a rich American and is solar powered and uses rain water in the plumbing system. Their transportation is a little motor boat with 4 benches, although all of the indigenous people around them still use dug out canoes and oars. Before we went to bed, we went down to the dock (on the way we saw a giant tarantula) and stuck our feet in the water. That´s when we realized another amazing thing about the island - the water glows!! Apparently there is this algae that glows when you irritate it (like kicking around in the water) and the water is sparkling, while everything else was pitch black - so cool.

The next morning was Sunday, and we went to Isla Cristobal, where another missionary couple holds a church service for the indigenous people in the area. They have a little hut with boards resting on tree trunks were we all sat. All of the indigenous people speak Spanish as well as their indigenous language of Ndombe. We sang some songs in Spanish and then went to pray, but the indigenous people said that they didn´t know how. They had one of the men read the Lord´s prayer out of the book of Matthew as an example (that is what Jesus used to teach his disciples how to pray.) After that they put in a movie (they have electricity and running water by where the missionaries live) for them to watch because the Americans there don´t speak much spanish and can´t really preach to them. After the service, several other boats of ´gringos ´ showed up from the area and they had a Bible study with them. During this time, Shannon and I played with 4 indigenous children that had lingered after the church service was over. We colored with them, and let them write in my journal. They know how to read and write in spanish, but they don´t have pens or paper there, just at school, so they were really excited. The kids took a real interest in us, and talking to them really made some cultural differences very apparent. First, I was wearing a bracelet with different color beads, all representing different parts of the Gospel message. One of the girls asked me what it was, so I was explaining to her... Gold is heaven, Black is sin, Red is Jesus´blood... them we got to white, and I said ¨White represents forgiveness because the Bible tells us that when we accept Jesus into our hearts He takes away our sins and washes us as white as snow¨ Silly Susie, of course they don´t know what SNOW is!! I described it as rain that´s white that falls down when its cold, and left it at that. Later we played some games with the kids and had similar experiences: with Duck Duck Goose, they didn´t know what a Goose was, and Red Light Green Light just turned into Red Green because they obviously dont know what stop lights are and I had to explain to them the association between red/stop and green/go.

After a while, the kids got into their canoe and rowed back to their village and we rejoined the other gringos. After lunch, Shannon and I put on these rainboots and took a hike through the jungle... this looked pretty amusing, considering we were wearing skirts from church with these giant rainboats meandering our way through palm trees and mud. Before we left, we saw lots of sea creatures from the dock, including a sting ray, an octopus, some sea urchins and lots of fish. We went back to our house around 3 and changed into our bathing suits and went to the beach. When we docked our boat a little bit down the island, we landed in the mangroves and you could see jellyfish everywhere in the water. After paying $2 to enter this national reserve, we hiked about 10 minutes to the other side of the island where we were the only ones on the beach...

We swam in the waves, laid on the beach, and had a dinner picnic before we left. There were wooden swings hanging from the trees, soft sand between our toes, and clear blue water to swim in - beautiful. We left before it got dark and spent the rest of the evening talking with the family about their ministry and life there. They have many medical teams that come down to offer medical and dental care to the indigenous people. They also teach english to some of the local children. This family from Ohio faces a lot of challenges - not speaking Spanish, having only one boat to go places with gas at $4/gallon, and gaining the trust of the indigenous populations - but they are trusting God and being faithful to complete the work God has given them to do.

This morning, we left the island at 7, took a boat back to the main land at 8:30, taxi, border crossing, bus, taxi...we got back to the base at 4pm. What an adventure! There are no teams coming to the base this week so I will be traveling around northwest Costa Rica with Shannon. I can´t wait!