Hey there.

Yep, it's been a while... Update: My squad and I are in Guatemala!! (route change). In this blog I am going to talk about where we went in Costa Rica, what we did, and what I learned. So in early November we headed over to Jaco, Costa Rica. In Jaco we painted light posts to brighten the place up and just talked to anybody who walked by. We also painted in a skate park (with good ol' oil based paint) and did homeless ministry and surf club with kids. In Jaco, God taught me how to rest. Sooo one night I was running in the rain with some friends as one does and I trip on a root. I slid across some cement and got a nice road rash on my leg. I didn't realize how bad it was until I woke up the next morning. It hurt to walk and it stung everywhere. I was a little annoyed and frustrated because I couldn't do ministry. So for a couple days I stayed at the base and spent time with the Lord. It was so good and so restful. I started to really feel a deeper and more intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father. I ended up being glad it happened because I learned so much in those moments.

We stayed in Jaco for about a month and our next stop was Nicoya. So before leaving for Nicoya we had to say a sad goodbye to our amazing team leaders. They were all such a big part of our lives... definitely a lot of tears. Our squad split up into our teams to go to different areas in Costa Rica for a little under two weeks. My team and another team (team Eden) went to Nicoya together. Our ministry host was Basilio. He was the pastor at the small church we stayed at. He was actually the most loving and kind man I have ever met. My friend Emily on team Eden wrote a beautiful blog about him and you should totally check it out! https://emilypomphrett.theworldrace.org/post/pastor-basilio

In Nicoya, we did some manual labor, picked up trash on the side of the road, raked leaves, and evangelized. Nicoya was such a sweet, sweet, sweet place of peace and quiet for me and wherever I went, I felt so loved. I learned in Nicoya to go to God first with everything and it has been such an amazing thing for me.

Alrighty, now we are in our final place: Puerto Viejo. We arrived in Puerto about mid December. Our whole squad was back together again (yayyy!). Oh and guess what!? I SAW 2 SLOTHS AHH!!! If you know me, I love sloths like a lot, haha. In Puerto Viejo, my team moved huge logs (they were actually trees, I'm not even kidding) and raked in a jungle. As a squad we did evangelism in the town and went to a village and played with all the kids there. We also danced in the streets on New Year's Eve singing as loud as we could. The joy of Jesus was truly shining so bright that night and it is a night I will remember for the rest of my life. I will be posting another blog about Puerto Viejo soon... some crazy stuff happened there, haha.

Thank you for reading!! :)

Ally