Travel Path Map

Map with Pictures:



Travel Path by Date:

Guanacaste

My good friend Hector invited me to go home with him to Guanacaste, a providence in Costa Rica, to spend Christmas and New Years with his family. Another friend of ours, Sarah, who was also away from friends and family back in the US came with us as well and we had a great time. This was our Christmas dinner that we made.








This is us singing praise and worship around a bon fire on Christmas night.


















We also hiked part of the way up Volcan Arenal, a highly active volcano in Guanacaste. You can see hot lava tumbling down the volcano.











We also did a canopy tour that had 10 ziplines through the jungle. It was awesome!












We also went horseback riding.













And played on waterfalls!


















We also had our unexpected adventures. This iguana ran through my legs into the bed room where it crawled through my clothes and refused to get out. It took us a good while to get him out.

Costa Rica

SAN JOSE

I spent Thanksgiving with my best friend from high school, Sean and his family. Sean and his wife Lindsey are in language school and will eventually go to be missionaries in Honduras. It was nice to not spend Thanksgiving alone and eat some good ol american food!








While there in San Jose, I also got involved with Campus Crusade in Costa Rica. They eventually invited me to come stay in the ministry house where I stayed for the rest of my time in San Jose. Some of the guys in the house are musicians and we played worship at many crusade events and church services.







SARAPIQUI

I was invited to go on a mission trip organized by the Rotary Club where we put on Christmas Parties for children in poor villages along the San Juan river between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In the picture to the left we are loading hundreds and hundreds of wrapped Christmas presents onto boats to take up the river.








At these parties we sang Christmas songs, put on puppet shows, played tons of games, gave out presents and also gave a gospel presentation.













There was a monkey at the mission where we stayed that took a liking to me. The monkey has been known to bite people, but he just wanted to cuttle with me. Maybe thats cause I fed him papaya and scratched his belly.
















One thing that I really liked about the mission is that it is almost completely self-sustaining. Most of the food comes fresh from the gardens or animals there. And money for gas comes from the selling of cheese that we made there or bananas from the finca on the property.








Every morning we got up around 5am for prayer and then worked on the farm either milking cows, getting eggs from the chickens, working in the garden, or whatever other chore needed to be done. Then after lunch, we would boat to a village to put on a Christmas party with the kids.









This is the Sarapiqui Team. But after this trip, almost all of these people headed back San Jose, but I stayed for another week to continue the mission into Nicaragua towards San Juan.











SAN JUAN

This is the San Juan team that traveled into Nicaragua doing more Christmas parties with villages along the river including an indigenous people group called the Ramas. This picture is at a place where the San Juan river dumps into the ocean.










Giving out Christmas gifts.


















A Rama indian family. The father was completely drunk, but really wanted a Bible. So we gave him one and there he is reading it. Alcoholism is a big problem among the Rama indians.






























Leading worship at a Christmas party.













This is me preaching at a church service.



















Ok this is a coral snake that was found on the ground near my tent. These snakes are highly venomous!

Nicaragua

After Guatemala, I headed down to Managua, Nicaragua where I stayed in the ministry house of Campus Crusade for Christ. Here I also did campus ministry going to a couple of the university campuses to share the gospel. I went with Junior, CCC staff and Antonieta, a student leader. We got to share with many, and even saw one student pray to receive Christ! I wish that I had more time to spend in Nicaragua to get to know other ministries in other cities, but I had to move on to make it to Costa Rica for Thanksgiving. But I did go to Pochomil on the coast with Angel and Rafa, to find a location for a christian leadership training camp coming up in December. I also went up to Matagalpa for the weekend with Oscar, another volunteer leader and worked with a church ministry up there for a couple days.

Here is one interesting story is about my roommate in Managua. I slept on a mattress on the floor of the ministry house, and when I woke up one morning, there on the floor beside me, was a giant Tarantula!!! And those of you that know me, know that I hate spiders!!! I took a couple pictures before smashing it with a shoe!







Political ciaos broke out in Managua while I was there. There was an election and the political party in power called the Sandonistas blatantly cheated the election process saying they won. They threw out votes, closed poles early, and kicked out the governing officials to count the votes in private. The Liberales, an opposing political group, planned a peace march on Tuesday afternoon to protest the election. The Sandonistas went out first into all the city plazas with masks and wielding bazooka-like weapons that are normally used for fireworks, but they would fill them with pieces of metal and shoot them at people. They also closed down all the main roads, blocking them off with busses. Their whole goal was to scare and threaten the Liberales from assembling and protesting. The police, who are under orders by the Sandonista government, didn't care about the fighting going on in the plazas, their only job was to keep the journalists out. The president didn't want the world to know what was going on in Nicaragua. I didn't dare venture into the plazas that day, but could hear the thunder of the bazooka weapons firing throughout the day and night. I did see some videos on local news channels that were sent from cell phones of reporters that had gotten in, but that's about all I saw of the fighting. I left the next day. Please pray for this situation in Nicaragua and that they can peacefully work out the election in a just manner without blood-shed.

Guatemala

In El Salvador, I met a guy named Ryan from California who has been traveling over a year now, but he started in the south and is heading north back to the US. He invited me to travel with him up to Guatemala, but I told him that I was heading the other direction down south. He then told me that we could go "jump off of things" including cliff jumping inside a cave! That was all the convincing that I needed. I was actually waiting to continue south because one of my missionary friends just had a baby and I was waiting for a better time to go visit them. So I had a week to kill and decided to spend it with Ryan in Guatemala. It was awesome!!! We backpacked, staying in hostels and living/traveling as cheap as possible. Most of the time, we traveled in chicken buses (school buses packed full of people) or in the back of trucks, which are not known for their safety, but we did fine.

We did have one bad incident though. We got on one bus that was waiting to leave, but realized that this was not the bus that we wanted. I opened the back door to get out and when one of the bus guys saw that I wanted to get off, he ran up, slammed the door shut hitting me in the face, and then smacked the side of the bus signaling the driver to take off. The driver took off despite our yelling to stop and that we wanted off. We went about 2 blocks to the next stop and the bus guys wouldn't let us off unless we paid 10Q = $1.50 (about half the fair to the next city). We were furious, but didn't have time to argue because we didn't want to miss the correct bus. We ended up paying him half that and got off the bus, but it left me really upset to be taken advantage of like that. Ryan was upset too and we talked about it on the next bus. We also talked about what the Bible says and that we are not only to forgive, but also pray for our enemies. And after some prayer, I got my perspective right and my heart changed from wanting bad things to happen to that man to having compassion on him and desiring that he would know my Lord and Savior to be freed from his own anger and suffering.

We live in a fallen world full of bad people, but there are also some good ones out there. Not more than a couple hours after the bus incident, we met one of them. Her name is Magdelena and she owns a "hotel", which is actually a room in her house in the town of San Juan. It was further away than most hotels, and probably not as nice, but for some reason I felt like God was leading us to stay with her. On the trek to her house, I found out that she is a single mother with an 8 year old son named Ezekiel and that they are just trying to make ends meet, so Ryan and I decided to share our spegetti dinner with them. We sat down together and I began to pray and bless the food and she started singing praises out loud! She was a christian and was so excited that she had 2 christians staying in her house because she had never had christians stay with her before! She told me that she was a believer, but had strayed in her walk with the Lord because of an ugly divorce with her alcoholic husband and because of financial problems. We talked until late in the night about the Bible and God's faithfulness. We also cooked them dinner the following night, baught them a few groceries, and sung some spanish praise and worship songs to the mandolin. I think the fellowship was very encouraging for Magdelena and she was very sad to see us go. I remember that I left the room the first night to go to the bathroom and I heard someone crying. I listened a little closer and realized that it was Magdelena praying to God through tears! Please pray for Magdelena and Ezekiel and that God would comfort them and provide for all of their needs.

Campamento

I have been here in San Salvador about 2.5 weeks now and still loving the ministry here. I have worked a lot with the Crusade team, but have also gotten to work with a few other ministries. One of the Universities has a ministry led by a couple student leaders. I helped them out with a retreat that they were planning and it was awesome! There were over 100 students that went to the camp and we loaded up in 2 buses and traveled out to a beautiful ranch right on a lake made from an old volcanic crater. The whole camp brought me back to my days of Young Life where we divided up into teams and competed in many different activities throughout the camp. I was constantly asking myself, "what would my crazy YL friends do in this situation?" and did whatever silly thing I could think of to draw my team together. We named out team "Las Aguilas" (eagles) and we had a cheer, hand shake, and by far the most team spirit! We came together and actually won the over all camp competition! On top of that, a few people on our team prayed to receive Christ that week!!! (Williams in the picture to the left was one of them) The student leaders did a great job planning the camp and I beleive 10-12 students accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior that weekend!


The pictures below are of some of the activities that we did at the camp:

El Salvador

I have been in El Salvador just over a week now working with Campus Crusade for Christ in the city of San Salvador. I am really excited to be doing college ministry again and it is the ministry that I have the most experience doing because it is very similar to what I did in Argentina. I am currently staying at the STINT team guy's house and it is drastically different from the sleeping conditions I had in Honduras. I have a mattress, hot running water, electricity, and even internet! So that is definitely a blessing. They are the first STINT team in El Salvador and are pretty much laying the foundation of ministry on a few new campuses. It is exciting to be a part of that and see their vision for the future of the ministry. They are all from California and make fun of the fact that I say words like "yall", but thats OK cause I can make fun of their spanish, having only been here for 2 months. But they are awesome and it is a blessing to be a part of their team for a while.

I am really enjoying the ministry here and the fellowship that I have with the team as well as some awesome Salvadorian Christians that I have met. And I think that I am going to stay here longer than I had planned. But thats whats nice about flying solo. Its just me and God and there is freedom to go or stay as He leads.

The picture to the right is of us using a tool called Selarium to share the gospel with a group of students. It uses a set of 50 pictures combined with a set of questions that help transition into deep spiritual conversations.