7/31/2010

7/30/10

Wow I don’t even know where to start. This week is probably the most important week in the DTS. It’s called plumb line. What we did this week was try to get back aligned with God. Throughout our lives we sin, we get hurt, and we make mistakes. This week is all about renouncing all of the lies we have believed and the hate we have held on to. It’s like spiritual surgery. We all realized that there is stuff from our past we thought we had dealt with or didn’t think was an issue but it was an open door the enemy was using to attack us and he was thriving off of that. This week I slammed so many doors shut that the enemy has been taunting me with. Once I confessed and renounced all of the lies that I believed there was such a huge emotional change inside of me. I feel free. For so long I have been seeking for freedom and I have it now. I LOVE WHERE I’M AT. The night I confessed everything we had worship and I have never feel so close to God as I did that night. He really speaks to me through music and I’m getting piano lessons from a girl on my team so I can really glorify Him through that.

He has been knocking at my heart for so long and I am finally stepping of the pedestal that I so mightily placed myself on and I’m opening that door for him to come in and consume me. I feel that our team is so much closer now. We know each other inside and out. It’s incredible that I’ve only known these people for three weeks and I’m sure we will remain close for the rest of our lives. I love these people, they are all so genuine and we want the same thing. We all have come from such different backgrounds and pasts but that doesn’t make anyone better or worse. It’s as if I have a second family.

Last night we got given a really cool art project. I have done stuff like this before but the guidelines were much different then this one. We have a picture and it got cut up so each of us could get one. Then she gave us a piece of canvas that we are to draw our little scrap on without looking at anyone else’s style or piece. This is so that we all use different colors and techniques so when it all gets put together it is a unique piece of work. I will take a picture once we connect all the pieces.

Friday we had a day off due to all of the emotional work we had been doing which was so nice. We don’t get too much free time so that day off was really nice. I slept in and went downtown to the market. I went with a few girls and one of them needed to go to the post office, boy was that an adventure. So first we found out that you need to get your own box so we went over to this store and asked them if we could have a box and luckily they were nice enough to give us a free box. Then she realized she didn’t know the return address so luckily Costa Rica doesn’t have street names and numbers so we just said 50 meters below the last bus stop or something like that hahah! A little different then the States and then she went to go use their tape and the guy says, “you need to pay for that Miss” how funny is that! So about an hour later she mailed her package, which contained a hammock and some jewelry, and would you like to know how much it cost? $50.00, crazy. For everyone who thought that Costa Rica was way less expensive than The States I hate to tell you but you were very wrong. A lot of stuff is actually more expensive I don’t understand why. One good thing is that public transportation is way less than that in the States, which is good because we use that quite a bit.

Friday night I got persuaded to go to a Christian concert at 9pm even though I had to wake up at 6am Saturday morning. One of the guys in our DTS lives in Costa Rica and his friends are in a band, “una sola cosa” and they had a show on Friday so they got me to go. I realized I need to learn Spanish pretty bad, especially since I love Latin America and would love to come back and do a lot more missionary work down here. We got there in time for the last few songs, originally the plan was to go at 7pm but the guy who was driving us ended up breaking down on the freeway on the way back from Jaco. So he showed up at about 8:30 and we drove there. We have a curfew of 11pm so we got back to the base right on time but it was great fun. One of the girls that I went with is a leader for the teams down here and she did a language school a few years back so she knew several people at the concert and lucky for me a few spoke English. Moral of the night was, I need to learn Spanish and soon, a few of my friends told me the main reason I should learn is because you can say love in so many different ways. Spanish just sounds much more beautiful than English in my opinion. When I told my friend last night that I was pretty much full Italian he asked if I spoke Italian I was ashamed to say no… not at all hahah. So then he told me he was only going to speak to me in Spanish so I will learn at least Spanish- a lot of people have told me that but then they change their minds after a little bit, I wont let them this time.

Each student and staff gets assigned to a weekend where they do all the chores on the base. That is because we get the weekends off for our trabajitos (chores) and someone needs to clean up the base, especially when there are a ton of people on base. So this weekend me and 3 other people from my group have it this weekend. We wake up at 6 and cook Gallo Pinto, which is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast-delicious- it’s black beans, rice, bell peppers, onions, and some other spices with a yogurt/sour cream side to put on it. It was really good J but we didn’t have very many eggs so we ran out before we got our food unfortunately (I made the eggs but I tested them as I went so I wasn’t disappointed) . Then we had to clean the bathrooms including scrubbing the toilets and showers which I’m used to because we had to do that every few days at my boarding school. All the people here are so willing to do any work chore, over at my boarding school everyone made such a huge deal for doing gross chores but we are all like “sure I’ll climb in the trash can and clean it, that’s totally fine”. Today there was a dead mouse in the kitchen and I think I may have stepped on it. I was telling a staff to look at one of the rags that had fruit flies all over it and he thought I was talking about the thing on the floor (he doesn’t speak very much English so we were getting a little confused) and then I look on the ground and there was a DEAD MOUSE right where I was standing!!!!! EW I like mice and rats but domestic ones, not the wild ones. He put on a glove and threw it out. But I have been skittish whenever I see things on the ground now J. We also have to sweep and pretty much clean everything everywhere including the kitchen! AH now I’m scared of that place, we go into the kitchen at 4 to make dinner and then clean it up so I will probably be in the kitchen from 4-8 this weekend. It’s not too bad though you get some free time.

Well I think I’m going to sign off for now but I will let you know if anything else cool goes on around here! I miss you all and hope you are having a great summer. For all the san Diego readers, I’m sorry your summer hasn’t started yet just pretend like you are in Costa Rica it rains here everyday!

Love you ALL

Nina