During our time here at vidanet their staff starts each morning with a devotional thought for everyone followed by quiet time. It was such a great thing to see our team take serious the challenge to spend 45 minutes alone processing and reflecting on their time so far in Costa Rica. Many of them told us later that they have never taken that much time to just be silent with God and that it was very helpful for them. Following our quiet time we joined together for a hot breakfast and then loaded up for our morning activity.
Our morning was spent taking a group of kids from the impoverished la cuenca community to a local roller skating rink. It was both hilarious and inspiring to watch our team fall together with the Costa Rican kids as well as help them get right back up and laugh it off. In addition to the skating we had a local christian rapper who came to the skating rink to share his music and story of transformation. He talked about the switch in his life from valuing fame to valuing Jesus which was great for everyone to hear.
After a pizza lunch at the skating rink, we headed back to the la cuenca community where we split into two groups. Half of our team joined in with the older youth in the community to play soccer while the other half ran an afternoon of vbs for the younger kids. We taught the kids about Jonah and the truth that God knows what's best for us, so we should always obey Him. We ended our afternoon with snacks and other fun games together with the kids. Our team has really embraced the importance of and opportunity to care and love these kids who normally have very few older figures in their lives that tell them they are wonderful and loved.
Following our day with the la cuenca kids we headed back to our vidanet headquarters for dinner and our second porch time together. Tonight, we had a lot of members of the vidanet team here in Costa Rica join us and even play instruments with us during the music portion of our evening. It was special to be praising the same God alongside people from a different country. Isaac gave a talk on incarnational ministry tonight which is just the concept that Jesus actually can live in us and that we bear the image of God in everything that we do. He challenged us to think about how foggy that image is right now and what responsibilities being image-bearers carries with it.
We closed our evening in small groups where we continued to process our experiences here in Costa Rica as well as started to take a close and honest look at our own lives and the image we are portraying to others and how we can be more fully aware of Jesus in our lives. We had a great day filled with wonderful experiences and we are looking forward to taking kids from la cuenca to a local amusement park tomorrow.
