Trip to Costa Rica

Last week we went to Costa Rica. It was a great trip. The principal reason behind it was to support a big Young Life event in San Jose on March 15th. It was an event which both attracted new kids to the ministry and also gave US donors a glimpse of YL's activities in Costa Rica. About 100 donors attended along with over 700 teenagers from around Costa Rica.

Rebeca was asked to go to be the speaker for club. It is not easy to speak to that many people, especially when they have varied backgrounds and points of view. She did a great job. I (Roy) was asked to go on the trip to help with logistics. There is a great new program in Central America called Camp On Wheels (COW). Since YL cannot afford to have camps in every country, in Central America they have created a huge trailer full of games, adventure equipment, a mobile kitchen, a circus tent, and many other supplies. With this, they can greatly improve the camping experience at facilities the local ministry is able to rent. It is a great idea that is just starting out. In order to get a jump start on use of the COW for this big event, they asked a couple of experienced YL camp guys to come and help set up for this event and begin creating procedures for future use. It was an interesting project, and fun to see it all come together. The team in Costa Rica did a great job and worked really hard. There was a circus tent for club, and inflatable climbing wall (I know - it sounds crazy, but it worked great), carnival games, soccer, basketball, hockey, food, and many other attractions for the kids. They had a blast. At the end of the evening, we gave every student a T-shirt. 700 kids is a lot of people to manage, but we thought we had a good plan: different lines for different sizes, with someone holding a sign in front of each line. But the MC made the mistake of yelling "FREE T-SHIRTS", and a stampede broke out. It was pure chaos for about 15 minutes, but nobody got hurt, every kid got a T-shirt, kids got on the right buses, and a great time was had by all. And they all heard a great presentation of the Gospel. It was a beautiful event.

In addition to a lot of hard work preparing for the event, we were also able to spend a couple of days with Rebeca's aunt, uncle, and cousins who live in San Jose. I had never met two of them, and had spent very limited time with the others, so it was great to get to know them more. We had a great time with them, and even got to hike up a volcano one day. David was a trooper in all of the travel. Rebeca's cousin is a professional photographer, and took some great pictures of us.