Costa Rica Mission Trips - We’ve had a few exciting days as John and I traveled back to the potential bridge site in Soke to take precise measurements and then visited the dilapidated homes of impoverished Bribri families we hope to be able to send teams to help next summer.

John frequently does surveying work when putting up buildings stateside, and he said there were two ways we could measure the span: With string and a level or with the proper surveying equipment. We stopped by the hardware store where we’ve been pricing out all our materials (which the owner seems to like, as he gave us both t-shirts and his card), to check whether they might have a cheap version of the tool John needed. They didn’t, but it turned out one employee’s uncle was a topographer, and he lent us his surveying equipment free of charge. It was heavy, WWII-era gear, and John said it did the job well. We took turns carrying the tripod during the hour-long hike up to Soke.

When we got there, the man watching the bridge, Faustino, dropped his cacao-farming activity to help us. He used a machete to hack a 20-foot length of cane and we carried that across the wobbly cable bridge and to the old bridge base on the other side. I moved it wherever John told me to (or, rather, whichever direction he waved his arms) until he told me to mark it and then said it was time to throw a string across as well.

It was a fairly complicated venture, involving much tugging and yanking, and several attempts to throw the string from one side of the river to the other. We finally achieved success after Faustino dove in to catch the string, which we had tied around a stick in order to get it across.

We hung a few strings from the string itself, and John walked around through the mud and in waist-deep water marking it up, then we rolled it up and took off. Faustino said he would be ready for us when we came back.

As we walked off, he shouted, “Just remember that I’m here farming this cacao so you can have hot chocolate in the United States!”

We’ve also spent time with Timoteo Jacson, a local Bribri leader, identifying families in need of assitance. We visited one home where a single mother with two children was left without a roof, and her parents, both elderly, live in a house that appears on the verge of collapse. We also visited a family of four–two of whom are deaf and mute–that lives in a small shack about a hundred yards off the road.

We’ve also been able to spend some time reconnecting with the people we worked with last summer, such as Pastor Gregorio and his wife Esther. Pastor Gregorio said a group of homes had been washed away by the Sixaola River and he said he would be happy to show us where it had happened.

At any rate, things are going very well and God has been keeping us very happy and very busy. We’ll post more later.

-Steve

To serve in Costa Rica with Experience Mission on Christian mission trips or a specific mission trip for all ages, call us at 360-732-0986. To check out additional media about Costa Rica, visit our news website at www.ExperienceMissionNews.com. Register now for a future mission trip with Experience Mission.