Church Ladies and Bus Drivers

We have been privileged to meet some very special people in Costa Rica. One of them was our bus driver, Luis. As with everyone here, he is someone who started out a stranger to me but quickly became a friend. When a mission team comes to Costa Rica, they contract with a bus company to provide transportation for the entire week. The bus driver, who remains the same each day, is basically at the teams disposal throughout the whole trip. Our driver was Luis, a young guy in maybe his mid-twenties, who has been the team's driver for the past 4 or 5 years. Because he has driven for Mt. Bethel before, team members who were returning to Costa Rica were very familiar with him, and they all greeted each other warmly when he fetched us from the hotel the first day.

What I didn't realize, but quickly came to understand, was that Luis was much more than our driver. He was a full and contributing member of the team. On the first day, I noticed him at some point painting alongside me on the exterior of the church. And not just painting, but climbing way up on a rickety ladder (which I had not even considered doing myself) to paint the very top of the church. On the following days, he was working upstairs in the parsonage. Later, he was painting the inside of the church with us. He helped prepare dinner for the fiesta, and he held the pinata for the kids...again, from high up on a rickety ladder! He went to dinner with us at night and to Pops with us for ice cream. He even walked with me and a couple of the guys (I felt like I was in the movie Bodyguard) one morning, leading us to a pharmacy several blocks away when it became apparent that I have contracted a nasty case of poison ivy (which funnily in Spanish is apparently called Mal Mujer, or bad woman!) It took me a couple of days to realize that he speaks quite good, self-taught English, which was a little embarrassing since I had been trying to speak my Gringo Spanish to him since we met. He really won me over, however, the day I heard him discussing one of the nearby areas that is even worse off than the one we are in at present...to the point that the police and Red Cross workers have abandoned it. Luis said he visits the neighborhood to help out sometimes, and someone said...We've been told even the police wont go there, and they have guns! And he said, It's no problem... I go with God. Wow.

Another person who made a big impact on me was a woman named Dona Ana...one of the church ladies I mentioned before. Ana was there the day we first visited Mount of Olives, which was Sunday last. After the church service, she was one of the women who served us lunch, which we had not expected them to provide. Ana is perhaps in her 60s with white hair and a wide, crooked smile. She is your typical grandmotherly type...my mom would say she is a good hugger, which is a high compliment in our family. Ana knows very little English, so it was hard at first to communicate. But each day, Ana was at the church early, and she and perhaps Pastor's wife or another lady from the church would start cooking in the teeny kitchen. At about 9 or 10 in the morning, you would start to smell something delicious wafting down into the sanctuary if you walked by the door to the parsonage. I can only imagine the torture the men upstairs must have endured every day...smelling that lovely food cooking for hours on end as they worked!

The first day, Ana and the ladies made chicken and rice...completely from scratch with tiny chopped vegetables and marinated chicken. They served it with fresh pineapple and salty chips. One day we had a wonderful piece of pork in mushroom gravy, rice, papaya, a potato-apple salad and a smooth, creamy guacamole that was heavenly. We begged her for the recipe, but it may be one of those dishes that just cannot be duplicated ... its creamy goodness probably has everything to do with time and place and the amount of love and care put into the preparation and little to do with the list of ingredients. The food coming out of that kitchen was nothing short of gourmet. And Ana herself was so gracious and warm...it made the food taste even better knowing that she had cooked it. Later Ana would appear at VBS, or maybe afterward to help clean up. She and the ladies would sometimes put a children's Spanish CD on and burst into song and dance. They taught us a song and dance about a frog and one about being loco for God, and I will never forget Ana, Lidiette and Sylvia.... three grown women... falling on the floor at the end of that song in fits of laughter.

After our lunch yesterday, we gave Ana and the pastors a couple of gifts...Ana then spoke just a few quiet sentences that brought me to tears. She had a very difficult life when she was young, and she said that everything she does now...for us, for the church and for the pastors...she does because she wants the people in her former neighborhood, those who are lost and broken like she was, to have the opportunity to know the Lord and to have His peace to comfort them...a privilege that she now fully enjoys. Ana, at that moment, was transformed before my eyes from the happy-go-lucky lady who cooked for us into a deeply spiritual person who is living out her faith with her every word and action. Ana is a true missionary who wants others to receive the greatest blessing she has ever received. The song ...Open the Eyes of my heart, Lord, which we sang often at Mt. Olives... comes to mind when I think about Ana.