Life has been good here in Costa Rica. Yesterday marked our first week of living here. I’m realizing that there is a lifetime of things to learn about this country and its culture! Our first time to go to church was awesome. This church is so vibrant and full of life. They preach the gospel, have lively worship, and, like my home church Redeemer Community Church, they have no paid staff. Abby and I have much to learn from these brothers and sisters in the way they view God and view their role in advancing his kingdom. I love seeing how big God is by looking at him through different cultural lenses. I’m amazed by and grateful for his creativity.

Want to hear a funny gringa story? This is the first of many mistakes I’ll make, to be sure. Abby, Shaina, and I were making cookies with the children in Ingrid and Brownie’s house last week, and we were asking for voluntarios to help us add ingredients and stir the cookie mix. Well, I asked for someone to help me add the “orina” to the cookies, which I thought meant flour. My mistake came from misreading “harina” on Shainas’ recipe card. For some reason I got the strangest stares from the children. I kept making offers to them, but no one wanted to help. This puzzled me, seeing as we had previously been unable to keep the kids from clawing each other to be the next voluntario. Shaina, who is much further along in her study of the language, kindly informed me that I was telling the kids that we were putting urine into the mix instead of flour. After blushing and laughing for a few minutes, I tried to put myself in their shoes. Some silly gringa that had only been around for a few days was saying, “Hey kids we need 2 and ¼ cups of urine!” “Isaac, you want to put the urine in and then stir it into the mix for a while?”

Thankfully they all laughed with me ☺

I love the fact that God cares about small things… small things like milkshakes. I was skyping with my mom and my hermanito Jon the other day, and Jon told me about a recent escapade to the Purple Cow, where he got a milkshake. I was glad for him, but to be honest I was actually pretty upset by the fact that I couldn’t hop into my Civic and drive to Shakes or Sonic to get myself a milkshake. My taste buds felt so trapped. Abby overheard my conversation and looked over at me and we both said, “Oh my gosh a milkshake sounds SO good.” Well, little did we know that our kind sister Rebecca, that very afternoon, would offer to take us on a little tour of the surrounding area. We thought we were just going to the carnicería to buy meat for dinner that night, but we ended up walking about a mile to a mall in Tres Rios. The mall was massive! After we walked around for a bit, Rebecca offered to buy us some ice cream… and lo and behold! Abby, Rebecca and I ended up each with a perfect strawberry milkshake! ¡Qué rico! I found it incredibly ironic, and incredibly thoughtful of God to arrange our day in that fashion.

As we walked home from the mall, I was reminded of the fragility of life by a passing motorcycle. Let’s just say that pedestrians aren’t as honored here as they are in the states. A motorcycle zoomed past us, and I realized that if I had been a meter or two closer to the biker, it could have been the death of me.

Then I looked down past my feet into the gutter. I saw dead things there. Plants and bugs were all rotting in the sewage. There is also a rat carcass down the road, squished flat to the ground by one of the said motorcycles.

Life and death swirl around us. Constantly. Creation groans.

Then I thought of Matthew 4:16:

The people living in darkness
Have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death,
A light has dawned.

This proclamation, triumphant and quietly confident, appears at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, after his time of testing in the desert. He is setting his resolve- turning his face to the coming three years and the mission to which his Father had called him.

Jesus made himself nothing. He took off his shoes and stepped into our dead, rotting sewage, and gave us

Hope. Life. Promises.

He promises that one day we will be with him- that we will find fullness of joy in his presence. He promises to wipe every tear away from our eyes. He promises to create a new heaven and earth, and to give to each of his children eternal life. He died so that death could not separate us. One day we will be resurrected, just like he was. He has defeated death.

We were walking around, like half-dead zombies, shrouded in ignorance and darkness, and he intervened. His light penetrated the darkness,

And the darkness cannot overcome it.

We are so lost without you, Jesus.

And since we have such a great Savior, who made himself nothing, we are also to go and bring the life inside us to dead people and dead places.

He must increase, and I must decrease.