St. Andrews Presbyterian Church from Houston, Tx in Costa Rica

June 25, 2009
10:50 pm
Shiroles, Talamanca Costa Rica

Second week of the summer and we just had the biggest team of them all. The team consisted of 52 people from Houston, Texas. The smallest being 6 years old all the way to the oldest being 76 years old. We had a lot of projects prepared for them to work on.

1st. Cristinas House

Cristinas house was one of the biggest priorities this summer, she is 76 years old and lives in a 4 by 6 small house by herself. When I was here in March we took a look at her house and found that it was infested by termites. The house was not in a livable standard for her to be in it. So this week we decided to tear the house down and start making her a new one. About 40% of the house is complete in this 3 week process. First we started by fumigating the house the whole week in order to kill and get rid of all the termites. Secondly, tear down of the house, and finally we started rebuilding it this week.

2nd Maruja’s Kitchen

About a year and a half ago the Costa Rican government started helping the BriBri people by providing cement houses for them. The government is trying to change their style of living. The new houses don’t meet their standards of living, the BriBri still cook on a open fire called a “fogon” and these homes don’t have a good enough ventilation for all the smoke and heat that the fogon produces. For this reason we are building a kitchen for Maruja. Maruja is Timoteo’s daughter who is a single daughter and is in need of a well fit kitchen that will meet her needs. This team worked on her kitchen all week long and successfully completed the project.

3rd House behind Timo’s

Virgilio and his family have been working hard for a year and a half to build a house. This summer we were able to start helping him in that process.

4th School Restroom

Bolio is the village name near the town of BriBri where about 12 people from this group worked non-stop all week to provide the kindergarten class a restroom.

5th Paint School

In this same school we saw the need for a much needed painting job.

6th National Emergency Commission

Benjamin Briton is the National Emergency Commision director for the Talamanca area. Benjamin has helped us many times before to arrange the trips to Alto Coen where EM is leading up the Bridge Project. He has been of great help the teams here and it was time to do something for him. For many years his passion has been to serve the BriBri and the Quebecan Indians in the Talamanca area. He is always focused on the needs of others to it was time to take a look at his office and give it a new look to help represent what it stands for. His office consist of 4 rooms in which 3 are used for storage and 1 is his office.

Alto Coen, Costa Rica Bridge Project

This past week God worked in a mighty way while 13 members of the Illinois team made the long journey up to Alto Coen, a small village in the jungles of Talamanca, Costa Rica. Their mission for the week was to continue work on a bridge that would provide the BriBri people a safe way to cross the Coen River in order to access medical services and schools Facilities. Knowing that the long journey to Alto Coen, which had to be done on foot, would not be easy, the team only brought the bare necessities such as a change of dry clothing, food, and all of the supplies for the bridge project. The team left early Friday morning, excited to see what God had in store for them. The journey consisted of long days of travel up the mountain and it required accommodations that most Americans would not find comfortable such as: having no electricity or clean water, sleeping above cattle and being woken up by roosters that crowed from 2 in the morning until sunrise. As the long journey continued with 40 - 60 lbs. packs up the mountain, only encouragement from the team and faith in God helped us reach the village. Even though it had been a long hike up the mountain, the team members were excited to be there and got down to business. As we arrived, people from each side of the village came down to the river to welcome us and were excited that a team was there to help them in the process of completing the bridge. The most important task while we were there was to help them connect a 1" cable from side to side, which was about 400 ft. across a treacherous Coen River. Since it was in the middle of the rainy season and the Coen River was higher than normal it wasn't an easy task to get the cable from one bank to another. Margarito, the Alto Coen president in charge of the bridge project, was the reason we were able to accomplish this nearly impossible task. Since there was no communication from bank to bank due to the noise of the raging current of the river, Margarito voluntarily swam from one side to another to help communicate and execute the work plan. The river crossing was a difficult task on its own and the team was able to understand the necessity of the completion of this bridge. It rained and poured while we completed this task and the BriBri people were impressed with the abilities the team provided. Due to the continual downpour the river was rising and it would quickly be impossible to cross if we didn't cut the trip short by a day. There were many struggles on the way down such as river crossings and weather related conditions but trusting on God made this trip a success. Not only did the team deliver the much needed bridge supplies but they also learned how to fully rely on God to get them through the hardest of times.

Yonathan Moya
Costa Rica Summer Staff

Invisible Children on Larry King Live

Finally the non-profit agency Invisible Children is getting a spotlight to raise awareness to bring a stop to the longest running war in Africa. Early in May I was part of an event called the Rescue in which we were able to bring Oprah out to raise awareness for this cause. Raise awareness to bring the LRA leader Joseph Kony to justice and stop the abduction of thousands of kids in Uganda. Tonight Larry King raised the banner and featured the filmmakers on his show.