about the Villages

Pastor Oscar was a proud man. He was strong and his shoulders and hands were larger than life. He worked harder than anyone on our team, and we had some pretty athletic college students, who played basketball, ran track, and who played football. I will never forget his smile radiating across his face, lighting up our work place with joy, and inspiring all of us to enjoy ourselves. When the tropical rains come you need to seek shelter and we would gather in a make shift sanctuary at the bottom of the hill. This place of refuge in the rain was Oscar’s temporary housing after Sunday services, before he and his family would walk thirteen miles back to their home village. Oscar’s children taught us to hang our heads beneath the palm leaf roof, face toward the sky, eyes closed, and allow the rain to run off the roof and through our hair. Refreshing to say the least. Oscar had taken the week off from work to help us, and with no vacation time or sick pay, he was without compensation. His children loved having him around, and so did his wife. On Tuesday morning during our first week, three-hundred bags of cement arrived, each weighing fifty pounds, and Oscar told us we would need to move the bags into the shelter before the next rain came.

The incline from the road to the shelter is steep and it was muddy from the rains in the night. Sludge filled our shoes and it was hard to keep from sliding. Our team of thirty lined up from the top of the road to the shelter at the bottom and began a vigorous human bag brigade, handing off one sack at a time, down the line and into the shack. We were moving quickly, and feeling pretty good as a team, and I looked up the hill to find Oscar asking two of the student missionaries to help him place one bag on each shoulder. He then took a deep breath and started marching down the hill, one powerful step planted in the mud at a time. After depositing his bags, he was back up the mountain for another load; smiling and singing every step of the way.

During one of our rain breaks, I spoke with Oscar about his past and how he came to know God and had become a pastor. He told me, “I was the greatest boxer in all of Central America. I represented Costa Rica with great power and honor. Thousands of people loved to watch me hurt and destroy my adversaries. I was the most feared and honored in all of Costa Rica and people would chant my name, ‘Oscar, Oscar, Oscar.’ One fight many years ago, I was fighting for another championship and I hit the man so hard that he fell down and did not get up for a long time. The doctors thought I had killed him. I broke his face and almost his neck. I was sitting with my trainer crying and I remember feeling like I had died. I was very scared, and I knelt down and prayed to God that if he would spare my adversaries life I would never fight again and I would only serve Jesus. I watched my opponent get up, and with tears of joy, I came to him and apologized. I told him I prayed for him to live and that my life had been saved as well. They announced my name as the champion, but there were not a lot of people cheering. I had already taken off the gloves before I prayed, and I remember how empty they looked on the floor. It was like my old life was empty and useless. After that I started working on a horse ranch and a chicken ranch and preaching on the weekends. I heard this village needed a church, so I started walking after work one Friday with my family and I showed up and said, ‘I’d like to be your pastor.’ And they said, ‘God be praised.’ That was five years ago. Now do you know what I hear after I preach Pastor Tom? People chant the name, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’ I am very happy and filled with much peace.” Oscar placed his hand on my head and smiled and prayed for me. His hands were like Hulk hands; they were rough and calloused and yet his touch was gentle and caring. We worked together side by side every day for that first week, and his influence continues this day to fill my heart with joy. By the end of the first few days, we had cleared and leveled the land to pour the foundation for Oscars four room house. I will never forget mixing the cement in a shallow hole in the ground and loading wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full and pouring the foundation. Oscar just smiled and thanked God for the laborers from America who came to build his house.

Many in the village stopped by during the day and celebrated our work and shared home made tortillas and beans and rice. Oscar’s family would always bring a gift of thanks for many of the women on our team. Sometimes, it would be a little hand made doll or a colorful piece of cloth or a flower. The students would be in awe at this village’s hospitality and thankful hearts. One of the team said, “I came here thinking I was doing something awesome for them, that I was going to be the coolest thing and help save their sad life.” And with tears in her eyes she finished with wonder, “I never thought they would be sent to show me my pathetic life, and give so much to all of us with so little. They are so full of Christ’s love, so full of love.”

Every afternoon the bus would come and we would join the other mission team and return to the orphanage. Climbing on the bus, we were applauded by the other team; always a nice encouragement. It was decided to all rejoice and give a hollar to God for what God was doing. You have never heard such noise coming from a busload of missionaries! Many of us would talk up a storm about the day. Some were exhausted and slept. The first week of work was a flurry of wonderful stories of how all of our needs, and the needs of the villages, were being met.

On Friday, as the bus pulled up to Oscar’s new home, it was eerily silent. At first we thought it was joke, and as our bus driver opened the door and we could see tears on his face, we became cautious of the emotion and entered quietly. All week we had heard about the wonderful tales of a wild and fun Vacation Bible School being attended by fifty children, and how their loving outreach was being used by God to bring such joy. We loved to hear the stories of the village coming together to help set the porch and raise a cover. We listened and prayed for the family whose infant was sick, and were always anxious to receive updates about the child. The pastor of this village referred to these missionaries as, “Angelos de Dios.” Speaking through their feelings with struggled breathing, they told us how they entered the village that morning and were greeted by the pastor who told them the little child had died in the night. They talked about being shocked to hear there was to be a funeral in the afternoon. They told us how overwhelming it was to hear the family ask if the missionaries would cancel the Bible school and take part in the funeral procession and burial. They shared how their tools felt useless and heavy, and how they did not know what to do. The pastor asked for them to spend the day with the family and the other villagers, helping them mourn the death of this little child. Everyone on the team told us how difficult it was and how totally unprepared they were for something like this.

The bereavement care and funeral procession was an incredible faith challenging experience. To this day I am in awe at how these missionaries, with such strength and compassion, gave so much in one day in grace and mercy. The team helped build and decorate a casket in the morning, adorned with flowers and white lace and beautiful things from the little girls home. As is the custom with a child’s death they carry the body in the casket through the village to the burial grounds. In the early afternoon the pastor proclaimed the child was no longer on earth but in heaven with God, and the procession was to be a victory dance of hope and everlasting life for the village to celebrate; a child’s suffering ended, a new life with God begun. Two of the biggest athletes stepped forward to be pallbearers, and shouldering the casket with great emotion and pain, the pastor led them and the child, the family, the mission team, and village to the cemetery. The pastor, with his Bible held high, sang songs of praise and everlasting life, and by the time they arrived at the graveyard, many of the missionaries felt peace, sad, but at peace. One of the girls who cared for the family that week proclaimed her personal revelation to us in the quiet of the bus, “I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life. This sucks.” Her’s were words of relief and courage capturing how we all felt. The sting of death taken away in the power of faith and the hope of Jesus’ resurrection, yet with scars reminding us of the frailty of life and how death can be painful. I offered a prayer and we all remained quiet, looking out of our windows the whole ride home. After arriving at the orphanage, a few of the Nuns who had prepared dinner for us, gave many on the team hugs and prayed blessings over us. IT was good to have someone at home caring for us. It was a quiet meal and we were all looking forward to rest and relaxation on our day off. Marc asked me that night while we played our guitars on the porch of our bungalow, “Hey bro, if this is what our first week is like, I wonder what’s going to happen next week?”

Just a Thought,
Pastor Tom

about Costa Rica

Chaucer said, “Time and tide wait for no one.” For me this means, “Get off my butt and do something awesome … now!” Even though Chaucer can be boring to me, this profound truth inspires me to drop the remote and make better use of the short time I have before my tide comes in.

One particular beautiful Spring day at Princeton Seminary, with the Dogwoods in bloom, while I was reading outside and thankful the snow had gone, I answered a call from Alan, a dear friend and colleague in North Carolina who was the youth pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem. The international mission group known as Latin American Missions (LAM), Alan was working with was in need of a pastor for a two-week mission trip to Costa Rica. Alan was given the opportunity to choose any pastor and preacher because Alan’s church had some thirty people coming. Alan told me, “We are building a church for a poor village, and I think you need to be there. You need to put some good Jesus action behind all your brainwork to balance your life and make you happy. Besides that, you could really help us out.” My response is always the same when these opportunities come up, “Let me check with Kathy before I commit to anything.” His response caught me off guard, “I already called Kathy, and she thinks you need this more than I think you need this.”

It would be the first time my wife and I were separated for more than an eight hour day. This tugged on our hearts, and we began thinking about mothers and fathers who are single parents. We could not imagine what they have to go through, and how they manage their time and stress and the love that keeps them going. We began praying for those families we knew in school and in the church I served as an intern. My wife was to be stretched in her own faith and mind as we sacrificed this time for mission work. This was when I learned there is always a home team who goes through change as much as the away team. God fills everyone’s heart through prayer. God works as God always does in five or six places at once. As the mission team and I worked together over the next few months, and as I shared with our extended family my excitement and enthusiasm of where I was going, my younger brother, Marc, asked if he could participate. Marc and I had never been part of a mission experience together, and we both sensed God working in our lives to bless each other with a moment in time like no other.

The last few months of preparation with Alan and the other churches were an organizational dream. There were hundreds of details to put together to coordinate efforts of finances, building materials, the work site, the Orphanage that was hosting us in Heredia, the congregation we were serving, and flight arrangements for fifty some students. From my end I was writing and preparing worship music and messages, preparing to be a mission pastor to the team of people I had never met, and as a pastoral liason to the village where language and cultural differences needed finesse and sensitivity. It was a whirlwind of conversations and prayer over the phone, and I learned how to build community through AT&T. The supplies were being purchased by the pastor in Costa Rica, and being stored on the church’s property. Alan and the other pastors arrived one day ahead of my brother and I and the other missionaries, to organize themselves, get the work site prepared, and cover any last minute contingencies.

I flew out of Jersey and Marc flew out of Arizona in July and we ended up meeting in Texas before flying into San Jose, Costa Rica. When I am with my brother we have far too much fun together, and we usually have some kind of an affect on the people around us. He has a way of making everyone feel at home with him and he enjoys laughter, especially hearing others laugh. We talked for hours. We talked about our lives, God, family, and the Costa Rican adventures before us. We were experiencing one of those rare moments in life when you connect with family without all of the baggage. We simply enjoyed each other and listened and shared in love as brothers. It changed our life, and we had no idea how God was going to continue to grow us together.

Costa Rica has speed limit laws and traffic signs for protection and direction. Hector, our cab driver, had no care for these sings, and I think he interpreted them as multiple choices based on mood. As we flew through a red light with his horn blaring and his head hanging out of his window yelling wild things in Spanish, Marc said laughing, “This would have been a great place to drive in high school.” Costa Rica is beautiful. We passed by hundreds of coffee bean plantations climbing through the mountains of San Jose around rough and rugged roads, passing large busses and trucks, until we reached the gates of the orphanage. The orphanage is run by Carmelite nuns and who had a great working relationship with LAM. The retreat facility is perched high on top of a mountain overlooking Heredia. The view encouraged you to slow down and soak in the stunning splendor. The rains in the afternoon are spectacular and the vegetation is unbelievable. I thought I knew what fruit tasted like until I enjoyed mangos and papaya and bananas off the jungle vine. The retreat facility was several hundred yards away from the actual orphanage where the children of San Jose and Heredia were cared for. We could hear the children in the distance playing. The orphanage is one of San Jose’s most prized care facilities and many in the area are grateful and protective of this ministry. The orphanage has a great reputation, and as we unloaded our bags Hector kept looking up tot eh fence around the orphanage. He kept saying to us, “This is a good place, a very good place.” When one of the nuns came to the edge of the orphanage’s property and looked over the fence, Hector began to wave excitedly and with a big smile he told us, “Senora Lupe!” After being paid, he jogged to the fence and they talked. One of the retreat staff told us Hector had been one of the many children who grew up there, and for him it was an awkward and joyful opportunity to visit this home again.

Marc and I were greeted warmly by Alan and the other youth pastors, and Alan looked troubled. He said, “The church officials and the government officials can not agree on how the church is to be built, because the pastor of the church ran off with the other $4,000.00 that we had put in the church’s account over this last year, and they have shut down our particular building project. All of our plans and $3,000.00 in supplies are being detained until they can work it all out. So, how was your flight?”

We had an urgent meeting. It was difficult and stressful. There were many frustrations and fears being aired. All of us felt helpless, frightened, and taken for granted. Many thought of going home on the next available flight. Everyone looked to me as the pastor of the camp, and someone asked, “What do we do?” Out of desperation, I felt we needed to pray out loud together. Through our prayers, a no holes barred intense blend of confession and fear, blaming God and crying out, and seeking answers, our frustrations were released and our faith inched us slowly toward reconciliation and inspiration. We decided God had placed us in Costa Rica for something more than we had anticipated, and in faith all of us chose to stay and figure out something else to do. So we prayed again and asked the retreat staff and LAM what else needed to be done in the area. Where could we be sent to be of the greatest help for the next two weeks?

It is always surprising to watch the Holy Spirit’s subversive power move the people of God. One of the camp staff knew a friend whose pastor, Oscar, walked some thirteen miles every weekend to pastor a little Pentecostal church in the mountains. They were in need of a home for their pastor and his family of six to live. Alan said, “We’ll take that one.” Another worker from LAM knew of a church in another village who needed a front porch with a roof, and who were in desperate need of help with a local Vacation Bible School. The other two churches took the lead with that one. The orphanage had secured a bus for us before we arrived and the bus driver simply needed a new set of directions for both teams. So, after breakfast we headed out to our villages. With no idea of what needed to be done, no plan, very few resources, and no idea of what God had set in motion, we were excited for our new adventure. An adventure of unprecedented life changing moments where time and tide change the landscape around us, causing us to reevaluate what it important in our life, and do something awesome.
… Stay tuned for Part 2 …

Just a thought,
Pastor Tom