Back home in San Isidro after two weeks of overlapping teams, as many as 60 missioners at once!  Marysville UMC from Washington state (our first west coast team ever) was here the last week of June.  Salem in Ladue UMC from outside of St. Louis was here from last Tuesday until this Tuesday, and A 48 person team from Christ Church UMC and Discovery UMC in Birmingham, Alabama arrived last Saturday and head home this weekend.  As you can imagine its been a very productive 15 days!  We've gotten most of the metal work on all three cabins sanded and primed and a portion of one of the cabins has its first of two final coats.  We've poured the concrete front porch on the Bathroom building next to the gym.  We've framed up and back filled the 50 foot long wheel chair ramp that connects the cabin with the gymnasium.  The walls of the bathroom have been plastered and sanded and are ready for sealant and paint.  The exterior walls of the cabins have been scrubbed and washed with bleach.  I was afraid they were going to need to be repainted, but the team has them looking like new!  To top it all off, this weeks team dug the 6 foot deep hole for the septic tanks and the 50 foot long drainage field, bailed water out of said hole and drainage field, and today installed the tanks, assembled the cinder block drainage and shoveled the same dirt/mud that they dug out two days ago, back into the hole.

At the sanctuary in Piedras Blancas we've finished 90% of the electrical installation (enough for a well lit worship service there last night), plastered and sanded the walls and all of the bars for the windows have been welded and are ready to be installed next week.  Like I said, it's been a pretty productive 15 days.  

The Birmingham team, in addition to helping out on the work site all week long, also sent out teams to evangelize and do home visitations in Piedras Blancas.  They visited around 200 homes in 3 days.  By the second day they had close to a hundred kids following them from house to house!  At each house they visited they invited the families to a worship service at the church in Piedras Blancas on Wednesday night.  It was a full house and their hard work paid off as 6 of the people they had met this week accepted Jesus during worship!  Another very humbling and very proud moment for Costa Rica Mission Projects.

We head back to the camp on SUnday with FUMC Rocky Mount (my home church) and a new team from Hominy Valley in Western North Carolina.  Please continue to be in prayer for Yolanda and I as well as the  rest of the CRMP team.

Peace.

As Wil said in the last blog my name is Colby Ray and I am a member at Asbury UMC in Birmingham, AL. This is my third time to come to Costa Rica and work with Costa Rica Mission Projects, but this is my first time to spend my summer here doing volunteer work.

New Albany UMC, a group of nine just finished working at K37. While they were here they spent their time sanding, painting, and moving rocks. The team finished sanding one of the cabins and started to pain it. We should have the rest of the cabins finished soon. In front of the new shower house we are getting ready to pour a sidewalk to connect to the gym. Some of the team members pushed wheelbarrows full of rocks and dirt all day, to start the foundation for the sidewalk. It’s about half way full so that is one of the projects that the team this week will have.

Throughout the week there was a lot of time building relationships and making new friends. It is always exciting to meet new people and hear their story, hear what God is doing in their lives.

There is one new addition to the camp. A very long piece of bamboo with a TV antenna mounted on the top, so we can watch the World Cup games. Sometimes the signal isn’t that good so someone has to run outside and turn the bamboo until the TV is clear. Its funny because everyone yells once the signal is good. Well Wil told me that I am going to be doing some of the blogs, so I will be back on here soon.

In Him,

Colby

It's been a busy week so I'll start at the beginning.... Asbury UMC got to K37 on Sunday night and we spent the next three days working there and at the sanctuary in Piedras Blancas.  They worked on the gym, sanded and painted the metalwork on one of the cabins, and started covering the sidewalks.  This task will serve a triple purpose: a) keeping people dry b) keeping the sidewalks from getting covered in slippery moss c) looking really cool when all of the buildings at the camp are connected by covered sidewalks.  In Piedras they poured 3/4 of the sidewalks around the sanctuary.  Not bad for three days work!

On Thursday we followed Asbury to another camp about half way between San Isidro and San Jose.  We were met there by 30 children from La Carpio, one of the toughest and most impoverished areas of San Jose.  We spent the next two and a half days rock climbing, rappeling, free falling, swimming in an ice cold river and most importantly smothering those kids with as much of God's love as humanly possible.

This morning Don Hugo and I drove back to K37 for the official inauguration of the camp.  I got a lump in my throat when we walked up to the gym and saw about 600 people worshipping there.  After four years of hard work by hundreds of missioners, God is using that place for exactly what we have hoped for...to draw people closer to Him.  I only wish that all the teams who have worked so hard there over the last four years could have been there to see it.  We'll be working there through the summer to finish the gym and bathrooms, re-paint everything and leave it like new in August.  

Finally, when we got back to San Isidro I swung by the church and picked up Colby, a volunteer who will be working with us until August.  Colby is a member of Asbury UMC and has come for the past three years with the teams they send to work with us.  We're looking forward to seeing how his understanding of missions grows and watching him communicate that with the other teams coming down this summer.  Colby will also be contributing to this blog from time to time.

No team this week but we already have a long list of things to do...please pray for the CRMP team as we head into this busy Summer season...

Peace On Earth

Wil Bailey

Just got home after our first week back at K37.  The team from Herndon Va. has been washing, painting and cutting metal bars for the windows of the sanctuary at Piedras Blancas, painting the columns that hold up the roof of the gym, and pressure washing the slippery sidewalks.  They also laughed A LOT!  The team worked with us last year on the San Buenaventura parsonage and we were glad to see so many familiar faces again this year.  

We've been building the retreat center at Kilometer 37 for the past 4 years.  We've spent more time there than on any other project since we started Costa Rica Mission Projects.  So, even though we'd been away since last August, pulling up once again with the truck and trailer full of tools on Sunday afternoon, seeing William and Macho waving to us from the parsonage, unlocking the gates on all of the cabins...it all felt very familiar.  Our team is excited that this year we will be able to turn over the keys to the District and the facility will be fully operational.  It feels good to walk around the camp knowing that the lives of the people, young and old, in the Golfito District will be impacted by the time they spend there.  Our prayer is that it will be a place where they can feel God's presence, fall in love with Him, and become the kind of servants that He calls all of us to be.

We have a lot of work ahead of us this Summer, but with the help of the hundreds of missioners who are coming to work with us, I'm confident that we'll get it all done.  Thanks Herndon UMC for getting us started and thanks in advance to those of you who are preparing for your trip.

Peace on Earth

Week two in San Isidro is in the books.  We've ripped out the old ceilings and put in new ones.  Once they are painted it is going to look so much better than before!  The electrical has been totally re-done.  Years of add ons by different people had created a spider web of sorts.  It's been sorted through now and we have a much safe, much simpler electrical system.  The walls in the upstairs bedrooms have been plastered and two of the four have been sanded.  They will all look like new once we get a couple of coats of paint on them.  We're also reinforcing the trusses that hold up the second floor and making wooden tables and benches for the new Sunday school room.  We'll be working here for two more weeks before about a month long break.  

It's been about 4 years since we've worked with teams here at the Methodist church in San Isidro and it's so nice to be home!   Of course we love working and staying in the different communities, but it sure is nice to sleep in our own bed...and not just 2 nights a week, but every night!  

We now officially have no more weeks available for the summer.  We weren't sure how the calendar would fill out this year with the struggling economy, but it looks like we're going to end up with 30 teams.  We are so thankful for everyone who has supported us and our work over the last 7 years.  Please continue to pray for Yolanda and myself and for the missioners who come to work with us.

Peace on Earth