Day 5 in Costa Rica

It's been five days since we've been here in Costa Rica, and today was another amazing day! To start off, this was the first day that everyone was able to serve together (due to illness). We served at two different places today. The first was at the largest public school in all of Costa Rica, called Tibas. We arrived to about 40 kids waiting for us, and that was just the first group. These seventh and eighth graders were put through passing, setting, serving, and hitting drills. They seemed to catch on very quickly as translator Bucky effortlessly taught them the 4-1-1 of volleyball. There was one boy, named Andres who had cerebral palsy. Even though he had this physical deficiency, he still had the desire to play as the rest of the kids did. He touched all of our hearts immediately, but connected with Brooke on a deeper level due to her passion for teaching special needs kids. You could see the pure joy on his face as Brooke threw the ball and cheered him on each time he hit it. After about two hours of teaching the kids, our time at Tibas was coming to an end. To wrap us up, Jennifer and Alycia each shared their testimony to the kids. After this, an employee from the school, named Juan, took us on a tour of the school. It was really cool to see the different cliques throughout the school and how similar it was to schools back home, even though we are in a different culture and country.

This is a picture of the courtyard in Tibas.

After Tibas we came back to the house to eat lunch and rest up in preparation for our next stop: Cartago. This drive was one of the longer ones but it had some of the most beautiful views. Before arriving at the school, we received a text saying that the clinic we were supposed to run was going to be pushed back an hour. Luckily Chico and Nattie knew just where to take us! Cartago houses the first church of Costa Rica. It is no longer used for its intended purpose, but is now home to a beautiful garden. It seems to be the hangout spot for locals...and couples..

After spending 20 minutes at the church, we hopped back on the bus and were treated to Pops (an ice cream place) before arriving at Cartago's recreation center. This was the largest and nicest facility we had been to thus far. Yet again we were told news that changed our game plan. Instead of having 35 eleven to thirteen year olds, we had 16 total. The skill level of these girls shocked us. They had amazing ball control and an impressive amount of volleyball knowledge. We were able to put them through more complex drills that we would typically do in our own practices. Afterwards, Suzie shared her testimony that connected well with the girls and volleyball. Their coach voluntarily took us on a tour of the facility, which included two Olympic size swimming pools, multiple tennis courts, along with numerous other recreational courts.

We left the recreation center which led us to dinner. Chico had picked out a restaurant for us: La Tierra. We had the choice of either chicken, steak, fish, or pork for our meal. Since our team was dealing with the runs, we strayed away from the fish...We all were very happy with our meals but Ellen was most happy about the only dessert option. Ellen has an obsession with rice pudding, so when she heard that this was their only dessert, she was the happiest she has been all week. Along with every other night, she ate not only her dessert but Braedyn's as well (and a few others).

Important word of the day: Copyright.
Our team tends to take credit for other teammate's jokes, so we decided to copyright our own jokes to prevent "joke-stealing". Least surprising of all, Bucky has the most copyrighted jokes thus far.

Today was a great day not only for all of the memories listed above but because we were all healthy enough to serve our awesome God together.