Hello everyone!
It’s our third week here and we are beginning to familiarize ourselves with the towns near our base, namely, Puerto Viejo and Bri Bri. Puerto Viejo and Bri Bri might as well be two different countries. The first is filled to the brim with roadside smoothie stands and minimalistic yoga studios, a good number of vegans, and vans that look large but are actually small and say TURISMO on the back. The second is an indigenous town. The streets of Bri Bri sound like motor cycles and plantains frying, Bri Bri language mixed with Spanish, people walking and working hard and living their everyday lives, surrounded by dark green mountains and the Panamanian border. I stick out like a sore thumb in Bri Bri. Our group is pretty white and very loud and most certainly from the US, and that means we draw attention to ourselves. I have a ton of thoughts about the dynamic that comes out of that, but I’ll save it for another blog. In Puerto Viejo, that dynamic does not exist.
As my team was evangelizing in Puerto Viejo this week, I met a surfer named Susan who was born in Mexico, grew up in California, then moved here after school. I asked her what brought her here. She paused. “The ocean.” Andrew, who was born here, has been selling jewelry on the beach for 30 years. He thinks God is real, but he’s never been “all that religious.” Jordania sells fruit on the street to provide for her three kids. Francisco works at a coffee shop and teaches tae kwon doe in his free time. Cessia says hi to me every day from her t-shirt shop. Ishmael is a real estate agent who knows everyone in town.
I’ve gotten the chance to speak with a ton of people, some in English, some in broken Spanish. And what I’ve found is that, despite Costa Rica being thought of as a “reached” country, where the Church is thriving and local leaders are doing incredible things, despite all that, there are a lot of people who are very lost in Puerto Viejo.
The Church here is a dozen people on a good Sunday.
From the conversations I’ve had here, it seems to me as though many people in Puerto Viejo grew up on the more affluent side, whether that be in North America, Latin America, or somewhere else. There are many who chose to live in Puerto Viejo because they were disillusioned with a “modern” lifestyle: the workday, the food, the pollution. So they moved here and started a simpler life in search of happiness and fulfillment. So as I’m talking with the residents of Puerto Viejo, I’m seeing people who have by choice rejected parts of a western lifestyle, and with it, Christianity. And there are so many people here who are searching for truth. They are so open and so ready to talk about the things that matter.
In Bri Bri, I am evangelizing to strangers whose lives are wildly different than mine, yet they have been reached. In Puerto Viejo, I’m evangelizing to the “alt” young adult I would have become without Jesus. Yet they are unreached.
Matthew 29:11 says “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The Greek word for “go” is actually a part of speech called a “participle of attendant circumstance.” Long story short, the word translates better to “as you go,” as in “as you go about wherever you are.”
So when I’m in Puerto Viejo, I am called to yogi açaí bowl makers. When I’m in Bri Bri, I’m called to indigenous Costa Ricans. We are called to become all things to all people for the sake of the Gospel, and in missions, that includes postmodern hippies who are searching for truth.
So pray for Ali. Pray for Arturo. Pray for Niel and John and Mauricio. Pray for my conversations with them. Because I believe the Truth that these people are searching for is found in the Gospel. Jesus is the answer.
