Pictures on Pictures on Pictures

Ok so this post is just a lot of pics.  I will give them captions so nobody gets lost... Enjoy!

My worst nightmare...public speaking!  @ NC Diocesan Convention in January

Props to St. Tim's WS for gutting this trench out!

St. Timothy's Winston Salem Mission Group January '13

         

St. Paul's Riverside Connecticut Mission Group Jan/Feb '13

St. Paul's CT masterpiece.  Note the clouds!

St. Paul's day trip up to Poas Volcano.  Care for a swim anyone?

Putting in the floor for the kitchen @ La Ascensión 

The shell of the kitchen

Plaster commence 

Prepping for plaster

Making a mess of the kitchen before it can be clean

Working hard

That paint job is pretty good if I say so myself

The final product

The new kitchen for La Ascensión!!!

Costa Rica has the coolest wildlife

Tropical paradise

     

Like I said, Costa Rica has the coolest wildlife (except this  is not wild)

Davidson College making that nursery look nice

Always nervous when someone gets up on the ladder

La Ascensión is down! I repeat! La Ascensión is down!

Almost ready to start bringing a new sanctuary to this parish

Hope you liked it! Further posts will have both prose and pics

Pura Vida

The Groups are Coming! The Groups are Coming! Part II

On February 16th I received a group from Emmanuel in Southern Pines.  Unlike the other groups, they worked on a project out in the province of Limón.  Emmanuel has been in a deep relationship with Santiago in Estrada and have helped them build a auxiliary building on their property to be used as a parish hall, sunday school classroom, and as a school/daycare center.  For five years Emmanuel has been coming down working on this project and while they were down here, they accomplished a lot. Not only did they do physical work on the new building and made repairs to the church itself, but they lead a vacation bible school for the kids in this banana plantation community.  It was incredible to see the turnout for it and both in the morning and afternoon lots and lots of kids came to participate in the activities, to learn more about the Bible, and to play soccer.  It was thrilling week to see everything come together for this group even though at some points we had to improvise.  But it all worked out for the best.

When I dropped the Emmanuel group off at the airport, I hung around cause I had a group from St. Timothy's in Wilson coming later that day.  This was a first for St. Timothy's and it went extremely well.  The group worked on finishing the kitchen at La Ascensión (pictures to come).  Like all the groups I have had thus far, they worked extremely hard and got just as much out of it as they put into the week.  It was an extremely fun group and we got a little R&R in Manuel Antonio.  I truly hope that they decide to come back next year!

Well besides the R&R I had no downtime as a group from Davidson College was waiting for me upon my return from MA.  When a lot of college kids have a week off from school a good portion like to blow off some steam and relax all week at a beach.  This group of students decided to spend their spring break painting a nursery for Hogar Escuela Heredia.  It was an incredible week filled with laughter, song, and prayer. Also to be able to provide a really cool looking room for the youngsters of the new school was more than a bonus.

Having brought my last group for the winter/spring to the airport, I had a "what to do now" feeling since I would be transitioning back into office work until the summer months.  Last week was, as my dad likes to say "a slow and easy" week.  But now I am back in the office working and starting to prepare for the summer months.  I hope everybody had a wonderful St. Paddy's Day and that all have an excellent Holy Week!  Until next time....(which will be filled with pictures)....

Pura Vida

The Groups are Coming! The Groups are Coming! Part I

I would like to start off this blog post with an apology for not having updated in two months.  There has been so much going on here and I now know what it is like to be consumed by work.

But anyways...let me get you caught up part way.  I will have another blog post coming next week (scout's honor).

So let's start off with the holidays. Christmas was nice and relaxing, even though I thoroughly missed my family and I don't know if I could get used to that.  However, I was able to Skype with them and open a couple of presents.  Bishop Héctor was kind enough to invite me over for the afternoon and spend the day with his family.

....New Year's.  So I was extremely lucky to have my girlfriend, Lindsay, come down and enjoy the new year with me.  We went out to the beach for a few days then headed to Manuel Antonio (southwest of SJO) for a week.  It was an extremely fun time and a great way to spend some down time before work just exploded.

I had my first group come down a few days after Lindsay had left and I was quite anxious for them to arrive.  St. Timothy's Winston Salem was a fantastic group and worked hard digging an extremely long ditch.  They did great dirty work and were able to put in the new drainage system for the new sanctuary of La Ascencíon.

After a fun filled week with many laughs, hard work, and spiritual reflection, I headed back up to NC with them.  As part of being a YASCer one of the commitments that we make is to spend the entirety of our service outside of the US,  but I was lucky enough to be asked by Bishop Curry to come and speak about our Companion Relationship at the North Carolina Diocesan Convention.  It was a wonderful experience and I was very honored to do so.  I am not the public speaker, but I think I did ok.  I had a little something written out and was going to use that but when I got up to speak my mind turned to mush for a second and I forgot everything I had written down. But I consider myself a good improviser so that is what I did. It was a pretty cool experience, minus the mushy brain. I was also able to meet a lot of cool people and discuss future groups and projects.

After convention I jetted back to CR where I had St. Paul's from Riverside, CT waiting for me.  This group painted a mural at our new Hogar Escuela in Heredia.  It looks fantastic.  After them, I received a group from Christ Church in Charlotte during the second week of February.  They just went to town on some demolition in La Ascencíon. Everybody just worked extremely hard and finished their project with ludacris speed. 

I really enjoy having groups down here because of the great conversations I have, the wonderful people I get to meet, and also for the work that gets done.  This ends part 1 of this two part blog and I will be sure to catch you all up to present time next week.  Also, I will be putting up pictures but am not able to right now as I am writing this on my iPad at the work site.  Until next time...KCCO!

Pura Vida

Ryan