Un Dia para Conocernos Mejor

The past week has just been a whirlwind of activity. Praise the Lord, Josh returned safely from his 2-week disaster response trip to Chile. The 3-man team was able to perform structural assessments on close to 50 buildings, including churches, houses and even a jail. Josh was surprised and excited to see the desire of the Chilean government to work with EMI, as well as the government's response to the devastation of the earthquake. There seemed to be a desire to help their fellow Chileans, a stark contrast to what he experienced in Haiti: an "everyone-for-themselves" attitude. Overall, the team accomplished alot and was able to make a difference in the lives of the townspeople and pastors of the villages they visited. He will be posting pictures soon. So stay tuned!! We had a fun and interesting weekend of activity with our church here in Costa Rica. It was called "Un Dia para Conocernos Mejor" which means "a day to get to know ourselves better". We would call it "dinner on the grounds". This was like no homecoming or dinner on the grounds I've ever seen, though. The day started with worship, then in place of a sermon, there was a singing competition. Yes, a singing competition which was followed up by a "Reina Infantil" competition which is pretty much a child beauty pageant where the winner is named randomly. They had lunch catered which was delicious. We had a choice of tamales, rice and chicken, picadillo or a slice of pizza. Picadillo just means diced foods. It can be made any number of ways, but this one had diced potatoes, some kind of pork, garlic and other things that were indistinguishable, but very yummy! Josh and I both opted for the picadillo with soft corn tortillas. They also served granizados, which is kind of like a snowcone on steroids. It's sooo yummy and they top it off with a little sweetened condensed milk. It's a very typical treat for ticos. Often, there are guys pulling carts around town with granizado makings, like a portable ice cream shop. During the lunch portion of the day, they also had a sort of mechanical bull rigged up to the side for the kids to play on. They strapped 4 ropes to 4 corners of a big metal barrel and strung it off the ground with a hand-made bull's face on it. Anyone who dared could straddle the barrel as guys manned each of the 4 ropes and tugged and pulled as hard as they could to get you to fall off. With my clumsy nature, I thought it best not to attempt this attraction. After lunch, they had a bible trivia competition on the book of Romans. Overall, it was a really...interesting experience, but we had so much fun getting to know people in the church and enjoying some typical Tico (slang for Costa Rican) food. So, the event fulfilled its purpose of allowing the church to "get to know itself better"