Attack of the Cosquillas monster(s)

Hiiiii friends! I'm back with another blog for ya! 

Yesterday at the CDI we were going through the book of Job with the kids and asked them 3 questions for an activity. One was, what is your favorite emoji, what emoji are you feeling right now, and what was Job feeling in the story. They had to draw each of those emojis and present them to each other. For my emojis I drew the one that's smiling and has stars for eyes because I felt excited (it's also my favorite emoji), but anyways now and when I've sat not doing anything I start feeling something different, I can't really identify it. I feel like crying maybe it's sadness, that feels more general rather than what it actually could be but I'm not sure. I think what's playing into is that I still haven't been able to spend quality time with the Lord. Every time I attempt to, something just feels hard about it so I can't focus or just feel lost. It's not that I don't want to interact with my emotions and it's not that I don't want to spend time with him, I can't really put my finger on it. If you all could be praying for me in that I would really appreciate it :) 

Since I started with the CDI, I'll continue with that and jump back to Sunday, so bare with me here 😅

Monday CDI days start later, but we had a meeting with all those that are a part of the CDI staff to talk about the lay out for the month that we are here and what they expect to happen. I think it went really well although it was all in Spanish and got translated a bit for everyone else. One of the big pushes that they want us to focus on in English, especially pronunciation. Then to also plan all the devotionals, this month that we are here they want us to give devotionals on respect, what it is, the actions we take for it, and what happens when there is no respect. I am excited to see how this plays out over the summer because the concept of respect is hard to explain what it is and really easy to show how it's given. I am excited to learn a lot from this along with the kids. After the meeting finished the kids started to arrive around 1 so we started playing a lot. It was very sweet to see some of the kids run up to us to give us hugs. One of the girls named Nathaly, who was definitely one of my buddies last summer, saw me and immediately ran to hug me. My heart felt so happy and filled with joy. I really do enjoy spending time with kids, it's just really fun and light-hearted. We then did the devotional that I mentioned earlier and served them lunch, then I got to lead a group game of Simon says. Which was interesting and made me feel like I was back in my camp counselor days the summers during high school. I felt very in my element for that game even though there were some directions that the other Simons gave that I didn't understand lol. Once the game was over we switched to English (this also could be all out of order, it's okay though) and picked a few common phrases that are useful to know. The phrases were, "How are you", "What's that", and "Where's the bathroom". All phrases that I think we (the gringos) may have learned pretty immediately in Spanish classes in high school, but for Spanish obviously. We focused on pronunciation a lot and they each repeated them a few times. Two of the boys, Axel and Jeremy kept asking "Qué significa what en español?¨ and as I responded Qué, they would say ¨so¨, hahaha, right? 😂 get it queso, they thought it was so so funny for a good 20 minutes. A bit later all the kids worked on any homework they had and if they didn´t they either did more English, Math, or typing on the computer. We spent a good amount of time of homework things and then we played for the rest of the time. 

At one point during our CDI day, a tickle fight broke out by some of the kids and me. Did you know that tickles in Spanish is ¨cosquillas¨? A new favorite word of mine 😆 so I took it upon myself to tell the kids to go tickle Sam LOL so they would somewhat be off of me for a sec. Apologizing in advance Sam for the picture, it was just super funny. 

CDI day went very well, I am really proud of all these kids, this team and just everyone. The kids are so sweet and just have grown so much since last year. This team has been doing such an amazing job with the kids! There is so much love going around and it is very evident. 

Our team took an Uber home and was hoping for tacos from La Tacopedia, such a good place, but unfortunately they do not send deliveries to Heredia so we couldn´t get tacos. Instead we found a burger place and ordered from there. Then we started planning out the devotionals for the weeks to come. We have broken it down into 2 weeks of what respect is, respect for all people, respect for authority, and challenges to respect for the other weeks. I feel really good about this set up, I am looking forward to seeing how each week will be planned in more depth. 

Now for Sunday, I had reached out to a few of the Hangout students and invited them to get ice cream with us and chill at a park or just do whatever. I also sent it out to all the Hangout students for anyone that wanted to join. It ended up being just us, Ada and Ana that hung out, it was really sweet though. We got ice cream, played a game called Hanabi and then some of us went home and some us continued hanging out. We ate lunch at a place called La Tortilleria and just talked about all kinds of stuff. From what we enjoy doing, hobbies, studies, the world, differences between cultures. It was super fun! A bit later, Ada had showed us that she bought her friend in Korea some Costa Rica Uno cards so we thought it would be cool to have some too. She offered to drive us to go look around the store and buy some of those cards. We spent some more time walking around the store and then it was about time we had to go home because Don Rodrigo, Doña Francina and their family were coming over to cook dinner for us. 

May have exposed myself with how much I love chocolate and sweets with the ice cream I chose, at least to Ana and Ada 😂

So sweet! 😊

Today, half the team stayed back to join the Ohio team on campus and the other half went to the CDI. Campus crew today is Alexis, Ben, Matthew and I. Excited to see how today will go because last week I went to the CDI instead of campus on Thursday so I am glad to get to see all that the Ohio team does and also get to jump in with them. 

Prayer Requests:

• Opportunities for deeper conversations
• For the kids to experience the love of God ever-increasingly throughout their lives
• For Alexis to be healed of whatever sickness she may have so she can get the most out of her last couple of days here
• An immense amount of peace and rest for Ana and Carlos
• For the 1-week team to be able to make the most of their time left here, close connections with the kids, the students and anyone they connect with. 

Thank you all so much for all your prayers and support! It really means so much to us and to the church here! Praying blessings for you all!