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My Missions Trip to Costa RicaWhich part do you want to read? If this is your first time here, I recommend just scrolling down and reading from top to bottom.
Part 1: IntroductionJuly 12-25, 1999. Actually, my trip ended on the 26th, but it was supposed to end on the 25th. I'll explain why later. This trip was a missions trip. We were a group of Christian teenagers from various parts of Alberta (It's a province in western Canada, in case you didn't know) who travelled to Costa Rica to tell people about Jesus. We told them how God created us to be His friends, but our sin prevents us from having that relationship. God loves us so much that he sent his son, Jesus to earth. He lived a life without sin and then he was crucified and punished for our sin. Then God raised Him from the dead. Thanks to Jesus, we can have God as our friend and we can live eternally in heaven when we die. If you want to ask me any questions about this, e-mail me with my feedback form:  
and I will tell you more. Part 2: How I Got on This TripI'll start off by telling you how I ended up going on this trip. I grew up in a Christian family, and I have been a Christian for several years. I wanted to lead others to Jesus so they could experience His life-changing power, but I never managed to actually tell people about Jesus. I wanted to make a difference, but I found it very difficult. Then sometime in the first few months of 1999, I went to a Newsboys concert. At the concert, somebody told everyone there about Teen Mania, an organization that takes teens on missions trips. That was when I first started thinking of going on a missions trip. My parents helped me get some information on some other similar organizations so I could compare. I ended up procrastinating. The end of May was nearing and I still hadn't sent in a registration form. I assumed it was too late to register. Then I went to YC '99. YC is a large annual interdenominational youth conference that happens every year in Alberta. They have live bands and guest speakers and activities there all to motivate teens to live for God. I found out that YC was starting a missions organization called Global Youth Missions, and it wasn't too late to register for their trip to Costa Rica. They were organizing this trip through another organization called Big World Ventures. A couple weeks later (remember, I sometimes procrastinate but I normally get things done on time) I registered and began preparing for my trip. I had to get a passport and get some shots for travelling. I only needed a Hepatitis A shot and some pills to prevent Malaria. I actually hardly even saw mosquitos on the trip, but don't let that stop you from taking Malaria pills when you travel. Part 3: TrainingJuly 12 came. I got a ride to Calgary from Mark, the pastor who organized the trip. In Calgary, a man named Andy, who was from Oklahoma, led training. For two days, we spent most of our time practicing for the play we were performing in Costa Rica. The play told about Jesus, but in a different way from how the Bible tells about Jesus.
During those two days, I met the people who I would spend the next two weeks with. They were all great people to travel with. Part 4: The Flights to Costa RicaOn July 14, we got up early and went to the airport. We flew all day. Our route was crazy. We flew from Calgary, to Denver, to Washington, D.C., to San Jose, Costa Rica, stopping in Mexico City. They even put us on two separate flights from Denver to Washington. We all thought we were on the later flight until about 15 minutes before the earlier flight left. One person noticed that his ticket had a different flight number. We all had to check our tickets and the ones on the first flight had to rush to another gate. Despite that, we all arrived in Costa Rica on time. Then we headed for the Irazu hotel where we spent most of our nights on the trip. Part 5: A Typical Day
We usually spent evenings at the hotel. Sometimes we went swimming in the hotel pool, which was cold. We played full contact water polo a couple times. Every evening, we had a devotion time, led by somebody from Calgary, a different person each time. Part 6: The Village TripWe spent a couple days in a small town on the coast. We performed several times there. The people there were quite poor. We had a lot of kids at most of our performances. It seemed like kids were the most willing people to respond to our message. They were also the most likely people to mob the people who were giving away candy. It was sad that the places with the most poverty were also the places with the most kids. Some people from a church there fed us for every meal while we were there. Even though our meals there consisted mainly of means and rice, they did know several ways of serving rice, and we were grateful for their hospitality. We spent the night in a church, in our sleeping bags, on the floor. While our hotel back in San Jose had good toilets, the toilets that we used in this town weren't so great (they didn't even have seats), and one of them didn't have much privacy. It made me thankful that I'm male. While visiting that town wasn't one of the most luxurious times in my life, I'm glad I went there. Part 7: How God Changed PeopleGod really showed me that he does change lives during this trip. When we led people to Christ, sometimes we would wonder if they had really changed, since we would pray for them and then leave. A few days into our trip we found out for sure that people were changing. On the first day, some people in our group started talking to a homeless man who had raised his hand after the play. He joked around with them at first. The first thing he said to them was, "I speak English." That was all the English he knew. After talking to him for a while, he decided to give his life to Jesus. He also asked them to pray about his drug problem. A few days later, one of those people who talked to him that day, and I, met him after another performance. He told us that he had been off all drugs except cigarrettes for a few days. He was very grateful for what God had done for him. He planned to go to church that Sunday. There were some problems though. His old "friends" were threatening him. He was also having trouble finding enough food. We prayed for him, and by the time we left that park, someone gave him food. There were also people in our group who had become Christians in the past couple of years. One of them said that he used to be violent. It's hard to imagine him being violent. Every time he did anything that could possibly make anybody angry, he was very apologetic. These were just a couple examples that I saw of God's power to change lives. Part 8: Our Days OffSunday was our first day off. That morning we went to church. The church service was in Spanish. I only knew one song they sang, and I knew it in English, not Spanish. Even so, it was a good service, and the people there seemed to love God. They prayed for us and our mission trip. (That part was translated for us.) Some bilingual people sat near us during the sermon to translate for us. I really appreciated having translators with us. That afternoon, we did some shopping, but a lot of stores were closed.
On Saturday, we went to a beach on the Pacific coast. We got there in the morning. It was a nice day, and I had fun, although it got cloudy in the afternoon, but by that time we were all sunburnt. We left in the afternoon and spent the evening back at the hotel. Part 9: The Trip HomeThe next morning, I got up around 3 o'clock and we all went to the airport. Our route going home was the same as the one going there (except in the opposite direction) but our flight from Washington to Denver was a couple hours late. We missed our flight to Calgary. We were sitting in the Denver airport for a few hours while our leaders were at the customer service desk. It turned out that there were no more flights to Calgary that night, and all the ones the next day were full, so they put us on a flight to Los Angeles and then a flight to Calgary. Those flights were both the next day, so the airline payed for us to stay in a hotel in Denver that night. On top of that, they lost my luggage somewhere between Washington and Calgary. They delivered it to my house two days later. At least the delay didn't interfere with what we did on the trip. The delay might have prevented something worse from happening. That's all for now. Later, I may add something about after the trip. Use my feedback form to e-mail comments to me:
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The play was called Spellbound. It didn't require us to say anything. Since most people in Costa Rica speak Spanish, and we didn't speak Spanish, this was a good thing. As we performed, we played a tape that had music and Spanish narration on it. The play was about a toy maker who made a toyland and some toys that he could talk to. Then an evil magician convinced the toys to rebel. Because they rebelled, a barrier was set up between the toy maker and the toys. (One thing I had to do in the play was be part of the barrier.) After some chaos in the toyland, the toy maker's son became a toy. He healed some illnesses that the toys had and was quite popular, but then one of his friends betrayed him. He was crucified. Then the toy maker brought his son back to life, breaking the barrier, so the toys could be with the toy maker.
The next day after breakfast we put on our makeup, as we did in the morning every day that we performed. We practiced the play one last time and then got on our bus to start performing. During our ten full days in Costa Rica, we performed our play about twenty times. We actually usually performed more than twice a day, but we had two-and-a-half days off. We usually performed in parks and schools. When we arrived at a site, we would set up and tell people in the area that we were doing a play. Some bilingual people from Costa Rica volunteered their time to travel with us and translate for us. These translators were teenage and young adult Christians. Every morning they would pray for us for about an hour and a half. Anyway, after telling people about the play, we'd perform a couple of short skits and then perform our main drama.
After the main play, somebody from our group got up and told the audience about Jesus (basically the same thing I told you in the introduction) and a translator translated it into Spanish. Then that person asked people who wanted to have Jesus in their lives to raise their hands and pray to ask Jesus to forgive their sins and come into their lives. Our leader estimated that about 2000 people who saw our play during our trip raised their hands, indicating that they became Christians, although some of them may not have been sincere, and others may not have stuck to their new commitment. Then we walked around in groups with a translator in each group and talked to the people in the audience. We asked new Christians to fill out cards with their names, addresses and phone numbers on them so that local churches could contact them and help them in their new relationship with God. In all we got about 600 response cards. We also prayed for people who wanted prayer. At the beginning, I found it quite hard to talk to the people we met. I just let the people I was with do the talking, but with some prayer, encouragement, and effort, I started talking to the people we met more. A few times when other people in our group prayed for people, God healed their illnesses. Some people also gave out candy at some places.
On Wednesday, we had the afternoon off, and we went shopping downtown. On Friday, we performed in the morning, but in the afternoon, we didn't get to do any ministry. The original plan was to visit a prison, but there had been some violence there, so they weren't allowing any visitors. It was raining, so we didn't perform outside because most people were indoors. We tried to visit a school, but they didn't let us in. It was a disappointing way to end such a good trip.