Talamanca - Costa Rica = THE FLOOD

This last week we went to the southeast region of Costa Rica near the Panama border, a region called Talamanca... to a tiny indigenous village called Bambu. We went there to teach oral communicators God´s word for a week or so, doing some seminars to help them know how to study God´s word on their own. This was super exciting, the place was beautiful, and yeah... this is what we as Titus have been trained and equipped to do - so bring it on rainforest!

The first day there our host Alex took us on an amazing trip through the rainforest... crossed a river into Panama and got to just walk through jungle and wade through rivers. It was an awesome day, a beautiful day.

Then... it started raining... and for the next 9 days there was no end to the rain. Seriously it felt like we need to build another ark because the river was rising so quickly. The river actually flooded its banks for the worst flood Costa Rica has seen in more than 35 years. Tuesday the rain began... Tuesday night there was a 6.5 earthquake in Panama somewhere... and by Saturday the river had risen almost 10 feet even though it was like a few hundred meters wide. Yeah, so... all of our ministry was canceled and we sat inside a house on higher ground watching a natural disaster for almost 10 days... welcome to outreach. Honestly, it was a rough time... a hard time... because we wanted to be doing ministry... not trying to complain... but it was tough. The hardest thing about it wasn´t safety... or food... even though we ate tuna and rice for a few days before the roads were restored because the market ran out of food supplying all 3000 people in the immediate area - the hardest thing was feeling absolutely useless while being on a trip where you want to be used by God in the short time you have.

So yeah, we just got back to San Jose... my rainforest experience was interesting to say the least. Now we´re trying to patch together that last week and a half of our outreach since these 2 weeks have been washed away in the flood.

Please be praying for the last week of our outreach... that we would have some teaching time and that we would recouperate well seeing how the last week and a half were rather hard (I think I have giardia now because of the water filters being messed up by the flood too). Also be praying for the 8000 or so people around the river near Bambu who lost all of their crops in the flood and now are looking at around a year to restore what was lost. Also be praying for the YWAM base there in Talamanca because the house on the river is being torn down... they will save as much of the material as they can and hopefully rebuild on higher ground.

(PS = 2 other posts today also before this... check them out too)