We returned home from dancing a little past midnight so technically it counts as dia ocho. Noah and I both decided that it was fun but we probably wouldn’t choose to do it again.
Domingo was amazing. We slept in until about ocho de la mañana and prepared to go to a church service at diez. We had been looking at a list of churches in Heredia; there were many Pentacostal churches, a Mennonite church, Anabaptist-amish churches, but nothing that really stuck out as “ooh, that would be a good place to go.” (Although Noah and I were both excited with the possibility of going to a Pentacostal church and see what their service was like.) Well, it turns out God had an even better idea. The day before, Benjamin and I had been exploring San Joaquin and looking for a church that Benjamin had heard about from other students who came down last year. We found the building but when we went by, there was no one there. We decided, however, to go to that church on Domingo mañana because it looked worth checking out.
The church was amazing. We actually arrived about thirty minutes early because we were not sure what the general practice is (it turned out that like everything in Costa Rica, it ran about 10-15 minutes behind the posted schedule). We spent most of that time trying to translate the church information and core doctrines pamphlet. It is a CCI church plant that has about a hundred people. We were all commenting on how the church seemed both so familiar to what we know in the United States while at the same time distinctively Costa Rican. The worship leader is of African decent and you can definitely tell by the way he leads ;-) Worship was wonderful; we recognized many of the melodies and that helped us understand the words on the projectors. The message itself was taught in Spanish. It was a bit hard to follow but we actually understood the big ideas and the main point. It turns out that this week was a special “world missions” week so the pastor taught on spreading the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost ends of the earth.
Practically the whole congregation came over to welcome us and everyone was extremely friendly. You can definitely feel that this church is alive. It was extremely refreshing.
After church, we wanted to stay out of the house long enough so that our families did not feel pressured to feed us lunch. (Their are only “contracted” to feed us breakfast and dinner, but they are such generous and polite people that if we were there during lunch time, they would feed us so on the weekends when there is no school, we kinda make ourselves disappear around noon). We ate at an great pizza place called Lonzcho’s Pizza. So far, it is the best restaurant in town that we have found. They make good pizza. Mi gusto the crust (the most important part of any pizza); es muy, muy buena. All the ingredients are good and the pizza is fresh from the oven. Best of all, it is very cheap. I plan on coming back often.
We came back to watch the futball final with our family. Heredia (the local team) is in a final match against their arch-rival, Liberia Mio (I think I butchered that spelling). If Heredia lost, there would be one final game to finish the match. If Heredia won, it would be over and Heredia would be the champion team of Costa Rica. Needless to say, our families were very excited. The game was very good and I enjoyed watching it. There were some amazing plays and these guys really knew how to play soccer. It was a treat. The score ended up zero to zero, but instead of going overtime, they decide match on Tuesday. Don’t ask me why, it didn’t really make sense to stop a game at 0-0 to me either ;-)
On Monday, we started school again, this time with a new professora. Every week, we change professors. This week our professora is focusing more on conversation than grammatica. We still cover grammatica but the first half of class is practicing conversation and speaking. (Rather than just reading and writing.) We went over the first four groups of irregular verbs out of eight groups. There is a lot to memorize and a lot more practice we need to do to make these verbs second nature. But we are all getting better little by little.
After school, Noah, Benjamin, and I went to Heredia in search of adventure (Ben’s motivation) and to buy some Heredia futball camisetas (Noah and yo’s motivation). Most places did not have them and it took a while to find a place that sold the Heredia T-shirts.I needed a shirt and I wanted to support their home soccer team for tomorrow so I bought a yellow one and Noah bought a red one. We were very pleased with our purchases.
So we caught the bus back home and successfully navigated our way through the city without a tour guide. All in all, it was a very good two days.
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