Today marked the one-week point since arriving in Costa Rica. It's taken that long to get our bearings.
When people think of Costa Rica, they think of pristine beaches, ziplines through rain forests, exotic flora and fauna… Well, our first week has contained none of that. Rather, it's been a fairly typical life in a congested Latin American capital city for a family very inexperienced in such a life. It's what prompted Malia's first words when we arrived at the house to be: "I want to go home" (along with the saddest sullen expression). Now the house is not that bad, mind you (see pic). It's just been an adjustment. It probably wasn't a good idea to call this trip the "40-day vacation" to our kids. I think we set the wrong expectations. Even our Spanish tutor told us, "San Jose es muy feo!" [The city is very ugly.]
We are starting to get more of the hang of it. Eliza's found a decent grocery store (she got a kick out of cooking Shake 'n Bake chicken and mac 'n cheese tonight, even though we probably wouldn't eat that at home). I'm learning to stop sweating bullets while driving an '87 Toyota stick shift sedan (the car we're borrowing) in San Jose traffic. We're getting used to the bug bites and heavy exhaust fumes from buses and cars (trusting that our baby in utero won't grow two heads as a result). The girls have been very creative in entertaining themselves with rocks, sticks and broken glass laying around the street (no, we aren't being absentee parents, just letting them live a little).
Two highlights this week:
- Visiting a Christian NGO called Casa Viva which has successfully introduced and rolled out a foster care model for at-risk children despite a previously skeptical Costa Rican government. It has been winning over its skeptics — now receiving 35% of its support from the child welfare agency of the government — and is poised to scale up significantly as well as help consult other countries in the model.
- Visiting a local Nazarene church where my friend, Allan Matamoros, preached about life in the Muslim-majority world leading a Latin American mission called Pueblos Muselmanes Internacional. A very high percentage of his support base is from Costa Rican churches.
One of the decisions we made was not to enroll in the local language institute. Our fear was that we would settle into an expat-dominated community and fail to integrate into Costa Rican life. It's caused me to reflect a little about how easy and tempting it is to develop a sense of cultural superiority when in a foreign country. One travesty about Costa Rica is how much of the best land and most lucrative businesses are owned exclusively by expats. Among Western Christians, there is an unspoken superiority we have that our starting point somehow is more advantaged towards living "good" Christian lives than other cultures. Perhaps it's true in the sense that America and much of Europe's founding was based on Judeo-Christian principles. But in day-to-day existence, the call to discipleship is challenging regardless of the cultural context. I heard the story of how one of the most storied and historic missions, Central American Mission, founded in the 19th century by Scottish missionaries, was recently asked to leave by Costa Rican church leadership, essentially over their unwillingness to relinquish control to nationals. [Although, in fairness, I'm sure my shorthand version of the story I heard is somehow incomplete.]
Regardless of where we are, I'm reminded that we need to be "jealous with [His] jealousy" -- to be passionate to see people living lives of genuine and deep faith within their own cultural context.
Tomorrow we overnight at a volcano called Volcan Poas. It will be good to get out of the city.
