Tim Høiland

A lot has happened since I last wrote so I’ll get right into it with a brief recap. On Wednesday our group split up into two groups. A car-full of us headed into San Jose to meet with the consul from the Canadian embassy in the morning and a doctor from an open-access, private practice that charges patients based on the ability to pay. Both interviews provided us with unique perspectives and helpful information. While we were in San Jose, the rest of the group had a meeting with a representative from the National Emergency Commission, the government agency that rose to the forefront in the days following the earthquake.

Yesterday we stayed in San Rafael. In the morning a smaller group of us taught an art class for all the students in grades one through five. Another group began conducting surveys for a census of every home in the town, while the rest of the team helped to haul the rubble of the Catholic church across the street to where the school will hopefully be rebuilt in the near future.

Today most of the group headed into the provincial capital of Heredia – where we’d met with the mayor earlier in the week – this time for a meeting with the regional director from the ministry of education. Meanwhile, the survey team completed our census (woot woot!) just as it began to rain a little bit.

In very exciting news, as the census team was heading back to the house we came upon a reporter from the largest newspaper in Costa Rica, who after talking with us is now planning to publish the story of Teresa, our amazing cook whose family has still not been paid for the government’s use of their land for the new road through San Rafael after the old one was swept away in the landslide. The reporter is also interested in receiving the report from all of our findings, which might be the biggest and most unexpected answer to prayer we ever could have hoped for.

Currently our entire team has convened at a place renown for the most amazing strawberry milkshakes in the history of the universe (where there also happens to be free internet!). We’re going to do a little shopping this afternoon and will really begin bringing our findings together this evening, our last night at Casa Shalom.