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.

After writing yesterday’s post, our team reconvened on the other side of town in Heredia in the midst of a downpour. Some were more soaked than others. We headed back towards Casa Shalom for two meetings in Varablanca, where we had church the other morning. We met first with the school board and association about the educational situation in this area, and out of this we’re working on collaborating when we meet (hopefully) with a representative from the ministry of education on Thursday. You could pray for that.

The next meeting, a briefer one, was with two members of the local community development association, with whom we chatted about housing and other areas of concern in the area. We also hope that connections can be made between these community leaders and the powers-that-be in order to help the community rebuild.

Yesterday was a great day, but an exhausting one. After these meetings we debriefed until late into the evening. Today was a big blessing, then, because we mostly have had the day off. This morning the clouds cleared out enough for us to head up to visit the Poas volcano. We were able to look down into the crater, which was steaming and hissing. Then, after a walk through the jungle over to the older crater, we had our daily devotions overlooking the beautiful crater lake. After this the skies opened up and we decided to take it easy, reading books, drinking coffee, chatting, and catching up on work in Casa Shalom.

Please continue to pray for our transportation situation. Each day has brought adventures of its own; today we only had to jumpstart a car once. But God provides and we’ve always had enough seats (sort of) to get where we need to go. We’d also appreciate prayer for the meetings and surveys yet to be done, and for continued team unity and safety. Thanks so much.