Howdy fellow Mennonites. 
This is Sara Schlosser coming to you live from Naranjo, Costa Rica. Today was an eventful day, and it was even more gooder since we were still laughing at the fact that Mark cracked a filling yesterday by eating a piece of sugarcane candy. Hold the applause please. (Oh and Kathy… get the dentist ready.)
Anywho, after our breakfast of buttered and jammed bread and bananas we hit the market spreading the good news of the “fiesta” we were holding in the park at about 9:30. It was a challenge, because yesterday we just had to hand out papers but today we actually had to exercise our Spanish in full sentences. YIKES!!! But if all else failed, Liz had written down basic information that we could let the confused Costa Ricans read.
When we finished at the market we headed to the park with our supplies of face paints, balloons and invites to church on Sunday morning. At this point, the whole youth group started to notice Mark’s absence, but we didn’t make much of it… thinking that he was just going to go purchase a few pounds of sugarcane candy for the flight home. Naturally. When we started out at the park the location we had picked was not very busy so we moved our belongings to the main walkway. SHABAM! It took a while but after we started yelling “gratis” (free) the parents finally let their kids get a “perro” (dog) on their face or a sword balloon. One thing that we all noticed is that all of the people we served and gave to church invitations to actually read the paper and responded with a excited “Si!” they did not just throw the paper on the ground and ignore our effort. It was a real blessing.
When we started to wrap up (the clouds looked pretty threatening) Marko finally decided to show up. It wasn’t until later that he told us he thinks there are a lot of leader in our youth group, and that part of us doesn’t fully show if he is present. We didn’t know it till that night that he was stalking us the whole day, watching God work through us and seeing us help each other even if the task was out of our comfort zone.
We walked home and ate rice that had chopped corn, hot dogs and string beans in it with chips. I have one word to describe Costa Rican food… DELICIOSO! After lunch we had a good 30-40 minutes of devotions. During this time we study the daily devotion in a packet that Mark had created for our whole trip. Then we can spend the rest of the time either in prayer or reading our Bible.
It was unexpected but after devotions we went to a birthday party for a 1 year old. It was a blast. We got fed some more rice and chips (huzzah!!), coffee and we once again made balloons and helped paint little chicos’s faces. Costa Rican kids are ultimately adorable.
After the birthday party we had a very spiritual seeking, earth shattering meeting Plus, we had a group discussion about the daily devotional. In a nutshell, the motto for the day was basically “he who is forgiven much, loves much”. It was great because we really exercised our minds and spread our knowledge of spiritual truths.
When the meeting was complete some member of the youth group took a walk into town and purchased some cinnamon rolls with a diameter width of about 9 inches and amazingly awesome Costa Rican “helado” (ice cream). Then we finished off the night with some “chilling.” What a day. 