Hey, Hey Jaco!

For the month of March, my team and I are living in Jaco, Costa Rica! We got to Jaco on February 27th anxious about where we would be traveling to next & thinking we would only be here for a week. Little did we know that this was our new home for this month, but lucky us, because we have the beach right at our fingertips.

Jaco is a touristy, beach town, which is very far from where any of us were expecting to be on the race. There are cute shops, great hikes, a long beach, gorgeous sunsets, tons of things to do & places to eat. And all that is because we are in a touristy area. Does the world race usually look like this? no not exactly, but sometimes it does! And I am apart of the sometimes. I was hesitant to share these things at first because I was thinking that everyone would think I am on a vacation & not on a mission trip. I wanted to be real and say that every ministry place looks different, but my mission, to make Jesus’ name known, is the same wherever I am. 

So what does ministry look like for us in Jaco?

My team is paired with a nonprofit called Oceans Edge. Oceans Edge is a local ministry here that focuses on serving the kingdom through community outreach. & we now get to help with that! So far we have been doing painting and childrens’ ministry, as well as serving with a main church here and doing prayer walks around town. 

A huge project that we get to be apart of is painting the light posts on the main streets. These light posts are big a deal because Jaco is such a spiritually heavy place. The vision for the light posts is to have them mimic a stained glass window  or ocean scene. The Edge team chose these designs in relation to putting small sprinkles of the church all over Jaco. We are not only painting the church but being the church as well while paint these posts & people come up to us wanting to know what we are doing and the why behind it. 

Talking to people that have lived here for years and hearing their testimonies/ about how broken Jaco used to be compared to now. It is very clear that there is a positive, God-loving community growing here. It is such a “one day at a time” thing because it won’t happen over night, but it is very evident that the Lord is planning something big here. 

Seeing that there is a solid church with a huge community that pushes pouring into the unreached in Jaco; I know that there is going to be great revival here within the next few years. I truly believe that Lord is continuously moving here whether we take the time to focus on the heaviness or not. That is why we are spreading the Lords goodness through the beauty of painting. 

It has been such a fun journey so far of getting to beautify Jaco. Our ministry hosts have us doing all kinds or different things and I can’t wait to share what else we will be doing  these next few weeks here!