The Trip

photos

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Greetings from Costa Rica

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Costa Rica Outreach Background

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The Vista, July, 2005*

Article on the CROSS

trip

The Trip

June 12, 2005

            Two weeks and over five thousand miles later, it’s good to be back home here in Austin.  Nine days in Costa Rica and four more at Camp Chrysalis near Kerrville definitely left me longing for the comfort of my own bed.  Most of that time was spent living out of a backpack, fishing for the clean pair of socks at the bottom of the bag, wondering where I put my flashlight the night before, searching desperately for the insect repellent that I was sure I’d placed in one of the side pockets.  Ah, the joys of life on the road! 

            There are a lot of thoughts and impressions of my trip to Costa Rica still swimming in my head.  Just sorting them all out seems like a monumental task.  And if I may beg your indulgence, I’d like to share a few of my thoughts with you by way of my sermon this morning.  I have to say that preparing for the trip and then spending time in Costa Rica led me to experience borders and boundaries in ways I never have before.  When I found out a couple of months ago that Jenny and I would be traveling with the Lutheran Campus Ministry group to Costa Rica, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I first had to find out just where exactly it was.  Now, I knew at least enough to look in Central America and quickly discovered that it borders Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south.  

As our plane drew near to the Costa Rican border three Saturdays ago and again as we approached the US a week ago today, we were asked to fill out a form declaring what if anything we were bringing into the country.  Were we carrying more than $10,000 in cash or merchandise or did we have any plants or seeds in our possession?  I checked the “no” box.  Were we transporting any fruit or vegetables?  Again I checked the “no” box fully forgetting about the two Roma apples I’d stowed away in Jenny’s carry on bag.  It’s a good thing they waved us through customs, because Jenny and I might well still be in Costa Rica.  Rest assured that the evidence was consumed as soon as we discovered our lawless ways.

When bad weather prevented our landing in San Jose, our plane was diverted north to Managua, Nicaragua which of course meant another border crossing, from a relatively stable and safe country into a much different country the realities of war and conflict are still fresh on people’s minds and where widespread poverty is something that people live with each and every day.  As we drew closer, the sense of anxiety on board the plane began to rise and continued for nearly four hours on the airport tarmac until at last our gassed up plane lifted up off of the runway. 

If I presumed that crossing into Costa Rica was the last border experience I’d have for the next week or so, I was sorely mistaken, because every day it seemed, I found myself in unfamiliar territory.  First there were the strange sights and smells of a altogether new place, the food, the flora, at times the raw and rank odor of rotting garbage and sewage.  Then there were the days in the village of Quirirrisi, among the indigenous Huetar people, people who were as gracious and welcoming as I’ve ever known, yet people who from my perspective as a relatively comfortable middle class US citizen are as poor as I’ve ever known.  And then again as we left the village to spend time on the Pacific coast in the relative comfort of a resort hotel complete with hot showers in the bathrooms, French fries on the restaurant menu and high-speed internet access in the library.

For good or for ill, borders like the ones I observed serve to hold back and to contain, to remind us that “Hey, don’t forget, you’re going from one place to another.”  In many ways, borders serve to divide and separate—one nation, one economic class, one race from another—all according to the rules of the game set by those who hold the keys of power in the worldly kingdom. 

            In conclusion, I want to thank you my brothers and sisters for affording me the time away to take part in this trip.  And I want to assure you that although you may not have made the physically made the trip with us, we sensed your presence with us all along the way.  There were numerous occasions when I found myself thinking about and praying for you all back here in Austin, especially on Sunday morning at around 10:30 AM as you gathered for worship and held me and Jenny and all our traveling companions up in prayer during that time. Through our generous support of the greater church each of you were there too.  Because of us, ELCA Division for Global Mission workers Lara and Lise were there to help navigate and lead us on our journey.  Because of us, Lutheran Campus Ministry at the University of Texas provides a place for young adults to grow in their faith, to develop gifts for leadership in the church, to share in life changing experiences like Costa Rica Outreach Simplicity and Service otherwise known as CROSS.       

             The young laborers with whom I was blessed to share nine days of my life experienced some remarkable things.  It’s safe to say that each of us in our own way were blessed to catch glimpses of Christ himself.  As part of the end of trip evaluation, each of us were asked where we had seen Christ on this trip.  The answers were quite remarkable and indicated that the Spirit had been at work among us in some profound ways.  Many reported seeing Christ in the young children of Quitirrisi, living and working among God’s people in that small corner of God’s world, in the community that developed among the twenty one of us who shared virtually every aspect of life together for nine days, in the beauty of creation, in the gracious giving our ourselves one to another.

           

June 19, 2005

           A part of the discussion we shared with those who traveled with us to Costa Rica three weeks ago was about how to share our experience with others, an experience that led many of us including myself to seriously question our economic, social and political priorities. 

In the nine days we were there we saw the other end of the food production chain and why it is that we’re able to waltz into HEB and buy bananas for thirty-nine cents a pound.  Why?  Because men and women are paid extremely low wages to work long hours in the hot sun.  Living in the middle of the plantations, they and their children are routinely drenched in pesticide by the crop dusters that fly overhead that don’t discriminate between trees, houses and people.  In a country where the average life span is about where it is the US, people who live in the plantation for any length of time are lucky if they make it to age fifty.

We heard many similar stories while we were there and among our group I truly sensed a spirit of outrage at how terribly unfair and unjust it all seemed.  At the end of our trip, many of the young people were eager to go back and tell others, their family and friends just exactly what they’d seen and heard, that somehow, maybe they could make a difference.  But for some coming home to tell their story hasn’t turned out to be at all what they’d expected.  Instead of enthusiastic acceptance some have discovered suspicion, disbelief and even anger even among those closest to them.  And it breaks my heart to know how terribly unsettling and confusing that must be for some of the dear young people with whom I was blessed to share community earlier this month, people who have found themselves in a real bind as their faith has begun to lead them to take conscientious stands about matters of basic justice.  In no way do I mean to question the sincerity of love between family and friends, never the less, as I hear stories of the resistance they’re meeting I’m haunted by Jesus’ words.  “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law.”

June 26, 2005

I have been reminded once again over the past four or five weeks how on a hot day just how good it is to have something cool to drink.  First, on our packing list for the trip Costa Rica was “one sturdy water bottle”.  I’m certainly glad I remembered to bring one along, because I’d have been in big trouble without it.  Although the weather was and is generally cooler there that it is here, you wouldn’t think it would be, but it is, the country’s proximity to the equator means it gets a whole lot more sunlight that we do even when the sun is at its peak like it was earlier this week.  Before and then during the trip, we were encouraged to be careful, to put on lots of sunscreen and of course, to drink lots of water.  At noon every day that we were working in the native village of Quitirissi, the senoras would bring us lunch, a meal that included cheese or meat sandwiches, a piece of fruit usually a banana and something to drink, some sort of fruit juice or just plain water.  More often than not, I simply opted for the latter.  After a couple of hours working in the steamy rainforest, a cool cup of water was truly a welcome gift. 

 Pastor Brian Peterson

                  

greet

Greetings from Costa Rica

Thursday, June 2, 2005, 10:58 pm CDT Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica   Dear Ascension Members,   Greetings from Costa Rica!  I'm writing to you from the city of Manuel Antonio on the Pacific Coast.  We've just arrived from our four days of working with the indigenous Huetar people.  We spent our time planting trees and preparing a site that will serve as a meditation center for the villiage.  Jenny led the tree planting detail and I alternated between helping her crew and the other crew that was building a trail from the site down to a nearby river.    The Huetar people were incredibly gracious to us.  It's obvious they don't have much in terms of posessions, but they are rich in faith.  I look forward to sharing more with you when I return.   Tomorrow, we spend time in a Manuel Antonio National Park and the next at a place called Rancho Mastatal, an ecotourism reserve that focuses upon environmental sustainability.   Time is short here at the internet cafe.  Will share more soon.   Peace,   Pastor Peterson

Costa Rica Outreach Background

 

 

You never know what's going to happen when you come to work sometimes, Wednesday morning about five weeks ago began like most other Wednesday mornings do.  I got to the office a little before 9. Around 9; 15 the domino players arrived and at 9:30 I moseyed down to the Day School for our weekly chapel time.  Then around 10, Craig Sommer, a friend who also serves as Campus Pastor of the ELCA Student Community at UT, called to see if he could stop by and talk with me about something. "Sure," I said. And about 20 minutes later he was in my office.

 

After a little small talk, he cut to the chase. 'Would you like to go to Costa Rica on a mission trip with a group of students at the end of May and the first part of June?"

 

Now, it didn't take much arm twisting on this end for me to say "yes."  The only question I had was whether or not Jenny could join me, which as it turned out would be just fine.  So, from May 29th through June 5th, along with eighteen university students and other sponsors, Jenny and I will be taking part in the CROSS Mission Project.  You never know what's going to happen when you come to work sometimes!

 

CROSS stands for Costa Rica Outreach Simplicity and Service* and is funded by a grant from Thrivent Financial for Lutherans*, as a part of its Youth Leadership Initiative*.  The grant was awarded to Lutheran Campus Ministry at UT for a proposal that combines study of voluntary simplicity in a complex and consumer oriented society with service learning in Costa Rica.

 

Just what is "voluntary simplicity"? At one of a series of Sunday afternoon meetings for participants, I came across a very helpful definition -- a mind set that loves people and uses things, rather than using people and loving things; maintains an awareness that all living things survive in delicate balance; requires limiting material possessions; stresses cooperation rather than competition and; strives to exploit no person or group of people. (From Things that Make for Peace by John and Mary Schramm).

 

The CROSS experience represents an amazing opportunity, seeing a part of the world many of us never have before, getting to know peo­ple who lead very different lives than those we lead, participating in the work of our Southwestern Texas Synod Companion Synod in Costa Rica through worship, service and meaningful conversation, sharing in Christian community with a gifted group of young church leaders who will no doubt challenge me to look at the world and my faith differently, and last, but certainly not least reflecting on our lives in the context of the global community, as stewards of all God's creation.

 

Most of our time will be spent serving in Quitirrisi de Mora, an indigenous reserve for the Huetar people located just outside the Costa Rican Capitol of San Jose.  The Lutheran community there is apparently small but growing. They have a very active women's group whose primary ministry is natural medicine. Their youth group is also very strong and talented in theater/drama. They are a people rich in culture, but who have been neglected and ignored by the population (good in one sense, but bad in another.)  A day or two will also be spent at a place called Rancho Mastatal, an environmental learning center that focuses on sustainable practices like organic gardening, natural building, solar energy, composting toilets, etc.

 

It's a trip that Jenny and I hope to share together with you. As I find out more detailed information about our mission project, maybe we will discover ways we can support this important ministry together through prayer and other gifts and in so doing gain a deeper appreciation of how we are connected to people of faith throughout the world and that together we might discover new ways to grow in our understanding of what it means to live as faithful stewards of all God's creation.

 

Yours in Christ

 

Pastor Peterson

vista

Campus ministry students participate

in service, outreach in Costa Rica

By Amber Byfield (Editor's Note: Students from Lutheran campus ministry at The University of Texas at Austin spent May 28-June 5 in Costa Rica for a week of cultural exchange and service. The event was entitled CROSS: Costa Rica Outreach-Simplicity and Service.)         We've all struggled at times to find God. We tend to see God's presence in the good waves, but deem it God's absence when the tides change. At the beginning of the summer, as the 20 of us prepared for our trip to Costa Rica, we were not aware that the journey we were about to embark upon would leave us looking for - and finding - God in poverty, in richness, in sunshine, and in clouds. As one member of our group put it so aptly in a group devotion, we were learning to find God in sunsets and sushi - in the good as well as the bad.       For most of us, traveling to a foreign land was new terrain in and of itself. With only a minor hitch (an impromptu landing for fuel in Nicaragua), we made it safely to San Jose - all 20 or so of us wearing bright, tie-dyed shirts that we'd made only two weeks before. Luckily for all of us, we'd spent months in fervent training for the trip of a lifetime. But not even all our preparation could have readied our hearts and minds for our experience.         We spent a lot of time learning about living lives of voluntary simplicity, exploring changes from spending less money on dining out to making a commitment to buy Fair Trade products. Our first steps into Costa Rica helped us understand why these changes, though they may seem small in our eyes, could make a bigger impact on our global community. It didn't take long to see how poverty had stricken the area we were in: multiple families living in small homes, a struggle for food and water, and the countless families who barely got by on their banana farm wages. We in America can get caught up in our cable TV, our cell phones, our neighborhood Chili's - but the people of Costa Rica don't have these luxuries. They cannot choose to live simply. We, however, can adapt our lives voluntarily, trimming the excess - living simply so that others may simply live, as Gandhi once put it.        We struggled to see God among the poor and the hungry, looking only skin deep. But as we filed out of our bus and into the open doors of the Lutheran church in Quitirrissi (where we were staying), God shone through like a blinding Light. The children welcomed us with song and dance, and the women of the village cooked a big dinner for us - and no, we never ate anything out of the ordinary, unless you count plantains, yucca, and gallo pinto (leftover black beans and rice for breakfast). We quickly saw that our church is truly a church without walls, one where Jesus is the strong center vine, and the branches reach all over the world. It is a church that welcomes the poor and the rich; those who struggle and those who are comfortable; those who live off the land, and those who live on it.      Each day in the village, we hiked into the mountains among the clouds and banana trees, alongside thousands of species of bugs and, well, other wildlife (to say the least!).  Part of our service/learning trip was helping the village with part of a reforestation project, as well as building a trail on the mountain

to one of the many natural streams. We worked all day with the people of the village, moving rocks up from the riverbed, carving steps into the m o u n t a i n s i d e , peppering the barren mountains with saplings that will grow to provide food and shelter for generations to come. After a full morning of work, we hiked back to home base every afternoon to "shower" (let's not forget that we were living simply…) before the rains came. In the afternoons, we kept busy playing games, singing songs, and blowing bubbles with the kids. By evening, we were wound down and passed the time talking with the elders of the village, learning about the traditions of the Huetar people (an indigenous tribe in Costa Rica; the people in Quitirrissi are Huetars), including their deep connection to the earth relationship with the Lutheran Church of Costa Rica (ILCO), according to Oldemar (one of the village elders who has been working to bring their culture back as a way of life), is a positive one. ILCO, he said, has not forced religion upon them, but has instead reached out a helping hand as far as building a community goes. It has been a presence in Quitirrissi for three years now, and has been a positive part of the community since its inception.       After our stay in Quitirrissi, we made our way by bus on winding roads to Quepos, where we stayed at the Blue Monkey Hotel. There, we met a few young people who had started a program called "Kids Saving the Rain Forest." We also got to experience the luxurious lifestyle once again, and e-mailed our families, enjoyed a pizza, and spent a day at the beach. God's presence shone there too, as we stood in the waves of the Pacific Ocean and walked through the rain forest with monkeys and sloths and toucans and purple crabs.       The next day, we traveled on down the road to Rancho Mastatal, a sustainable environment run by volunteers from all over the world. Think Swiss Family Robinson, Costa Rica style. They make their own homes, outdoor bathrooms, and foods - including yoghurt, cheese, and wood-fired breads. Some of us even had the invigorating experience of bathing in an outdoor shower. Three walls were made of bamboo, but the fourth wall was left open and facing the breathtaking canopy of the rain forest, the bright morning sun peaking through and glistening off the drops of dew, making every color of the rainbow.      Those of us in CROSS were so very blessed to be a part of such an experience. Our eyes have been opened, and each of us has come away with a deeper understanding of how big this world is, and how much bigger than the world our God is. It's easy to find God in a sunset that throws its palette in big, bold brush strokes across the sky. It's easy to find God in the nourishing rain that falls over lush, green mountains, and in the waterfalls that gently flow over millions of years of rock. It's easy to find God in caring people, no matter where you are. Amber Byfield, a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Taylor, received a bachelor's degree in journalism in May from The University of Texas at Austin     © The Vista, July, 2005

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