San Ra

Today we woke up and got ready to go to the town that I had lived in in ’05, Heredia. My cousin Joe was going to chauffer us around all day, it was great spending so much time with him. He is really neat, he is very personable, and SO easy to talk with. Our first stop was Karen’s house. We dropped in on her and talked for a while and then she served us her famous canalones – o man, so DELICIOUS. She makes really really good food. In fact, in her desperate desire to learn English, she had proposed that she would come over and cook for us once or twice a week, if we would only speak English and correct hers, while she did so. This was how we got to know this loving friend that we now visited.

After that we wanted to stop by the internet café that Marco works at, BUT he wasn’t there and they had told us that he had moved to a barrio called “La Suiza” We knew this area because one of our friends, Geiner lives there. So we went to try to take a shot in the dark, and found Marco near a cafetal (coffe plantation/field) talking with some girl. I went to hug him but he held back because he was all scrapped up. He had just fallen off of a mini motorcycle the day before.


We then went to visit his family, which is always a real treat. They are from Colombia and just so warm and welcoming. It is always good to see them. I shared with them why I don’t have a boyfriend. (which is strange for a girl my age) I told her that I had taken time to really know, and love who I am, and allow Jesus to love me, and develop more intimacy with Him, before engaging with anyone else. I told her of my struggle with finding my identity in others, not having liked who I was, my struggle with depression, and my couple of suicidal moments. My sister had known about my depression, but not my face to face encounters with the decision to end my life. She didn’t know that she was one of the main reasons that I decided not to take my life. And so we cried. It was good. I felt it to be a healing time for me to share about this.

After this Gabby stayed at Geiners, and I went with Joe to see if anyone was at the YWAM base. There was Jason and Gabino, and it was so good to see them  but I was sad because the Sibaja family (my second family –which is a term I use for all of the second families I have Molly’s, Sofi’s, etc- who I had the incredible opportunity to get to know during my DTS 2 years ago. I left a note for them.

I looked for Celso, he was working. I saw Nacho (Jose Ignacio) and he was ALL SMILES, from ear to ear, he said that he never would have guessed that I would come back, and much less that I would come looking for him at his doorstep. It was a really sweet time, nd I’m glad I got to see him.

I went up the small entry to where my ex-boyfriend Ademar lives, and had Joe call his best friend, Josue out. BUT Josue wasn’t there, so I talked for a while with his older brother Caleb, and he was very encouraging telling me that I marked History in our small community (commenting on the fact that Ademar wasn’t going to catch up with me because his girlfriend would be jealous)

I finally went to see my best friend Sofi (If you’re confused, I have several best friends in many countries) and went to hang out with her family for the rest of the night. We talked and laughed and prayed, and cried, it was SO GOOD. It’s neat to be by her side as she is walking uphill in her battle with depression, after having walked there where she has walked. It was so nice.