Without Borders.

I want to share with you a ministry opportunity that God has presented to me. I have recently been invited to participate in an international mission to Costa Rica this January with Cru. Cru is an organization that has been working with college students since 1951. I would be traveling with a group from Texas State University. I will be traveling with 15 other students and Cru staff members where I will be serving the poor, growing in my Christian faith and character, and sharing God’s love with others. We will spend the first part of the trip helping with various humanitarian needs. Previously this group went to Costa Rica and were able to paint a local church and volunteer there. This trip our team leader is developing another project with this church in order to continue to build this relationship. The ministry will likely address a physical need in the area in order that we might continue to build relationships and share the gospel in this community. During the second part of th...

I have been wanting to do an update now that I am back to college life in the United States. A lot has happened in the last 5 months since I arrived home from Costa Rica.  To start I wanted to make sure that everyone that supported me, both in your prayers and financially, knows they are so greatly appreciated. My year in Costa Rica was life changing. Going into the year my faith in God was shaky at best and my knowledge of Him was minimal. I was not in a great place. However, in Costa Rica I had great mentors, friends, and teachers. I replanted my faith in Christ and in November I was baptized. If you ever want to hear my testimony I would be happy to share.   Coming home to the states took some adjusting. My family for 9 months was gone and so were my ministries. Over the summer I worked a couple different places trying to save up money for college. For 7 weeks of the summer I worked for Upward Bound as a tutor/ counselor. The program is an academic summer program f...

Ministry has been really awesome! Every week I'm excited to go hang out with our kids and they seem excited to see us. We have really been able to build relationships with them and love on them. They're such a great group and since camp our relationships with them have improved a ton. We are always joking with each other and picking on each other. At group we always have a snack. A couple weeks ago we were able to make... PANCAKES! It was awesome and then last week two of our girls had birthdays so we got them a cake! Many of our kids have accepted Christ if not all of them and there has been a visible difference in them. In Los Guido Salvador, the guy in charge of our ministry, has started a church. So far we are meeting every other week. At this point they cannot afford to rent out the church space every week. We've met twice so far. The first time a couple families attended with their kids from group. The second time mostly just our youth were there. I'm excited ju...

Hey fam, I'm back in Costa Rica! It was time for a visa run for the group so about 30 of us packed up for 4 days in Nicaragua. As I write this we're on the bus headed for the Villa. Our trip was awesome. First of all praise God for his help at the border both times. What could have been the worst part of the trip was easy and almost fun. Typically the time spent crossing the border could be around four hours or more, but somehow we were able to cross in about two hours going into Nicaragua on Monday and coming out today. And also instead of standing outside in the sun for it we were able to wait on the bus. In Nicaragua we went into town the first day for snacks, adventuring, and fun. We went to the grocery store where everything cost about half as much as in Costa Rica. Then we got rickshaw rides. That could be a horse pulling a little cart behind it but these ones were guys on bicycles that push people in an oversized basket/cart like a little taxi. We raced each other an...

One thing I learned at camp this week is that God speaks Spanish too. We couldn't understand everything our kids said, what the pastor said, what the music was about, or what the directions were but we saw hearts changing. We were able to take 35 students to camp from Monday to Thursday from two cities we work with; Los Guido and Alajuelita. The camp was called La montaña and it was a beautiful camp surrounded by mountains. Our first night we played in the gym while the staff "washed the cabins". Kelly, one of the interns was put in charge of one of our girls cabins and Sami and I were put in charge of the other. We had 6 girls with us from Los Guido. We spend a couple of hours with these guys every Saturday but it has been hard to really get close to them. This week was an amazing opportunity to get to know them and love on them. 😊 The theme of the week was Paradox and they opened the night with a skit and a video but I'm still not sure what it was all about....