I’m not sure if I could adequately put into words, my feelings about our Costa Rica Missions trip. It was by far, one of the most beautiful and most challenging and most wonderful experiences I could ever have imagined. And I truly believe that the days and weeks and months ahead will continue to slowly reveal the full impact that it had on my life and so many others.
Stay tuned. Till then, here are a few of the last pictures we took yesterday morning, before we left. Photo credit goes to my amazing esposo. By the way, one of my new life goals is to learn Spanish. Because it would be amazing to know another language and I have a feeling it may come in handy for future missions trips.
Also, I would be remiss not to mention these sweet little ones. They kept my heart going, when I was missing my own children while we were away. I helped sweet Sophia practice her English while we made friendship bracelets and saw so many glimpses of our own sweet Ellee in Raquel. And that precious boy in my arms? He captured my heart. I would sing the only two Spanish children’s songs that I knew over and over to him and he would smile and smile. I will miss them and their beautiful families so much.
After we said our goodbyes, our travels started. We left the church at 9:30am for a journey that would end up taking close to seventeen hours. It was longer than expected due to a few hour delays at the airport. I have to admit, it was a little rough at times.
But we took lemons and made lemonade. After the second hour delay was announced, a few energetic souls and I decided to see how many random people would let us take pictures with them.
It was well worth the 30 minutes of entertainment it provided. We ended up having a third hour delay redacted when the plane came in early and we were finally able to take off. I’m pretty sure we ended up back home around 3:30am. After saying some pretty tired goodbyes to our team, we picked up our children and came home together. It was a beautiful moment for our family.
And then today, after a little sleeping in and a lot of family catch up time, we met up this evening with a solid group of students and leaders for TAG at the beach.
I give the missions team members that showed up all the credit. It was a long night traveling home, and it was so, so good to see their smiling faces again this evening.
And it was also awesome seeing Lois, because her hair matched her glasses and we love her.
We played a few games together on the beautiful beach.
I took in every hug and cuddle with this girl, to make up for the ones we had missed last week.
And even as we will settle back into our summer routine, there will continue to be glimpses of our missions trip. Tonight’s was found in a wrist full of Costa Rican friendship bracelets. Disclaimer: There wasn’t really anything specifically Costa Rican about them, except for the fact that our team got pretty good at making them in our down time.
Oh, and I’m sure we’ll continue to be reminded of our great trip whenever Steve-O flies his Costa Rican flag. Which I’m guessing and hoping will be a lot. Because it will be a solid reminded of a life changing trip and one that will not be too soon forgotten. All that being said, I wanted to especially thank everyone who followed our trip and sent thoughts and prayers our ways. It definitely meant so much to our team and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Laura Herr Photography 