From Ashley

Even though the days are long, time is flying. The past couple of days have been incredible. Today we woke up early and went to met up with leaders from a church in a local community near San Jose. A man named Arttro runs the church and it is modeled after Saddleback which is kind of cool to see.They showed us a video of all the ministries they have going on at the church and it just blew my mind. They are doing so much to reach their community. They recently bought new land to build a church and they took us to go see it. It is super exotic and grassy and they were bugs everywhere, we trekked through this land for about ten minutes. Going into it, i didnt really understand why we were going there. It turne out to be super gorgeous and we walked down to this little river. It is one of the only clean ones left around that area. We then followed to a waterfall that was breathtaking. There is so much natural beauty in Costa Rica that I have to stop and thank God for constantly throughout the day. We walked toward the center where there were some huge big trees and they told us their vision for the church. God had put it on their hearts to buy the land to build His house. They had so much passion for it and I definitely had to check myself today for doubting the importance of us being there. We encouraged the leaders in their investment and prayed over the land and what God has in store for it in the future. We had some delish Costa Rican food for lunch an headed over to one of Arturo´s minitries called the Rock. It is an after school hangout place for kids and teen moms. We loved and played with the kids. I talked to a little 12 year old girl, painted nails, and colore picturs. A five year old named Tiffany and I exchanged drawings that say "i love you" on them in spanish. In the van before we rached ither location we read ephesians 6 as a group and prayed that we would be covered with the Armor of God. This barely covers how my heart felt about today, but it is something. I miss all of you! Please keep praying that God uses us in our last few days here and that Satan is cast away out of our hearts and minds.

Love you all a lot.