The Last of Jaco, Costa Rica

Hello my favorite people!

It has been a minute since I’ve been able to update y’all! Lots has been going on, including wrapping up ministry in Jaco, saying goodbye to our host and local friends we’ve made, meeting up with the whole squad in San Jose to debrief the first 6 weeks of the World Race, flying to our next location, and now moving into our new town! Plus, very little access to wifi in each place. The next blog will include where we will live and serve for the next two months (because y‘all are my priority, I will let you in on the town and country… Mixco, GUATEMALA)! This blog will be the last one for Costa Rica…

Wow, the last 6 weeks have flown by. THANK YOU for your prayers – they are powerful and effective (James 5:16). The words that come to mind in reflection and prayer over our time in Jaco are transformation and middle – middle being that we serve a God of the beginning and end, yes, but He is also a God of the middle. 

The town of Jaco has shifted a lot in what it’s known for/gripped by in the last 20 years. The locals say it used to be the Sodom and Gomorrah of Costa Rica just two decades ago. So, when we came to live here, I thought we’d be towards the end of the powerful transformation, but it turns out we’re smack in the middle. Seeing the shift occur before us, and paving the way for more.

God is a God of the beginning and the end, yes, but He’s also a God of the middle. In your story, in your town, in your healing, in your project, He’s a God of the middle. 

We got to be a part of the middle of the story of Jaco. It’s weird leaving a place that feels like home, but I trust the God of the beginning, the end, and the middle to keep writing the story♥?

Ministry was highly varied in Jaco; from murals transforming abandoned parks, doubling as outreach to local families and empowerment of the local kids as we’d paint, helping the environmental sector of the municipality by serving at the recycling center and conducting beach clean ups and praying individually over the workers, serving in the youth and worship at church and equipping the church and local ministry to teach film, photography, and business marketing classes to locals to support their businesses, and LOTS of transformation at the property of our local ministry – helping prepare for more missionaries to come.

We got to know locals including the smoothie shop workers, a guard at a apartment complex along the main road, surfing instructors, kids at the parks we transformed, waiters and waitresses, locals we played volleyball with, etc. and invited them to church with us (Horizon Church in Jaco, where English and Spanish speakers are all welcome). Connecting people to the local church is a LARGE part of what makes these missions sustainable – building relationships and connecting them to the local church so that long after we are gone they are continually discipled, equipped, poured into, and growing. Locals joined us at church and got connected or even saw that people they previously knew went and already had friends to continue coming and growing with! It’s beautiful!!

Blood, sweat, many bug bites, prayers, tears, finances, etc, were poured into the transformation in Jaco. Thank you SO MUCH for being a part of it. Costa Rica will never be the same and countless people will know love more because of the direct and ripple effects of our time spent living and serving there. You and I get some credit, but ultimately would God get all the glory – the sweet, powerful, relentlessly pursuing the “one”, God of the middle, God, be glorified!

Now, on to Guatemala!!

Much love!!

Your girl,

Sierra