5 Days in the Jungle

During this past spring break for the local high schools, I had the opportunity to co-lead a fantastic group of guys on a mission trip to the remote, mountainous jungles of Costa Rica. Our goal: to partner with the River of God missions organization in the construction of a church building for an indigenous tribe called the Cabecar. It was a combination of the most physically and emotionally demanding, yet most spiritually enriching weeks of my life. While it will take me months to process and reflect upon the intense experiences of that week, I want to invite you along a visual journey of what I experienced and learned. So, instead of the 7,000 words I could use that would only begin to scratch the surface of my experience, I’ll start with these 7 pictures and descriptions of each…because you know how much a picture is worth (as well as your time).

This was one of the 7 river crossings along the 7 mile hike into the jungle. It was at this point that I realized how important our willingness to create contextualized training sessions had been leading up to this trip. Knowing the physical demands of the trip, we decided to facilitate two of our training sessions while hiking together as a team. It worked because it was experiential, it was great for team building, and it was relevant.

Our campsite for 11 was the size of an average North American family room. One of the hardest aspects of the trip was having zero personal space. From the moment we were greeted each morning at 5:30am when we stepped out of our tents up by the Cabecar children to when we went to bed each night to the sounds of the locals talking late into the night, we were with people non stop. Having no personal space was something we didn’t expect, but our constant theme throughout training of “being Gumby” and staying flexible kept attitudes positive and us on track.

Richard, a father of one of the high school students on the trip, became affectionately known as “Captain Video.” Having spent years directing documentaries and commercials for World Vision and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, he came to document our trip. I’ll never forget the conversation we had together on the way back home when he said, “even though I’ve been attending church for decades, this trip was the first time I went from the stands as a spectator to the field as a player.” This trip was a catalyst for him wanting to get more involved in serving with the church. You never know what will happen when you ask people to step out and serve. What I learned: make “the ask” even if you think they’ll say no.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 5 days straight: a soupy mixture of rice, beans, some sort of root, and pig. I’m still recovering (literally) from eating pig for 5 days straight in an environment where they don’t have refrigerators. And no, I don’t have Swine Flu.

When there is no lumber yard within 200 miles, making your own lumber is about the only option for building a church. There was something primal about taking God’s creation and literally fashioning a church building out of it. Seeing the trees being cut down and knowing what the end result would be caused our team to be filled with humility and awe.

I will never take a piece of wood that you can buy at a lumber yard for granted. The process to get the wood to the level that you see above (i.e., what you could buy from Home Depot) went like this: cut tree down, cut blocks of wood out with chainsaw, carry blocks of wood 3/4 mile to work site, rip the board (I learned how to do this on YouTube before the trip), cut the board with a table saw to exact size, plane the board, then router the board…all before it was ready to be nailed up as part of a wall or the flooring. It was a great lesson that a lot of necessary work happens behind the scenes and in preparation, not just in displaying the final product that everybody sees.

I learned so much from each of these guys. As we debriefed every night, one of the constant themes was our need for God to sustain us throughout the physically demanding work duties. There were moments when we had been carrying 50 pound blocks of wood on our shoulders for hours and we were physically and mentally exhausted. We all agreed that the only way we were going to survive this week was to be in constant prayer and to be constantly encouraging one another. Prayer and encouragement became as natural and as necessary as breathing. I learned humility, faith, and commitment from these guys this week as we leaned on each other and God. All in all, it was a phenomenal trip and we are currently debriefing how this mission trip will be a catalyst for living missionally moving forward.

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute