Farewell Costa Rica! We're excited to come home, but we will miss hammering concrete, giving piggy-back rides, washing windows, giving manicures, making runs to the market and to POPS for ice cream, seeing the joy on the faces of little kids when they read their new Biblias, using broken Spanglish, hanging out with amazing Costa Ricans, and eating delicious Costa Rican food.
Yesterday, it was so hard to leave the kids and women after VBS. On the kids' side, they each received a new children's Bible and a picture of themselves. It was incredible to see how excited they were as they read the Bibles. When we first arrived at the site on Monday, we saw that someone had written in spray paint on the blacktop, "ALL HOPE IS GONE." Yesterday, Walter, Kelsey, and Meredith Mellard got spray paint from Andrew and fixed it. It now reads, "ALL HOPE IS NOT GONE!" The women treated us to lunch, and then we finally had to leave. It was very emotional as some of the kids climbed the fence, trying to reach us through the bus windows.
We had an intense devotion and Communion with our hosts last night. There was not not a dry eye in the room as we took the tortilla bread and dipped it into the grape juice. Everyone was sobbing into each others' arms. We love y'all a lot, but we just don't want to come home yet :) Later, Dougie and Sam led us in a bilingual worship service. It was powerful to be worshiping the same God in two different languages. We can't even truly relate how intense the night was.
¡Dios les bendiga!

Much love,
Alexandra and Kimberly
Oh, and Walter