Vision: “establish culturally relevant churches to the beach communities of Costa Rica and beyond.”

Mission Strategy:

“Bring Christ to people one authentic relationship at a time.

Be Disciples and make Disciples of Christ.

Be a blessing to our Community.

Depend on the Holy Spirit for everything.”

Relationships

On September 4th we celebrated Elias’ 4th birthday party with lots of friends and family. We could not have prepared a Pirates and Princess Party for 75 people without the help of some young volunteers. We had three helpers, Gloriana, Steven, and Sofia. They helped us with decorations and food prep as well as holding Selah and keeping an excited Elias busy. We have found that sometimes the best way to get to know someone is by asking for help. When you ask for help it shows that you can not do it all and at the same time you affirm the value of the person that you are asking. These three are dedicated to attending our gatherings on both Sunday and Wednesday and I hope that someday they will feel comfortable enough to ask me to help them too!

Fiesta de Piratas

Be disciples and make disciples of Jesus

The day of Elias’ birthday party we welcomed Jason Groenink and a team from his church in Seattle. They came to do a VBS and to get to know the people of Esterillos. We had a wonderful time getting to know them as we worked beside them doing three afternoons of VBS at the soccer field. We had about 55 participants plus younger and older siblings and parents for crafts, games and bible study. On the last day one mother was sharing how much Esterillos needs this kind of thing. This family does not attend a church although they probably consider themselves Christians. She said that she had been watching TV with her eight year old daughter the night after our first day of VBS. The mother had made a demeaning racial commented and the daughter corrected her reminding her that everyone is made in God’s image and so the way we treat others is how we are treating God. We pray that these lessons are repeated and become a way of life.

jasons-group


Be a blessing to our community

Not only was the VBS a huge blessing to the community but Pura Vida Church put on a fundraising surf contest. It was a community event that brought many people together as they volunteered and donated to put together a wonderfully attended contest. With over 80 contestants what was going to be a one day tournament ran over to be two days long with wonderful weather to top it off! With the proceeds from the contest we were able to put much needed trash cans on the soccer field, donate towards re-roofing the community clinic building and even give some funds to the local school and the local soccer team.

contest

Depend on the Holy Spirit

We lost our dog Boomer that we had brought with us from the States. Elias and Kyle especially were affected by this loss.

Continued prayer as we re-file for Dennis’ US citizenship.

That Selah can get her US passport (it is a bit more complicated process than we thought) soon and that we find cheap tickets for a trip to Santa Barbara in November.

The option of going for our second church plant in Parrita by opening a surf shop (if you are interested in investing in this plant let us know and we will send you the business plan).

Con mucho Pura Vida, Familia Leon

selah