Mission trip in Costa-Rica

Mission trip in Costa-Rica

Hi. My name is Junghyun Hong and I’m from South Korea. My story is about my first mission trip in Latin America. Our mission trip team visited Costa-Rica which is famous for banana, pineapple, and coffee.

First of all, I need to explain the meaning of mission trip. Mission trip is called a short-term mission and it means “the mobilization of a Christian missionary for a short time. Many Christians try to evangelize people in destination during mission trip because evangelism is one of the most important duties for Christians. Our team did many efforts to make them believe in God like teaching some gospel songs, dances, and worships in Spanish.

Our team was comprised by Korean students, almost all of them are OSU students, and just one of us could speak Spanish. So, we should have practiced Spanish and worship songs in Spanish. Also, we had practiced worship dances, teaching skills, and the way how to evangelize people who don’t have religious belief with other church people experienced mission trip. I was a vice-leader in my team because my church people thought that I have enough leadership and responsibility. I have experienced leading a team many times during my military service.

At first, we headed for SanJose airport, the capital of Costa-Rica. We had to pass through 3 other airports and it took 14 hours. We did our missions in Tongibe which is 4 hours distant from SanJose. It was a small and poor countryside. There were just about 100 people and they were in a endangered tribe. We have spent 6 days in small church built by other Korean church. We did a lot of things in this place. We painted the church wall and write gospel words on the wall in Spanish. Also, we taught many children worship songs and dances. Sometime, we drew face-painting on their face and they loved it. We went around the small village and visited many houses to inform our coming and invited many people, especially children. We also played the Costa-Rica traditional game, Pinyata. During playing Pinayta, children covered their eyes and tried to hit the big bag which had a lot of candies, peanuts, and other delicious snacks with long stick. We felt that our efforts to prepare our mission work during very busy academic life were great gobs because we was well prepared to work even though practicing was tiresome and hard.

In the last day of mission trip, we bought a living pig at the tradition market near the church and we cooked it. When we killed it, it was an incredibly hard work because none of us knew how to kill and handle a pig. After a lot of hard work, we finally cooked it and shared it with many people. All of them enjoyed foods, dances, songs and our worship dance with us. After our worship dance, they showed us their traditional dance. It was so cute and impressive. Many beautiful children smiled and greeted at us and some of them wrote letters to us in their word. Even though we could not understand it, we could felt their heart. We could converse each other in different language by our heart. When we leave there, some of us and children cried because of miss. All of my team felt how beautiful it is to give loves to others and we experienced God’s bless.

After mission trip, we visited some famous place in Costa-Rica like beaches, mountains, and parks. Most of all, the beach was the most impressive place for me. It had beautiful scenery and huge and powerful waves. I enjoyed them and it was the best beach in my life. The mission trip was not easy because of poor living condition, a lot of mosquitoes, too hot weather, and problem with conversation, but it was the most memorable and meaningful trip in my life. Thank you for listen my story.