COMMENTARY: Mission team sees Methodism thriving in Costa Rica Jim Jones, Aug 27, 2009
Jim Jones
By Jim Jones Special Contributor
PUERTO VIEJO de Sarapiqui, Costa Rica—Monkeys woke us up. Birds of many colors flitted in the tropical forest behind our hotel. Children captivated our hearts.
It happened during Fort Worth’s First United Methodist Church’s mission trip to Costa Rica, July 9-19, led by the Rev. Chuck Graff. An odd bunch of construction workers—Realtors, a banker, an insurance executive, a journalist, a geologist, a nurse practitioner, a promotions specialist, oil and gas executives and others—mixed concrete, plastered, sanded walls, stuccoed, painted and laid tiles on a huge floor.
We were helping build a spacious church and community center in Puerto Viejo, which is on the edge of rain forests of northeast Costa Rica. We were excited to learn that Methodism is flourishing there. John Wesley would be proud.
My biggest surprise came on our first night at the Hotel Bambu in Puerto Viejo. At 4:30 a.m. my wife, Carol, and I were awakened by a strange sound in the tropical forest outside our open patio door. It sounded like a Texas hound dog treeing a raccoon. But it was no dog. It was a howler monkey, one of the exotic inhabitants of Costa Rican forests. We saw two of the monkeys in the trees on our way to breakfast that day. It’s astonishing how a monkey that looked about three feet tall could make such an incredible noise.
On a boat trip down the Sarapiqui River we saw more of God’s unusual creations. More howler monkeys were romping in the riverbank trees. We spotted two kinds of crocodile, a sloth, cormorant fishing birds, iguanas and tiny black bats clinging to the sides of tree trunks extending out over the river. Outside our hotel, team member Dan Cooper discovered a giant rhinoceros beetle clinging to a grate.
Our mission to Costa Rica wasn’t a one-shot affair. It’s part of an ongoing partnership with the Evangelical Methodist Church of Costa Rica, (Iglesia Evangelica Metodista de Costa Rica) a conservative, highly evangelical, autonomous denomination founded by Methodist missionaries in 1917.
Mr. Graff, a bilingual associate pastor who has been traveling to Mexico and Central America since he was 22 years old, has led two youth groups and four adult teams from our church on mission trips to Costa Rica. More trips are planned for next year, including one led by youth director Brandon Frenzel, Mr. Graff said. Nancy Tully, the church’s director of outreach, and her husband, Brendan, were on this year’s team.
Some of our 19-member team have been on multiple mission journeys to Costa Rica.
“They go back because of the love they have for the people,” said Mr. Graff. “They feel like they are a part of something bigger. It’s satisfying to know you are helping a part of Methodism that is rapidly growing in another country. We always say, ‘We will go out and be God’s people to the world,’ and when they go there they feel like they are really doing that.”
We were overwhelmed by the spontaneous love and care given to us. At the last worship service, Mr. Graff presented a Texas Rangers cap to Fernando Abarca Corrales, pastor of the Agape Evangelico Metodista Church in Puerto Viejo where we worked.
An emotional moment came when we were called to the front of the tabernacle and Mr. Corrales, his son-in-law, Jose, and others put their hands on our shoulders, praying for the health, safety and spiritual growth of each of the volunteers.
Like many Latin American Christians, the Costa Rican Methodists follow a spirited form of worship that contrasts with our more traditional rituals. “It’s a kind of Pentecostal approach to worship but with a very strong Methodist theology and doctrine,” Mr. Graff said.
Upon arriving in Costa Rica this year, we slept in bunk beds at the Methodist Center, a multi-building complex in Alajuela, a city of 250,000 people near San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital. We drank coffee with members of Methodist work teams from Georgia, Alabama and Oklahoma. A record 26 U.S. Methodist work teams came to Costa Rica this summer.
Children won our hearts at late afternoon Vacation Bible Schools we conducted in outlying villages around Puerto Viejo. The focus was sharing the Bible story of Joseph in a variety of creative ways. Team members met prior to the trip to sew colorful cloth bags filled with gifts for children.
We gave village pastors a number of pocket-sized Spanish language Scriptures with the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs to distribute. Team members made a colorful Joseph coat that Mr. Graff put on to tell the biblical story of “La Tunica de Jose.” Each pastor we visited also was given a Joseph coat covered with pinned-on cloth squares decorated by the children.
Two of our volunteers wowed children with their puppet shows in Spanish telling the story of Joseph.
More than 200 people gathered in a tin-roofed tabernacle for Sunday worship in Puerto Viejo. About halfway through the service, children left the tabernacle as a light rain fell, carrying plastic chairs over their heads. They ran up the hill to the new church we are helping build. They held Sunday school in some rooms partially finished.
Volunteers pay most of their own way. But many expenses for building supplies and other needs come from contributions of our church. Sunday school classes make donations. An annual pie-making contest and Christmas dinner earnings help finance our mission trips.
Dollars go a long way in Costa Rica, which has a lot of poverty, despite a high literacy rate and stable government. The colon, named for Christopher Columbus who landed here on one of his trips, is the basic money unit. You get about 500 colons for a $1 bill.
Our constant helper on our trip was Allison “Alli” Adams, a recent graduate of Georgia Southern University who is an intern to Methodist missionary Ray Zirkel. Ms. Adams, a dynamic young woman, patiently taught us to sing choruses about God in Spanish, complete with hand motions. The kids in the Bible schools loved seeing us try.
We also toured a hillside site of a future orphanage near San Jose. The land was purchased with $400,000 donated by Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas. Work teams from Highland Park and other churches are working on it this summer. It is much needed. “About 1,300 children live on the streets of San Jose,” Ms. Adams said.
On our journey through Costa Rica we visited the Britt Coffee Plantation. And at a vast pineapple farm owned by the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, we sampled freshly picked pineapple that a guide rapidly sliced up with a machete. We glimpsed a Coatimundi before taking a tram through the top of a rain forest of Braulio Carrillo National Park. On a hike in the park, we photographed a small, but very poisonous viper called the Boca Raca.
We relaxed at Baldi Springs, hot volcanic baths at the foot of Arenal Volcano. Along a freeway in San Jose, we saw a billboard with a picture of Osama bin Laden. It was a tongue-in-cheek advertisement by a phone company. The Spanish message was, “If you see this man, call 911.”
In recent years, Methodists in the U. S. have increasingly flocked to mission trips, said Elliott Wright, information officer for the New York-based General Board of Global Ministries.
“It‘s a grass-roots movement,” Mr. Wright said. “More go to Latin America than anywhere else. But they also go to a lot of other places—Mongolia, Africa, Russia.”
Before packing up and flying back to Fort Worth, we formed a circle under a mango tree at the Methodist Center in Alajuela and served each other Communion. It was a fitting climax to a spiritual adventure in which we sought to follow Jesus’ far-reaching teaching about loving our fellow human beings.
In Costa Rica, we received as much love as we gave.
Mr. Jones was a longtime religion writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Jim Jones
We were overwhelmed by the spontaneous love and care given to us. At the last worship service, Mr. Graff presented a Texas Rangers cap to Fernando Abarca Corrales, pastor of the Agape Evangelico Metodista Church in Puerto Viejo where we worked. 
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