Temerario amor de Dios

The day I met my first Ticos

“‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34, NIV

Since April there have been 30-some Costa Ricans living in our small community primarily made up of folk of European descent. They are seasonal workers at ABC Truss who over the next few weeks will be returning to their families and their native country. This past Sunday we threw them a farewell party to thank them for living and working in our small town.

Barbecue & gathering with
our Belizean neighbors in 2017 

This is not the first time men from Central America have lived among us. In late 2015, ABC hired about ten men from Belize as part of a trial run. It worked out so well that by the following year and through 2017 approximately 30 Belizeans lived and worked among us. Our fellowship and Faith Baptist connected well with these guys and overall they endeared themselves to us and their coworkers at ABC. By and large they were bi-lingual speaking what they jokingly referred to as “Spanglish”, a sort of pigeon dialect of English and Spanish. Four or five of the guys were regulars at Refuge and in late December/early January of 2016-17, thirteen of us from here traveled to Belize to visit them and their families in their homeland.

We miss our Belizean friends

At the beginning of this year, our government canceled the labor agreement we had with the Belizean government over their record on human trafficking. So ABC contracted with another labor pool, this one out of Costa Rica. But unlike their Belizean forbears, these guys are mostly Spanish-speaking men who may understand some English but speak very little of it themselves. Admittedly, getting to know them has been more problematic as so many of us – like so many Americans in rural areas – are pretty much fluent in only one tongue. The adjustment at the plant I am told by both sides was even more challenging.

I met Elisardo in April when he and four of the other guys were biking down our street. I had just been informed that ABC's new guys were in town and with one look I knew these must be some of them. I had just pulled into my driveway so I hopped out of my van and walked into the street to introduce myself as they passed our home. We made acquaintances, I learned where they were staying, I oriented them how to get to the VFW tank (which they wanted to pose in front of) and before they took off I invited them to come to our worship gathering on Sunday (as well as directing them to where St. Boniface was as many of them are Catholic.) Elisardo and another one of the “Ticos” (as they prefer to refer to themselves) showed up and has been a part of us ever since. A former body guard and a lover of Jesus he very quickly fit in with us thanks to Mike.

Mike & Eli have made a good ministry duo

Mike, while one of us, was born in Peru but mostly grew up in Chicago. He is fairly fluent in Spanish (in fact, compared to the rest of us he is our resident expert.) He and Eli became fast friends and I think because he saw the need Mike offered to lead a bilingual worship set once a month if only for our favorite Tico's benefit if for nothing else. What's more he and Randy, one of our elders,

Barb at work with the ESL class

came up with the idea of beginning an ESL class to help Eli and his fellow Ticos get oriented to Chetek and the surrounding area. When they brought their idea to me I thought of Barb, a recently retired ESL teacher and former missionary to Chile who lived a few blocks down the street. As it happened, I ran into her and husband at the craft fair during Liberty Fest and pitched her the idea. On the spot she offered to help. For the rest of the summer and into the fall she led the class as well as oversaw the volunteers from Refuge and elsewhere who offered to assist her.

Interest in the class faded primarily because this past fall the guys were working long hours and with only one day off in seven it was challenging for them to commit to bettering themselves while also needing to get their laundry and shopping done. Beyond waving at them whenever they passed our home or church and calling out 'Buenos dias' or 'Buenos tardes', it was the extent of my connection with most of them for the last few months.

Mike & Ronda and their Tico friends at Thanksgiving

My idea of this farewell gathering was a simple one – it would involve a worship gathering with singing, preaching and prayer in Spanish and English followed by an authentic Costa Rican meal. We'd invite all the guys. Mike would lead worship and be my translator as well. We'd pray over them and then send them out with a blessing. End of story – or so I thought.

Kale opening up the gathering

And then Mike informed me that he would be out of town on the Sunday of our despedida ('farewell' in Spanish) and in one fell swoop our Costa Rican soiree was in a tailspin. I began sending out emails and making phone calls to various pastors in our area – in Rice Lake, in Chetek, in Cumberland, in Ridgeland – who had involvement in one way or another in connecting with the approximately 1,400 Spanish-speaking people in our county and struck out every time. I was in need of a translator and bi-lingual worship leader and none seemed to had. Even Barb the ESL teacher was unavailable to be with us on that Sunday. In desperation I reached out to a sister church in the Twin Cities whom I knew to be pastored by a bi-lingual man and, as it happened, caught him just as he was about to board a plane to Argentina. He quickly placed a call to his sister who agreed to come – if it didn't snow but the long-term forecast called for snow. Despite my best efforts to organize it, this gathering seemed to be awfully resistant to coalescing.

They made it look easy

While originally the plan had been for the meal to be pot-luck, the week before the farewell Monica, the woman I had asked to head up the meal called and informed me that she and fellow-chef, Joy, had conferred and thought it would be a whole lot simpler if they could cook the meal. All they needed was $300 for ingredients. Their logic was totally understandable (I mean, rice and beans is not a staple meal around here) but cash flow at our fellowship was definitely a challenge. All we could do is put it out there and trust that the money for the meal would come in.

Meanwhile, because of a post I had placed on Facebook, Colleen, a woman I've known since she was a teen and married to a Venezuelan living in neighboring Cameron up the road from us, offered to translate and if necessary help lead Spanish worship on that Sunday. At the same time, a guy named Zabdiel (or simply Z for short) from Red Cedar, while apologizing for not being able to come himself, said he would send his parents instead. Kale, one of our worship leaders, let me know that he could lead at least one song in Spanish. At the same time, the leaders of an intrachurch discipleship class (aka the Discipleship Training Class) held this year at Faith Baptist had the idea of sending their students and staff to mingle with the guys during the meal and a fellowship time to follow. I said 'yes' to everyone (beggars can't be choosers after all) yet lacked the clarity on what the morning and afternoon would exactly look like. The only thing I was certain of was that God loves the foreigner living among us and wants us to bless them and so one way or another, by hook or by crook, this gathering was going to happen. These men, with God's help, would be blessed.

Between the hat being passed at Refuge and at Faith Bapitst the Sunday before, the $300 needed was collected. I got a list of all names of the Ticos from the Operations Manager at ABC as well as where they all lived and on the Wednesday before hand delivered 33 invitations. But on the Saturday night before the gathering it snowed three inches and as promised my worship leader from the Cities called and cancelled. We'd have a service and a meal but at the moment my 'despidida'-idea seemed to be just a bunch of random pieces of fabric lying together in a heap on the floor.

But here's what happened and for any person accustomed to being a part of the Lord's work, none of what happened is probably a bit surprising. Because out of these assorted pieces of cloth – some selected songs in Spanish from a back-up worship leader, a Spanish couple whom I met fifteen minutes before the gathering began, and some remaining ambivalence on my part on just how the service should flow - the Lord wove together a beautiful quilt of blessing.

The despedida opened with a couple of songs in English led by Kale followed by your standard meet-and-greet time as well as offering and announcements. I then welcomed Colleen, our translator, to join Kale on the platform and together they led three songs bilingually with Kale leading in English and Colleen in Spanish. Though they had just met a few minutes before the gathering they made it look like they did this every week. I then introduced France (pronounced Francee), Z's mother, who proceeded to share a 10-minute exhortation from John 10 in Spanish about Christ coming to give us abundant life – now and eternally. She clearly had done this sort of thing before. I then shared some thoughts pertinent to all of us from Leviticus 19 as well as a brief exhortation from Luke 15. Just as they are anxious to get home to their families in Costa Rica and their loved ones there are eager for their return so Father God is longing to see any of us who may be away from His family. All of this I had to do in bite size sentences, of course, so Colleen could translate for me.

Barb shares some parting words

During my sharing who should enter the sanctuary but Barb, our ESL teacher, who had managed to get off early from her job to be with us. So even though she's Presbyterian on the spot Pentecostal-like I asked her to come and share a greeting with the guys. She did wishing them a safe journey home as well as a heart-felt relationship with Jesus Christ. I then asked Elisardo if he would care to share anything and he was only too happy to do so thanking all of us and Barb for making them feel so welcome. As we proceeded into communion after some instructions Kale surprised us all by singing Cory Asbury's Reckless Love in what seemed to all of us fluent Spanish (he told me afterwards he had practiced all week long). As we were about to close the gathering, Oscar, one of the Ticos, asked if he could share. In so many words, this is what he said: “You have a wonderful family here. To us, your community is a little bit of heaven and if any of you should find your way to Costa Rica we want you to know you have a welcome there.” I then prayed over the men for traveling mercies home and closed the service.

Instructing the guys that they were to lead the way, they proceeded downstairs to the fellowship hall where Monica and Joy had prepared a meal of arroz con pollo (chicken and rice), gallo pinto (beans and rice), ceviche(seafood dip), arroz con leche(rice pudding), and tres leches (three milk cake). We were packed to the gills and soon our stomachs would be the same in the Jesus-style of at the very least twelve baskets of left-overs. After dinner, the guys were invited back up into the sanctuary and at this point the DTC-ers took over. For the next hour or so they split the guys and their students up randomly and played a variety of “minute-to-win-it” games that everyone seemed to enjoy. Fortunately, there were two gringos in that group that were fluent in Spanish to translate.

The DTC folks had made up gift bags for each of the guys with their name on it. Inside there were home made cookies, bars and treats, a homemade bookmark with their name and Scripture on it and a tabbed Spanish Bible, marking important salvation verses. At the close, Brian, a high school teacher in Eau Claire, shared his faith story with the guys and explained, via the translators, how the tabbed Bible worked. When he was done and there seemed nothing more to say, Sarah, a twenty-something gal suggested they call the guys up and let all of them pray over them. They came forward and circled up and allowed the gringos to pray prayers of blessing upon them.

It was, all in all, a great day and the eighteen or so Ticos who had come to our despedida seemed sincerely touched by the generosity they had experienced. Many of them made a point of coming to me to thank me for inviting them to the gathering. I was simply grateful that by all of us pooling our efforts together the nation of Costa Rica on that Sunday had been blessed by the gringos of the little northern 'burb of Chetek, Wisconsin and surrounding area.

Oscar & me

Granted it was just a handful of us and a handful of them but it's through gatherings such as these that we are reminded that we have far more in common than our language differences would suggest. In a day where there's a lot of angry rhetoric and harangues in the air on building or not building a wall and stopping or not stopping waves of caravans, disciples of Jesus need to be about building bridges so that all may experience the Father's warm welcome to all of us whether we hail from north or south of the border.

Experiencing a snow storm and walking out on the water
was pretty cool for Elisardo and the guys