Jaco, Costa Rica
Getting to church was more complicated than I expected it to be. My usual method is just to find the nearest ward on mormon.org and then put the address in google maps and off we go. Here, the nearest ward is just a branch, but we've done branches before so that didn't bother me. It's an hour away, but we've done that before too. It did give me some pause to realize that next Sunday we will have turned in our rental car and be dependent on public transport, but that is next week and I am a big believer in living in the moment and worrying about the future when it becomes the present. That is probably why I didn't actually try to google map the address until last night. The address on mormon.org was "De la Bomba Costanera 27 300 Este, Orotina," and Google had no idea what to do with it. I looked up how Costa Rican addresses work (I love Google) and learned that basically they do not exist. They describe where a place is in relation to other places. Which is great if you know where the other things are. Or if you can even translate *what* they are. My Spanish, as I may have mentioned, is minimal, but I think that address begins "from the bomb." From the bomb?! What does one do with that? I admit that the thought entered my head that we were about to drive an hour to attend three hours of church in a language we don't even understand, should we even bother? But I answered that right away with YES we should bother, church was where we belong on Sunday and we needed to take the Sacrament. So off we went this morning at eight with only a vague idea of where we were going.
We got to Orotina with no problem, but there was no giant sign outside of town announcing where the church was. We stopped and asked a taxi driver. Like this: Kris said "Donde esta..." and I pointed at the address on my phone. The taxi driver spoke no English, we tried to follow what we interpreted from his waving arms. We stopped at a gas station and asked the attendants there using our same method. They spoke no English, we tried to follow their directions. By now it was nearly nine o'clock. I was feeling panicky. I thought "please let us get there before they pass the sacrament!" We saw a fire station. I noticed it because in really big letters on the front of the building it said: "Bomberos," which seemed sort of close to "bomba." At the fire station we found two firemen (bomberos) one who knew where our church was, and one who spoke English and could translate for us! Hooray! They sent us back to that same gas station we had been at earlier. "La Bomba" also means means "the pump," a gas station. The church was east of said gas station, about 300 meters east to be exact. De la bomba costanera 27 300 este: "from the pump on coastal highway 27, 300m meters east." Of course. We were late. But barely. I was just so relieved to be there.
As I sat in Sacrament meeting, understanding very little of what was said over the pulpit, I felt so grateful to just be there. Part of my gratitude was for the familiarity of my surroundings and of the routine of church, but much of it came from being able to take the Sacrament. I don't know that I have felt that grateful in the past for that simple few minutes on Sunday to take the blessed bread and water. Maybe it was the desperation I had felt in the possibility of not getting there in time, but I think much of it was simply that with so much going on around me that I didn't understand, the ordinance itself really stood out as the focus of the meeting and I just sat there feeling so happy to be in that little chapel with ceiling fans above my head, seated on a folding chair surrounded by people I didn't know and could scarcely communicate with all partaking together the bread and water and committing ourselves again to always remember our Savior.
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