In 2014, Costa Rica Mission Projects inaugurated the Missions and Ministry Center in San Isidro del General, Costa Rica.  The Missions and Ministry Center is home for our volunteer teams while they are here as well as being “home” for several of our other ministries that are not volunteer dependent.

Volunteer teams stay in 3 cabins that each have 12 bunkbeds, bathrooms and showers.  This gives a maximum capacity of 72 volunteers at any given time.  Teams share meals (sometimes with other volunteer teams and sometimes with our daycare kids!) in our open air dining hall.  Underneath the dining hall is our storage facility where we keep all of the tools, materials and equipment we need for construction equipment (eliminating the need to volunteers to bring their own tools with them when they come).  Best of all we have a fire pit/deck area where teams can spend devotional time together in the mornings and evenings.  (Isabella calls it our church without a roof!)

One of the first things we did when the Missions and Ministry Center opened was open our Child Care Center.  Costa Rica Mission Projects has partnered with Costa Rica’s Social Services and all of the children in our childcare program are sent to us by Social services.  We normally have around 20 children between the ages of 3 and 6 who are here 5 days a week from 7am until 4:30pm.  One of the focuses of the Child Care Center is to prepare our little ones for their intro into the public school system, but in addition to that we are able to provide them with nutritional meals, a safety and consistency in their daily lives, and heaps of God’s love.  While our full time staff provides the programming for the children there are always opportunities for volunteers to be involved while they are here in a way that is healthy for the children and the volunteers!

In 2014 we also opened our Student Housing at the Missions and Ministry Center.  Through this ministry we provide room, board, encouragement and family for young women from Costa Rica’s rural south who have come to San Isidro to pursue higher education.  We have room in the house for as many as 6 students, a number of whom over the years, have been daughters of Methodist pastors in this area.  We are privileged to get to walk alongside these young women as they navigate the scholastic, social and spiritual challenges of college life.  We couldn’t be more proud of how hard they work and love having a front row seat to their successes.

Our newest program at the Missions and Ministry Center is the Listen with Love counseling program.  Listen with Love is open, free of charge, to anyone in the community who needs help dealing with depression, anxiety, abuse, neglect, etc.  Priscilla Alfaro, our resident Phycologist and Yolanda Bailey (co-director of Costa Rica Mission Projects) provide the clinical and spiritual tools that our clients need through one-on-one counseling as well as small group and family workshops.  The testimonies of the participants in this program are powerful and we are thankful to be in a position where we can provide this kind of guidance and companionship to people in our community.

We love the Missions and Ministry Center and all of the incredible things that God is doing here.  Our volunteers love the Missions and Ministry Center and consider it their home away from home while they are in the mission field.  We look forward to your visit and know that you will love it too!