Sophia Ann Photography »

This is my photography blog, after all, so I though I would share some exciting and beautiful photos with you from a recent trip to Costa Rica. Before I do that though,  I want to share a little bit about how I got the chance to go there and what Costa Rica means to me.

On the second Sunday I moved to ND, I decided that I wanted to check out a local church, Valley City First Church of the Nazarene. I immediately felt at home and knew that I would go back. During the service it was mentioned that a group of people where  going on a mission trip to Costa Rica in January. I was excited to hear this and asked about it that afternoon at lunch with the pastor and his wife. Unfortunately, registration to sign up had closed the previous week! To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement, but I trusted God that I would have another chance to go in the future. About 3-4 weeks later I was approached by our pastor’s wife, the team leader, with some exciting news. One of the team  members was unable to go, and she was had not put names on the airline tickets yet so she was checking to see if I was still interested. I said “yes” immediately.

13 of us left Faro, Nd on January 4, 2011 heading to San Jose, Costa Rica to help a local church build a new building. We were there for 11 days, arriving home January 14, 2011. I had no clue what I was in for. Upon arrival, it was close to midnight and very dark out. I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like during the day. The next day, after getting to sleep in a little, we headed out for our first work day. Driving through the city was just amazing. It took me all of 30 seconds for me to fall in love with Costa Rica. It was gorgeous and the people were so friendly. We would drive by these houses that were made of cinder blocks and tin roofs. A lot of them looked as if they were going to fall apart…or where actually falling apart. Through out our week we did challenging manual labor, work that if we were in the United States we would have easy machines do the work for us. A lot of the time I though, and heard from my team mates, ”if only we had such and such we could work so much faster and efficiently.” I think we felt like we could be doing so much more! After a while we all realized that God was working in His time. He had a lesson to teach us. It made me think of those people in the houses that were falling apart, and they weren’t thinking “if only I had…” but they were genuinely happy with what they had. I learned many things on this mission trip. This is only one of them. I learned to trust God again, that I don’t need things to make me happy, but above all I learned to seek him in everything that I do. I am excited to see where the Lord may lead me. I pray that He may be able to use my passion and talent in photography to glorify Him and further His kingdom.

So, here are some pictures of the work we did. I have hundreds of photos. It was so hard to pick just a couple to share. However, I did decide to share more from some of our outings in future posts. So check in again soon to see some amazing sites from Costa Rica!