Sunshine streams through the trees, macaws screech overhead. The bailers groan as they press down plastic and cardboard. Plastic and glass crunch as someone climbs recycling mountain. And there’s a smell surrounding us. It’s heavy, rotten milk, fermented juice, and other questionable liquids we pour out of containers. Everyone’s dancing around the questionable liquid bucket, careful not to knock it over. We’ve made a game of it you see, every bag we open to organize has its own story. You’ve got Susan’s (said in a deep southern accent) which is a mixture of broken fans, sewing machines, and drink bottles. She’s kicked Johnny out for the week so she had to throw out his things (MG is Susan and Aaron is Johnny). Or the high school reunion bag, which we all want to go to. It’s filled with small tiki torches, juice containers, contents of a sundae bar, and a giant bucket of dulce de leche. So many bags filled with stories we make up for them. We blast worship music, dancing and singing as we work.

All last week was spent this way, and possibly more time here will come. While it’s not what we expected to be doing, (come on, recycling work in Costa Rica? Not on a list of things a missionary would do) my squad is awesome about seeing what needs to be done and doing it with everything they’ve got. And that’s exactly what we did, we talked to the workers, organized a lot of bags, seriously we knocked out a lot, and spent some quality time together laughing and having a good time. What we saw happening was people questioning why we were there. Why is this group of people working in a recycling center? Why aren’t they at the beach or in the bars like the tourists here? Just like painting the light posts, they question why we work to make their town better. Which just gives us an opening to tell them about Jesus. I mean, why else are we here?

We’re all told to tell the world about the good news, we’ve just been given some interesting ways of opening the door. I want to challenge you, find something no one wants to do in your town, then do it. You’ll be surprised how many people you’ll have the chance to share with because of it.