Deliberately Dependent: Lessons from Costa Rica about Community & Leaning on God and Others

by Roberta Jezequel

We were in our 20s, newly married, and fresh out of El Instituto de Lengua Española in Costa Rica when we began working way up in the mountain village of San José de la Montaña at Camp Roblealto.  On Sundays, especially, we missed gathering at one of our family’s homes for Sunday dinner back in the States. We reminisced about the big pot of sauce with sausage and meatballs, raviolis, salad, and bread from Modern Bakery in Lodi, N.J. Equally, we sometimes found ourselves craving a turkey dinner, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and potato rolls.   

We were in our 20s, newly married, and fresh out of El Instituto de Lengua Española in Costa Rica when we began working way up in the mountain village of San José de la Montaña at Camp Roblealto.  On Sundays, especially, we missed gathering at one of our family’s homes for Sunday dinner back in the States. We reminisced about the big pot of sauce with sausage and meatballs, raviolis, salad, and bread from Modern Bakery in Lodi, N.J. Equally, we sometimes found ourselves craving a turkey dinner, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and potato rolls.   

All the while, an older Canadian missionary couple who had lived in Costa Rica for almost seventy years would say to us, “Come on over to our house after church; there’s always plenty of food; don’t wait for an invitation.”  But we argued in our own minds that we weren’t family and that we couldn’t impose in this way. 

One day, however, after the Sunday morning service at the little Spanish Evangelical church in town, we moseyed on down to Don and Nancy Longworth’s house. We went back every Sunday for years.

Independent or Dependent? 

We allowed the Longworth family to provide Sunday dinner for us, but responding to their invitation represented a deeper recognition from inside ourselves. Certainly, we needed food, but more than that, we needed relationships, friendships, and other people in our lives in this foreign setting. We couldn’t provide for all of our own needs alone, no matter how much in love we were as a newly married couple and no matter how excited we felt about this fresh ‘calling’ in our lives to Latin America. We recognized our dependency needs.

We had already realized that there were two groups of people with whom we needed to communicate. We were dependent upon our supporters, churches, and individuals back in the States. They provided financial support so that we could live and work in this foreign setting. As they prayed for us, we also felt a strong need to educate them regarding real life in missions. 

When the question was asked, “Do they sharpen their spears down there?” we were able to paint word pictures that revealed that missions in Latin America didn’t always mean reaching an indigenous group in the Amazon jungles. Missions might mean befriending Zila, a mom whose son was my son’s best friend in preparatorio (kindergarten), or accompanying Elizabeth to Barrio Cuba in San José to meet an old grandmother who cared for a newborn baby girl who needed a family to adopt her, or baking crumb cake every Thursday night for Erasmo, Wilton, and Luis Navarette, adolescents who came to talk to my husband in our living room about life, dating, and scripture.

Today, communication through technology enables us to monitor the missions world onto computer screens in kitchens back ‘home’ or onto their IPhones in the palms of their hands through email, Facebook, Skype, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Technology might demand our time or make us too dependent on those people back ‘there,’ instead of living the present reality in which we’ve been placed. In this way, technology might become a mechanism to escape culture shock. We don’t want to deny our roots, and we don’t want to “Go Injun” as Lieutenant Dunbar did in Dances With Wolves. We live between two worlds, perhaps recognizing our true, eternal home as never before.

Certainly, my husband, Kevin, and I learned to depend on one another in this Central American setting. Back in the States, with family near, we would have relied more on natural kinship ties for encouragement, advice, and emotional support, as well as a home-cooked meal. Depending upon one another forced my husband and me to quickly work through divisive issues between us that might not have surfaced as quickly if we had stayed in a more cushioned situation on familiar turf. 

We already had valued good communication in our time of dating and engagement. We believed in talking and talking some more to really get to know each other’s thoughts and expectations in life. In order to become “intimate allies,” (Allender and Longman 1995), we needed to appreciate one another, our similarities and differences, and to deal with our own insecurities that would only hinder us in building a solid marriage and in reaching out to the people who were our neighbors in Latin America. So we needed to talk and talk and listen and talk some more to one another. As Archibald Hart and Sylvia Frejd Hart remind us, “Face to face is a lot healthier than the superficial tweet, text, or email” (Hart 2013, 92).

We also needed to learn to communicate face to face with the people who surrounded us in the Costa Rican countryside where we had been placed. All of the forms of social media today would not change the process of learning a new language and culture without interfacing with the people in a country. 

Today, email, Facebook, and Whatsapp keeps us in touch with these lifelong friends, but deep relationships with these people were established years ago through day in, day out hard work of depending upon them, inviting them into our home, responding to their invitation to attend a birthday party, working side-by-side with them in the trenches digging the footings for a new building, becoming members of their church, founding, teaching, and counseling in a new seminary, doing premarital counseling in our living room, and marrying them and dedicating their babies. 

In many cultures, including Latin America, there is inter-connectedness with people, especially in the extended family, church, and community. Doña Ruth from our local Spanish congregation recognized that we lived far away from family, so she sent her daughter, Yetty, to help me when our first son was born. She tidied the house in the morning, hung out the cloth diapers to dry in the sunshine, helped me bathe the baby, and watched him as I showered and dressed.  

Learning to Depend on Those around Us

Kevin and I had been raised to work hard, to fulfill our responsibilities, and to be much more independent of others than what we encountered in this Latin American setting. Our independent way of thinking seemed very odd to our Costa Rican neighbors. We needed to depend on each other, but we also needed to learn to rely more on the people put close to us in our lives. This dependency upon our Tico brothers and sisters built relationships—and this why we made this cross-cultural commitment in the first place.

Remarkably, we discovered that deliberate dependence, as we coined the phrase, broke down barriers and formed strong bonds like nothing else could. Certainly, it took humility on our part in order to say, “I need you. I can’t do this on my own” even with graduate school, seminary training, and missions orientation. Sometimes, willingly putting oneself in this place of need implies weakness.  

Some people might respond to this vulnerability by being domineering, taking over, becoming bossy, or positioning themselves to be a know-it-all. Yet, “the heart of the gospel is the cross, and the cross is all about giving up power, pouring out resources, and serving” (Keller 2011, 124). 

The True Value of Dependency

As we voluntarily became dependent, a miracle took place right in front of our eyes. For one thing, I learned Spanish as I interacted daily with Yetty, Giselle, and Maria Elena, Christian girls who helped me from the youth group of our Spanish congregation. It took time to put into practice the vocabulary words, the verb forms, and the Spanish grammar usage we had learned from the textbook in language school. 

Today, Rosetta Stone or another online language learning program might acquaint us with the basics of a language, but my newfound friends taught me what no classroom experience or on-line program can—how to speak the language of the people of Costa Rica. 

Meanwhile, my husband learned their pachuco, the Spanish slang expressions of the country people, as he dug ditches and bent rebar with Enrique and Geraldo, local obreros who helped him put seismic construction into the new buildings at Camp Roblealto. How they would all laugh when Kevin would come out with one of these idiomatic expressions, usually learned by Costa Ricans growing up from their infancy in the midst of coffee farms and towering volcanoes.  

He had to be careful when preaching from the pulpit, not to say something that would turn out to be offensive. Yet, at the same time, this affinity with the language bonded us with these people we had come to love. Face-to-face communication teaches us the social skills necessary when learning a new language and culture in order to present the gospel. It’s not only vocabulary words, verb tenses, and the ordering of these expressions in a sentence. It’s coming to understand cultural gestures, facial expressions, and even the humor of another culture.  

And this takes time. Sometimes a long time. I have found that Latin Americans are very relational. As a North American living outside of New York City, I’ve been conditioned for quick. I’m used to getting right to the point. So a Whatsapp communiqué to a friend in Costa Rica recently brought me back to Latin reality when she wanted to know all about the details of our family: we went back and forth for quite awhile before there was a response to my inquiry.  According to Hart, a quick text might “feel like the sender doesn’t have the time, or courage, to speak the real words of deep feelings. This stunts emotional and social development” (Hart 2013, 96). 

We discovered it was essential to read and to study scripture and to spend time in prayer personally, not because of some unspoken or written rule in order to please God or other people, but to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).  

Jesus said,“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 10:10). 

Some might call this a “quiet time” or a “time of devotion,” but we found this personal pause in our daily routine vital to our centeredness in life. Henri Nouwen relates this biblical pattern in his book Reaching Out: effectiveness in our lives begins with solitude, to community, to ministry.   Matthew Crawford, in a 2015 New York Times article talks about this. In “The Cost of Paying Attention,” he writes that

We’ve auctioned off more and more of our public space to private commercial interests, with their constant demands on us to look at the products on display or simply absorb some bit of corporate messaging… In the process, we’ve sacrificed silence—the condition of not being addressed. And just as clean air makes it possible to breathe, silence makes it possible to think. (Crawford 2015) 

I learned early on that it did not matter when or how I sought out this silence. I had been used to getting up early and spending my first moments in a day with a cup of coffee in hand and my open Bible, but I now do not believe that God is more pleased with us when we meet with him first thing, although I prefer to put “first things first” (Lewis 1994, 280) each day.  

When a new baby arrives, after a wakeful night, one grabs at snatches of sleep whenever one can. Any schedule gets turned upside down at first. I found myself getting frustrated with my newborn for his intrusion into what had been my neatly ordered life. Soon, the thought came that God had created this precious son and God also desired a relationship with me. My relationship with God is not all dependent upon what I do. I relaxed in this new paradigm. Although I didn’t realize it immediately, I drew upon a storehouse of truth on which to meditate from previous years of Bible study during this season when the children were infants and we were up many times at night, and sometimes time and exhaustion didn’t permit me to read the Bible or to spend time in deep study.  

After all, isn’t it all about growing in our understanding of God’s love for us in sending his Son Jesus which causes us to worship him as our Lord and Savior? God remains faithful, and through his Spirit, he brings to mind the things we have “learned and become convinced of” (2 Tim. 3:14-17).

Dependence upon God

The little Evangelical church in town didn’t have a pastor during our first years in Costa Rica, and if anyone spoke, the language was Spanish. It took years to really understand the deeper scriptural teaching in another language. The spiritual props that we had been used to back in the States seemed taken away—an inspiring message at church on Sunday morning, men’s and women’s inspirational seminars and retreats, summer Bible conferences, Christian bookstores with the latest publications, and even Christian radio.  

I can still envision our pastor, Herrmann Braunlin, drawing out an illustration on scrap paper of telephone poles supporting the electric wires. He reminded us that when the props are taken away, like telephone poles supporting the electric wires, we can go directly to the Source of our strength and power; God is our ability to survive in a foreign setting. This is still how I live my life now—less dependent on a great sermon on Sunday morning or an inspiring book, or even an encouraging conversation with a good friend.  

Certainly, all of these resources prove wonderful when given, but I’ve learned to depend on them less. I’ve found I can meet with my Creator, the living God, every day, and at any time, usually as he bids me. His Spirit directs me as I read the Bible, his communication to me. He gives me a sense of what to pray and talk to him about. This doesn’t negate the need for friendships and relationships in our lives; it only takes the pressure off of my thinking that my husband, my children, and a los demás ought to provide for my deepest needs.

Scripture says of Christ, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2: 6-7), became deliberately dependent.  

As a baby, weak, vulnerable, totally dependent upon Mary and Joseph to provide nourishment, warmth, and safety, Christ showed dependency. Even more, he became deliberately dependent upon the constraints of the human condition in time and space here on earth.  

Until we get to heaven, none of us will truly fathom what Christ left to come to earth in order to be identified with our human condition. In that day, when “we see Him as He is,” we will fall prostrate to worship him who demonstrated so great a love. Christ, the Lord, the Son of God, didn’t choose to grow up in a king’s palace here on earth where he could have enjoyed the pleasures and best material possessions on earth at the time; instead, the Son of God became the son of Joseph, a humble carpenter in the town of Nazareth.  

He learned the woodworking trade. He associated with shepherds and fishermen and tax collectors. All the while, he would intentionally go away by himself at times up into the mountains to talk to his Father: “After He had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone” (Matt. 14:23). In this action, he acknowledged his deliberate dependence upon God. He demonstrated what he tells us in John 15:4: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

References

Allender, Dan B. and Longman, Tremper. 1995. Intimate Allies: Rediscovering God’s Design for Marriage and Becoming Soul Mates for Life. Va: American Association of Christian Counselors.

Crawford, Matthew B. 2015. “The Cost of Paying Attention.” The New York Times.

Hart, Archibald D. and Frejd, Sylvia Hart, 2013, The Digital Invasion: How Technology Is Shaping You and Your Relationships. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.

Keller, Timothy. 2011. King’s Cross, New York: Dutton.

Lewis, C.S. 1994. “First and Second Things.” In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Roberta Jezequel and her husband, Kevin, served with the Latin American Mission for twenty years. She currently teaches high school English, Spanish, and Psychology at the Hawthorne Christian Academy in New Jersey. 

EMQ, Vol. 53, No. 4. Copyright  © 2017 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.  aAll rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.