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All articles in category Costa Rica

July 2013
Costa Rica

Compassion in Costa Rica

He’s split up fights with street gangs in Costa Rica, but Keith Holder says his most terrifying experience came recently in England. The missionary was awarded an MBE in 2011 for the work he and his wife Joy have done in Costa Rica for the last 20 years.      Keith (63) says, ‘It was a nerve-wracking experience, meeting HM The Queen, even more so than when we were breaking up a knife fight in the shanty towns of Costa Rica. There have been other scary experiences we’ve been through too.      ‘We went to Buckingham Palace to get the award and I was a bit...

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Missionary Spotlight – Costa Rica at a glance
By Latin America Mission
October 2008
Costa Rica

Missionary Spotlight – Costa Rica at a glance

Costa Rica at a glance   Costa Rica is a mountainous Central American nation. Nine per cent of its four million inhabitants profess to be evangelical; 85% are Roman Catholics.      Most Costa Ricans are Spanish or mestizo (mixed European-Amerindian); 3% are of black African origin (largely, English-speaking descendants of 19th-century Jamaican immigrants). Spanish is the official language.      Agriculture is central to the economy (coffee, bananas, sugar, cocoa), but electronics, manufacturing and tourism are expanding. High literacy rates, relatively low unemployment, and widespread land ownership have produced a relatively high standard of living for many Costa Ricans.      One of the most stable democracies...

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Missionary Spotlight – Coping with upheavals in Costa Rica
By Bill Green
October 2008
Costa Rica

Missionary Spotlight – Coping with upheavals in Costa Rica

Coping with upheavals in Costa Rica   The twentieth century witnessed two upheavals, the first being the growth of urban communities. Early in the century 14% of the world’s population lived in cities; today 50% are urbanites.1      If we bear in mind that over the same century world population has more than tripled, we begin to understand urbanisation’s global impact. Its negative manifestations are the same everywhere – inadequate housing, high unemployment, poor access to health facilities, family breakdown, and loss of identity.      Fragmentation   Urban centres are places of great loneliness. Many Costa Rican families once maintained close ties with parents, brothers...

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Missionary Spotlight – Dispelling the image
By Bill Green
October 2008
Costa Rica

Missionary Spotlight – Dispelling the image

Dispelling the image   As one of very few Reformed churches in Costa Rica, our small denomination (comprised of four congregations) swims against a current set by the Roman Catholic Church and the many ‘evangelical’ churches that have sold out to ‘health and wealth’ neo-Pentecostalism.      This makes for slow going, but God is good and has given us solid growth over the past years. The Reformed and Presbyterian Church of Costa Rica also has a Christian grade school and high school.      The church and school were established in Tepeyac, in the northwest of San José, in 1984 and 1992 respectively. Roberto Venegas is now...

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