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We set out in the late morning with a goal of visiting a list of 10 or so homes. We figure early that number might be optimistic.  We are working our way through a list of people who had expressed interest in a visit and participating in a bible study during our summer medical clinic. My daughter, one of the ones who sat at the exit to clinic and took names and addresses from our interested neighbors, warned me it would be a challenge. "A lot of people didn't know their address," she told me. "I think they might be guessing."
They might be guessing. That might be a good guess.
Turns out that we are, too.

Thankfully, we have experience guessing. We lived in San Jose, Costa Rica for eight months. I have heard that gradually the system is improving, but for nearly ever, Costa Ricans have had no traditional number and street name. They use a "landmark system." For example, the address of our house was something like
The Holliday Family
San Francisco de Dos Rios,
Four blocks south from the Shell station,
Turn left,
Fourth house on the right, a yellow house with a white fence.
We didn't have a mailbox. When the electric bill and the cable bill and the water bill came, it arrived rolled up and stuck in our front gate. More than once, we found ourselves without services because we forgot to pay. More than once, we found a bill, not our own, blowing down the street. Amazingly, we did receive mail, but not at home. We used the more reliable school address for letters from back at home.

But back in our Aquiles neighborhood... we look at the first address on the list. We pull up Google maps for street names, because signs sure are no where to be found. We go to the corner and turn right. And we start to look for numbers. We turn left and again start to look for numbers. Amazingly, the house waits right on the corner. With a mailbox! With a sign with the family name! With a name that matches the name on the paper! And she's home! (Yes- that's a lot of exclamation points, but it is a Lot of Exclamation Point Worthy Event!)

We look for places to sit in her front porch. I take a seat on the toilet. We laugh. (For those wondering,  yes, the lid was down. For those wondering, no, the toilet was not hooked up. For those wondering, no, I'm not sure why there was a toilet waiting on her front porch...) And then this dear lady tells us about her family and about her health and about her work. It is hard. We pray. We leave her a bag of basic food from the church. She thanks us and kisses our cheeks and bids us farewell. We promise to return. We set out again.

And this process of searching, of squinting for non-existent numbers, of greeting the saints and of greeting the needy, it continues. We discover the numbers are not in order. We discover streets that are called by different names. We discover that more than one blue house is on each of the corners of the street. We meet the neighbors of the neighbors. We pray. We take a break for a gringo lunch. And we return to the list.

We hear impossible stories. One lady greets us with her arm in a sling and we hear about how she was injured at work. Now she is out of work and wondering how to provide for her family. We pray. We meet a lady whose children are scattered far and wide, working here and there, problems big and small. We pray. We meet a mom of four boys. She works the night shift and leaves the boys in the late afternoon and returns to them in the early morning. She worries that her boys are on the streets at night. She looks at us, tired and fighting a cold. We pray. We lean on cars and we lean on fences and we sit on plastic chairs and we sit on mini-van seats made into couches. We listen. We pray.

Often I hear people count their blessings as if it might be a list of "but it could be worse." I wish they could spend time with people that they might consider "worse off." It is humbling. In the hardest times, our only hope is to lean into our God even harder. One of the ladies we talk to told me that.

We finish for one day. Still, we have plenty more to visit. Plenty more numbers to find. Plenty more stories to hear. Plenty more opportunities to pray.