Zucchini Time in Costa Rica

Zucchini season is upon us in Costa Rica. Well, almost, kind of and, yet, not quite.

You know what I am talking about.

Each year the cycle repeats itself when friends, relatives and people you may have met once in your dentist's waiting room, begin to leave brown paper grocery bags on your doorstep filled with produce from their gardens. For some reason, no matter what the weather has been and with no regard for global warming, there is almost always a bumper crop of zucchini.

On a philosophical level and in moderation I have nothing against zucchini. It is relatively low in calories and contains useful amounts of folate, potassium and vitamin A. A 1/2 cup of zucchini actually provides 19% of your daily needs of manganese - which I have always thought of as a metal alloy and not a nutritional need.

Still, this is note is not really about zucchini - which grows up to three feet long in Costa Rica. (That is more zucchini bread than anyone should EVER eat). Instead, our cultural equivalent are bananas. Everyone has them. Tiny Costa Rica is the seventh largest producer of bananas in the world and it seems like everyone participates in the national goal of increasing that production.

One fact you need to understand is that when a stalk of bananas begins to mature, you immediately have a lot of bananas! To my knowledge, all of my neighbors currently have large stalks of bananas on their porches, in their garages, on their kitchen counters and, possibly, under their beds. The church we attend even has their own bananas growing by the parking lot. When Christians observe you getting out of your car with bananas in your hands (to give away, of course), they immediately duck into the bathroom to hide.

In Costa Rica we cook bananas, make banana soup, eat banana chips, prepare green banana salad and bake bananas with cheese on top. (I am NOT making this up!) Even with these creative uses, we have too many bananas. Sometimes there is simply a lot of fruit.

This past weekend, in addition to the many bananas growing on the Multiplication Center property, we saw a different type of fruit maturing. Our Sonlife team organized a conference to train youth leaders and pastors in discipleship principles based on the life of Christ. About 50 people came from a dozen churches from around the country. They learned principles about Jesus' preparation for public ministry and His call to "Come and see." They also learned about what it really means to call a disciple to follow after Jesus.

I may occasionally get tired of zucchini or bananas, but the fruit of these young leaders is something that I long to see day in and day out in the years ahead.