While all are friendly and greet others with a smile, some seem shy or hesitant, especially when they find that a visiting journalist is present.
Finally, a half-dozen women assemble and sit around the table with their notebooks open. Off to the side, a worker is helping the nearly dozen children find activities while their mothers meet.
Soon, the women turn very serious. One seems to cry a bit while others talk. The leader is pleasant; she smiles, she listens, she empathizes and she prays.
Each of the participants carries an enormous burden that they are only now, slowly, beginning to unload. Each has been the object of physical or emotional abuse and is seeking the help of a Christian ministry called Healing Hearts.
"We began the ministry last February," explains Eliette Padilla, a Costa Rican who is a missionary with Christ for the City International. "We are working with women who have been damaged spiritually or physically."
"There is a lot of violence in our culture," she adds. "It's a big problem here and reaches all levels of society and all parts of society. When children are abused, it damages our future citizens, and that worries us."
Eliette attributes the high incidence of abuse to the absence of God in the family. Without their roots with God, many men misunderstand their role as the head of the family, thinking, 'I am the man of the family and I'm in charge,'" she explains.
While there may be a higher incidence of violence among poor families, such as those who are attending the support group in La Carpio, Elliette says that she also is leading a group in a middle class area of San José.
The problem isn't confined just to Latin American families explains Dee Johnston, a CFCI missionary who works from her base in Omaha, Nebraska. "It is a widespread problem," she says. Dee began working with abused women in her home church in Omaha in 1991 and recently has begun expanding her Healing Hearts organization world-wide through CFCI. She visited Costa Rica in early 2007 to help start the program there.
CFCI works in a number of countries around the world to meet the greatest needs of the poorest cities. The mission's purpose is to help people transform cities by transforming lives. Missionaries from CFCI accomplish that by determining what needs people have, meeting those needs out of the love of Christ and building relationships so they can share the Gospel and change lives, determining what needs people have, meeting those needs out of the love of Christ and building relationships so they can share the Gospel and change lives.
