Sloth Tuesday

we found this guy hanging out on our neighbor's porch last night...still there this morning!

A New Home

We greeted our friends from Lubbock and met new ones as we loaded up luggage into the van and set off from San Jose for the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica. This team was a group of college students from the Wesley Foundation in Lubbock, TX, and we were so excited to continue the construction project with them for the next 10 days.

A little background...Patricia and her five children are currently homeless and living with friends for shelter. After the donation of a small lot of land, our church decided to partner with 3 short term mission teams this summer to build Patricia and her family a new home. Thanks to the previous team from San Diego who came to help out and their generous donation toward the project, the Lubbock Wesley Group was able to begin the second phase of the construction, and made some great progress.

Get your guns up!

Home-ade concrete Costa Rica style

the delicate art of laying block...it's tricky

our friend Kate putting together rebar columns

digging for the Costa Rican style septic drain

more digging

hanging out at Friday night skate night

Patricia cooking lunch for everyone

finished septic

progress on the house

final goodbyes!

Southern veggie dinner minus the cornbread...

Yumm...It's the simple things...

Update

As many of you may already know, I made an early trip back home to Texas due to the unexpected death of my grandfather and left Jeremy all alone in San Jose. I spent two weeks in Tyler with family and friends, and just returned to Costa Rica last night, with our dog Mia in tow.

The transition from life in Costa Rica back to two weeks of Tyler, Texas was an interesting one. It is so strange how you can truly feel out of place in your own country, your home, after returning from another part of the world. I feel like I no longer exclusively belong to either...I am a weird hybrid mixture of the two places.

Anyway, I had a great time at home with loved ones, and the weeks truly flew by like a whirlwind. Now, we are preparing to move to Puerto Viejo, where we will be living, in about a week and a half. We are so looking forward to settling in somewhere and ending this extensive transition period that we have been experiencing! As we continue praying for all of you, please continue your prayers for us! I have a feeling that this final transition will be a huge adjustment, and your prayers are so appreciated. More to come, but until next time...

Thought for the Day

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." - Ghandi

Granada, Nicaragua...La Gran Sultana

We had a long weekend, with a Friday off from school, so we travelled to our neighboring country to the North, Nicaragua, to renew our visas. We spent our weekend in the city of Granada, one of the oldest colonial settlements in Central America. It was such a beautiful place, filled with rich history and untouched architecture from the 1500's.

Photo Update... normal day to day occurrences

1. Killing the dreaded mosquitos before bedtime

2. Pretty Sunflowers from the fruit stand

3. The last few moments of life for this HUGE spider...

4. Jeremy playing soccer with his Tico mechanic friends

5. Delicious new roadside food stand find....AMAZING

How do you like yours?

"The traditional way of preparing coffee in Costa Rica supposedly comes from the "biggin" system, which was widely used during the Victorian times in England and Holland during the XVIII century. The concept was simple: you hung a cloth bag full of ground coffee on a metal ring that was adapted to a metal recipient that served as the coffee pot."

A Legend of Coffee's Origin...

"Among the many legends that have developed concerning the origin of coffee, one of the most popular accounts is that of Kaldi, an Abyssinian goatherd, who lived around AD 850. One day he observed his goats behaving in an abnormally exuberant manner, skipping, rearing on their hindlegs and bleating loudly. He noticed they were eating the bright red berries that grew on the green bushes nearby.

Kaldi tried a few himself, and soon felt a novel sense of elation. He filled his pockets with the berries and ran home to announce his discovery to his wife. They are heaven sent, she declared. You must take them to the Monks in the monastery.

Kaldi presented the chief Monk with a handful of berries and related his discovery of their miraculous effect. "Devil!" exclaimed the monk, and hurled the berries in the fire.

Within minutes the monastery filled with the heavenly aroma of roasting beans, and the other monks gathered to investigate. The beans were raked from the fire and crushed to extinguish the embers. The Monk ordered the grains to be placed in the ewer and covered with hot water to preserve their goodness. That night the monks sat up drinking the rich and fragrant brew, and from that day vowed they would drink it daily to keep them awake during their long, nocturnal devotions."

Fun Facts...

• Coffee Day is celebrated in Costa Rica on September 12th
• There are 7,800 coffee producers in Costa Rica, chiefly small-scale farmers; 101 processing plants that transform the fruit into coffee, wash, dry and wharehouse it; 73 roasters that toast and grind the bean; and 30 exporting companies.
• Coffee is only grown near the equator, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn, within a 1,000 mile limit.
• 400 Billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide, making it the most popular beverage
• You can put some cold coffee or coffee grounds into the dirt of your ailing plants to revive them.
• Costa Rica is the only country in the world where a presidential decree (November 4, 1989) states that only Arabica varieties of coffee may be planted.

www.selamta.net

www.crtraveler.com

A word from Jeremy...

Kerbi and I started working on our Costa Rican residency about eight months ago in June of 2010. In preparation for this process, we had to gather a ton of official documents, have them certified and authenticated by the Costa Rican Consulate’s Office, then translated into Spanish. After all of our preparation, it was finally time to take the paperwork down to the immigration office to submit our application for a temporary residency status in the country, which will allow us to stay for two years at a time. This process is complicated even for a native Spanish speaker, but we managed to leave our first meeting with the immigration official only in need of one more document. This is where my story begins.

We went to the United States Embassy in pursuit of our last necessary document, and received what we needed to proceed with the process. The next day, I began my morning by walking to the bus stop where I waited thirty minutes to squeeze onto a bus that was so crowded that I had to stand just inside the open bus door. It was a little nerve racking standing only a foot from the pavement whizzing by, but at the same time it was nice because my backpack was facing outward where no one could mess with it, and I had an ample amount of fresh diesel perforated air to prevent me from dying from the dehydration caused by torrential sweating. When I reached down-town San Jose I walked about a mile to my next bus stop. This walk is always a little stressful because downtown San Jose is full of “ladrones”, or thieves, and it’s impossible to walk without being jostled and bumped by the crowd. Paranoia sometimes sets in , and every little bump can seem like a robbery attempt, but I managed to make it to my second bus stop unscathed, passport, wallet, and phone in tact.

After a little while, as I was waiting for my next bus to the immigration office, I felt my backpack being bumped just a little too often. I knew it wasn’t normal. After about the third bump I realized that the guy behind me was trying to pickpocket the “gringo”, so I turned and asked him to stop and “pase!” Thank goodness he did, wanting to avoid any hassle or attention, and soon after, I boarded my bus. The first stop was at the main hospital in Costa Rica, so the bus was full of sick people. Costa Rica has socialized healthcare, so citizens are able to go to the hospital freely for any need, regardless of how small it may be.

This just wasn’t my day. The bus ride to immigration was a long one…we stopped to pick up more people every few miles, and after about thirty minutes, as I was beginning to lull into drowsiness, I felt a swipe on my back pocket. I was standing in the aisle because this bus was crowded, leaving my pockets exposed. I knew that there wasn’t anything in my back pocket, so in the beginning I ignored the attempt, but about five minutes later, I felt another swipe. I turned around to face the man, and tried to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. I wanted him to know that I knew what he was up to without making a scene, and again, my tactic worked.

I finally arrived at the immigration office, and was directed to a line of about fifty people. Like many situations here in CR, I was the only “gringo” present. I really do cherish these opportunities, because I know the Lord places people around me, and in this case, it provided me with great chance to practice my Spanish despite my limited comprehension and fluency. It just so happed that I sat down by a newly married couple and began listening to their story right there in the immigration office line. The man was Costa Rican, and his new wife was from Mexico. They decided to flee Mexico after they married because of the increasing violence and invasive drug war taking over the country. He explained how hard it had been for them because many (not all) Costa Rican’s treat them as “aliens” and outsiders. After about an hour, my number was called, and I submitted the last of our paperwork and the agent informed me that the application process was COMPLETE, and now, we just had to wait for the results. Thank you Jesus!

I left feeling a great sense of accomplishment after submitting all of the necessary documentation, but also experienced a feeling of utter helplessness. Our future legal status and ability to stay in this country where we were called to serve depends entirely on the staff’s opinion about us on paper. Thanks and praise be to our all powerful God who has the power to lead us through His will, whom we can rest our worries and apprehension on without despair! I boarded the bus back to downtown San Jose and saw that there were a few men standing in the aisle again. Directly to my left, as I entered, I saw an open seat next to a lady, so I sat down beside her. Another unsuspecting subject to practice my Spanish on! I soon found out that she was a citizen of Nicaragua, which is Costa Rica’s neighbor to the north; a nation stricken with poverty, and little work. She began sharing her story with me, and told me that she had applied for residency in Costa Rica 5 times, and had been denied each time, even though she had been living and working here for ten years. Each time, she musters the determination to try once again. She saves and saves to be able to afford the process, and asks her relatives in Nicaragua to mail her the necessary paperwork, then stands in lines after lines only to be denied again.

During this process, I have realized that we can work hard, prepare well, but in the end, it’s up to the Lord to prepare us and protect us. Even though Kerbi and I are not “rich” by American standards, and live in a way far less comfortable than the average American, we have to realize that we ARE rich in the eyes of many who live here. As Americans, many times we are the targets for robberies, thefts, and petty pick pocketing, but we also have the luxury of opportunity that the majority of our worldly brothers and sisters just don’t have. Our American passport many times is like an “express” pass, or a “get out of jail free” card, that we rarely take the time to appreciate. Already, my compassion for those around me has deepened profoundly, and I am continually striving to look at them, and really SEE them through the eyes of a true follower of Jesus.

-Jeremy

Hurry is not OF the Devil; it IS the Devil

"In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in "muchness" and "manyness," he will rest satisfied. Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, "Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil."

If we hope to move beyond the superficialities of our culture, including our religious culture, we must be willing to go down into the recreating silences, into the inner world of contemplation. In their writings all the masters of meditation beckon us to be pioneers in this frontier of the Spirit. Though it may sound strange to modern ears, we should without shame enroll as apprentices in the school of contemplative prayer."- Richard Foster

Psalm 1:1-6

Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither- whatever they do prospers.

A day at the beach: Playa Jaco y Playa Hermosa

A few weeks ago, we were invited to join our Tico family for a day at the beach. We drove over one morning and returned home the same night. Here are few pictures from that fun day at the beach!

Playa Hermosa...some of the most consistent waves in CR! A surfer's paradise!

Sofia, Carolina and Luis Andres relaxing in the shade

Cousin Silvia, Tia, and Maribel, our Tica Mom, enjoying some lunch

Jeremy and Rodolfo grilling some carne asada

Playa Jaco

Fresa, our unrecognizable white poodle, after taking a roll in the black sand