Photo Friday: a sloth!

We were so surprised to see this sloth hanging from a tree by the side of the street when we walked out of church last week.  We'd seen sloths in a national park here, but never here in Atenas!



el Día de los Niños

Last week, we celebrated a fun Costa Rican holiday, el Día de los Niños (Children's Day).  On this day, children receive gifts, get special treats and are able to participate in fun activities at school, around town, or at church.  Our church had a Children's Day party.  There was a performance, singing, games, and lots of treats (more than we let Timmy eat!).  It was really fun to watch the kids having a blast.  These photos will give you a bit of an idea of what the celebration looked like:

Our friend, Marifer, leading a game...

... singing and dancing with streamers...

... watching a performance...

... playing games...

... Timmy enjoying his first ice cream cone...

Introducing our new interns!

"Meet" our new interns:

From left to right: Alfonso, from Mexico (now Texas), Jess from Washington (now Florida), David from Georgia, Bethany from Arizona, and Erika from Minnesota

It's hard to believe that our new interns have already been here for a month!  They went through a week of orientation with us when they first got here, then really enjoyed their two weeks of language school, have gotten settled into life with their host families, and are now going on their project trips.  David and Erika are getting back from Guatemala today, Alfonso will go to Honduras with Dan next week, and Bethany and Jess (a long-term volunteer who went through orientation with the interns) will be going to Honduras the following week.

We started up this term's Bible study last week.  It is such a joy to have the interns in our home each week to study the Word together and to hold each other accountable to the applications we make through our study.  This term we will be studying John 13-17, and I'm really looking forward to focusing on these words of Christ over the next couple of months.  Please pray for Dan to have wisdom as he facilitates this study, and pray for all of us to have our hearts molded more into Christ's likeness through what we learn.