Excuses, excuses

Some of you may have been wondering lately, “Where in the world are Dan and Sarah?” Well, we’re still in Costa Rica… quite busy with ministry and life, feeling much more settled, but still looking ahead to lots of settling yet to do, and still not having much time to catch up with emails or our blog…

We really do have quite a few excuses for our lack of communication. My first and main one is this little guy:

He’s one year old, he’s walking, and he is so much fun! Nothing brings a smile to our faces faster than seeing him toddle around with a look of pride on his face or seeing him walk towards us with a hopeful smile and one hand holding out a book. He dances to music and it’s absolutely adorable. He seems to be learning new things every day, and I feel like I need to write everything down so that I won’t forget anything! Just today, he very deliberately took his sippy cup out of his mouth, held it up to me, and said clearly, “All done.” Needless to say, Timothy is taking up the majority of my time these days and that’s a good thing.

Anyway, on to why our blog is not being updated much… The other big reason is that we are still waiting on an internet connection at home. All ways of communication (phone lines, cell phones, internet, etc.) are run by the Costa Rican government, so even though we requested a DSL connection months ago, we are waiting for the government to decide when they would like to allow more connections to be available in Atenas. When will that be? We have no idea. I can use the internet at the eMi office, but because of Excuse #1, I don’t have much extended time there!
What else? Hmmm… our house has flooded twice and we’ve had two earthquakes this month (I just thought I’d throw the earthquakes in, but they really didn’t have any effect on our ability to blog!), I’m getting used to housekeeping here in Atenas (which is worthy of its own blog post), and, as I mentioned in the last entry, progress on settling into our house has gone much slower than we expected.

In the midst of all that, we have been busy with what we came here to do, which is so good. Dan works full days each week day at the eMi office, doing structural review and design for existing projects, preparing for this summer’s project to Haiti, coordinating the intern program, and often being the tech support guy for the office. We are really enjoying spending time with our interns and are learning how to make our home a place that’s open for ministry, whether it’s for Bible study, prayer group, movie night with the interns, dinner with the neighbors, or a place for visiting eMi staff to stay.

We are excited to see what the months ahead hold for us… maybe more blog posts? We’ll certainly try! Dan and I have decided that I could type up what I’d like to say in a blog post, choose the photos, and then he would post it at work. If this plan works, I hope to do some catching up on the blog, and also keep you all better informed on what our daily life looks like these days!

Home in Atenas

It's been in the back of my mind for weeks to update our blog, but, as usual, there are way too many things to write about and way too many photos to share! We currently do not have internet access at our house, so our time online is pretty limited these days.

After spending Christmas and New Year's with family and friends in the States, we've been back in Costa Rica for two weeks now. It seems longer than that because we have been incredibly busy exploring Atenas, meeting our neighbors, starting work with EMI, doing an orientation for our interns who arrived this week, and working on getting settled into our house. The settling in has actually been pushed back to a fairly low priority for a variety of reasons. Today the interns were great and helped do a lot of work at the house, including doing a deep, thorough cleaning of the main room, so I'll finally move into the kitchen tonight!

So far, I love Atenas. It feels like a place that can really be home for us and we are excited to get more involved in the community. Time management is a bit of a struggle for us right now. Please pray for us to find time to get settled, while still keeping relationships as our priority. We're looking forward to truly having a home here!

What a day!

Compared to our life in the States, it seems like we have more days here that cause us, at the end of the day, to let out a long sigh and say, "Wow, what a day!". But, November 18th made all others of those days seem like normal old life. Here's the story. It's long, so I'm dividing it up into sections. If you just have a few minutes to read now, read a section or two and come back later to finish the story... Or, make yourself a mug of hot chocolate and get cozy to read it all at once...

A Normal "What a Day" Day

The day started out just as a "what a day" day usually does - rushing with our schoolbags, diaper bag, and Timmy in his stroller to school because we were late, getting confused by crazy Spanish subjunctive grammar rules, feeling frustrated with difficulty communicating, and just generally being busy at school all morning. I (Sarah) stayed after school for my once a week afternoon of uninterrupted studying and Dan picked me up at school several hours later to run some errands. Traffic and shopping were stressful for some reason and we got back home later than we expected.

A Special Delivery

When we got home, our neighbor told us that our landlady had just left minutes ago. Because we had missed her, it seemed we'd have to wait even longer for the long-anticipated brand new stove/oven she had gotten for us. The oven was a bit of a sore subject for me because we'd been without a functioning one for months, and with Thanksgiving around the corner, I really wanted to bake! After a series of phone calls, a man came to install the oven and we were quite happy. Here you can see how happy Timmy and I were as we made supper on the new stove!

The Great Robbery

In the excitement of the special delivery, it slipped our mind that our car was still parked in the street. We rarely leave the car out for long past dark, and we had never left anything in the car while it was parked in the street before. Unfortunately, that evening we did both of those things and the result was our first personal experience with theft here in Costa Rica. Someone broke into the car, stole the stereo, and, much worse, my school bag. My bag had my school books and other school supplies, my wallet, and, worst of all, our gate and apartment keys. Fortunately, my wallet only had 10,000 colones (about $20) in it, and no credit cards, but it did have my Costa Rican driver's license, a few other IDs, and Timmy's and my cedulas (Costa Rican residency cards). We were really only worried about not having the cedulas until we realized that my keys were in the bag. Knowing that someone who has the propensity to steal had keys to get into our gate and into our apartment (and knew where we lived) was not a nice feeling. It was good, though, to put things in perspective. None of us were hurt and nothing of great value had been stolen...

Shaken

Dan and I prayed about the situation together before going to bed. Although prayer did bring more peace, I could not sleep. Any noise I heard made me wonder if someone was trying to get in our gate and I was worried about how we were going to replace the stolen items, what we needed to do to get new cedulas, when we'd be able to replace all the locks, etc. The sound of our clanging gate brought me to our front window. My heart leapt to my throat, it seemed, when I looked out and saw a shaking shadow on the porch floor in front of our door. My first thought was that it was the shadow of a man's arm (the thief!), but then I realized it was the shadow of our hanging plant. The plant was shaking, as were in the potted plants on our porch. Then I realized the whole porch was shaking, the building across the street was shaking, our floor was shaking... For a moment, everything seemed to be leaning a little to one side, then everything seemed to lean far to the other side. I lost my balance and fell against the wall. It was then that I finally realized I was experiencing my first earthquake!

My thoughts were jumbled, "What are we supposed to do during an earthquake? Get everyone into a room with no windows? No, that's for a tornado. Of course a Kansas girl knows what to do during a tornado and not during an earthquake..." My racing mind still couldn't come with an earthquake safety plan, but, thankfully, the shaking stopped quickly. I ran to Timmy's room to make sure he was ok. Nothing was out of place and he was sleeping peacefully. So was Dan; he slept right through it! I woke him up and told him I thought there had just been an earthquake. He asked, "Are you sure you aren't just dizzy?" and rolled back over!

Aftermath

Convinced that I hadn't just been dizzy and feeling pretty shaken (in more ways than one!), I lay wide awake the rest of the night, wondering if there would be an aftershock or if the thief would come back. In the morning, it was confirmed that there had indeed been an earthquake. It was a 6.2 (dizzy, ha!), but its epicenter was on the Panamanian-Costa Rican border, so we did not feel the full extent of it here in San José. As far as I know, there were no injuries nor much damage.

Dan had to stay home from school that day to guard our apartment. Our landlady was great and had a man here to change the locks that morning. He also repaired the broken locks on our car. That afternoon, my mom received a call from the American Embassy here in Costa Rica! Someone had found some of our missing ID cards. Hopeful that they were our cedulas, we called the Embassy, who gave us the name and number of the man who had our cards. It ended up that he had my driver's license and Timmy's cedula. He showed Dan where he had found them; it was in a little park by a bus stop not far from our apartment. Dan looked around and found my empty wallet, and eventually all of the contents of my wallet, except for my cedula and, of course, the 10,000 colones.

Since then, Dan and I have been sharing one backpack and one set of textbooks, and we've been working on getting my cedula replaced. We were pretty discouraged last Tuesday, when we spent the morning at the immigration department, only to be given an appointment to come back in April to talk to someone about my stolen cedula! With this plan, it would take longer to get the card replaced than it took for us to get our residency here in the first place! When the lawyer who helped us get our residency found out what was going on, she presented the case and our paperwork, and it looks like we now will have an appointment when the immigration department opens back up after the holidays, sometime soon after January 13th. ¡Gracias, Patricia! Please pray with us that this process will go quickly and smoothly, and that meanwhile we will not have any problems because I do not have my cedula. Also, please praise God with us for protecting us, for returning so much of the contents of my wallet to us, and for giving us this earlier appointment with the immigration department.

November 18th has definitely put things in perspective. Having Timmy scream about eating his vegetables followed by a blow-out diaper in a crowded mall food court, having the electricity go out right in the middle of baking muffins in our new oven, or having a day full of frustrating Spanish mistakes just doesn't warrant as much of a sigh at the end of the day anymore. Nothing like a robbery and an earthquake combined to make you say, "What a day!"

ESL Class

After working as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher since finishing grad school, becoming a student again was quite a transition for me. At first, it felt strange to be sitting in a desk looking at the board trying to understand my teacher instead of being the one standing in front of the class wondering if my students can understand me. But, teaching the grammar of my own language definitely helps me learn the grammar of other languages, and I have really enjoyed being in the position of learner again. The truth is, though, that I miss teaching.

Once a week, however, I have had the opportunity to be in front of the classroom again. During our time here in language school, I volunteered once a week at ministry in our neighborhood. Another student from our school and I taught an advanced conversational ESL class. It was fun to teach once again and to get to know our students.

We had our last class a couple of weeks ago. After we handed out certificates of participation to the students, they presented us with a "Good Teacher Award." It was very sweet. I am thankful I had this unexpected opportunity to teach here, and I'm curious to see what kinds of teaching opportunities might arise in Atenas.

All I want for Christmas is a pressure cooker,

and a crockpot, and a stove, an oven, a refridgerator, an automatic washing machine, dryer, bed, table and chairs, sofa, kitchen cabinets, closets, window curtains, shower curtains, lamps... The list is way too long. Getting ready to move out of our furnished apartment and into our very unfurnished house has been a little overwhelming.

One overwhelming factor has been that household items, especially appliances, are really expensive here. They are often twice or even three times as expensive as they are in the States. We have been researching every appliance store we know of to get the best deals so that we make the most of the money we have allotted for this. Please pray for us to have wisdom!

We've also been realizing that when we lived in the States, the vast majority of what furnished our home was either given to us or borrowed. I think the only furniture we ever bought for ourselves was our couch. So, it's crazy now to need to buy everything. Here in Costa Rica, when you rent a place, it does not usually have appliances and you might have to put in your own closets or cabinets. That is the case for us. There is a lot to do in the next couple of weeks!

Where we will live soon...

In two weeks, we will be leaving San José and moving to Atenas. We are eager to get to the place we've been preparing to go to, and we are excited about what God has been preparing for us there. One of the things that we're excited about is our house. The story of finding this house is a story of God's provision and guidance.

In August, we spent a week in Atenas during a break from language school. During that time, we looked at some houses that were for rent just to get an idea of costs, locations, what was available, etc. It was discouraging because it seemed that what we were looking for was going to be hard to find. We wanted a house that was good for both our family and for our ministry. We found a couple of houses that would have been great for our family, but, because they were far from the center of Atenas, they were not so great for our ministry. We also found other houses that were a great location, but were not good for our family. Very few of the houses had a large living space that we feel would be beneficial for having over groups of interns, host families, etc. In addition, not very many houses are available to rent in Atenas because it is such a small town, and those that are for rent are often quickly snatched up.

When our team director and his wife returned to Costa Rica at the end of that week, they drove us around showing us some of the areas of Atenas they liked. They drove us into a neighborhood where one of our intern host families live. I remembered that I had been there before and liked it, and I also remembered that we really liked that host family. There were no for rent signs, but our team director pulled over at a house that was obviously not being lived in. Out of curiosity, we all got out of the car, and started looking around. The man across the street immediately came out of his house and asked, "Are you interested in renting that house?" !!!

He had the key and took us in the house. I almost cried; it was more than we had been hoping for. It has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, one large main room that is open to a kitchen with a lot of counterspace, lots of windows, a yard, and beautiful mountain views. The man told us that the owner's family was coming to Atenas that afternoon and we could meet them if we wanted. Later that afternoon, we met with them and basically made arrangements to rent the house. What's amazing is that the family, who actually lives very close to us here in San José, was coming to Atenas that afternoon to post advertisements about the house! What an encouragement to see how God put us in the right place at the right time!

Another amazing thing is that we are paying a similar rent to what we pay for our apartment in the city. Why? Well, here's the catch. The house is unfinished. It is definitely ready to be lived in, but there is still a lot of work to do. Dan was out there two weekends this month painting the inside of the house with the owner's family and some EMI staff. The EMI interns worked on it some a couple of weeks ago, too. There is an upstairs loft area that is completely unfinished. It will eventually have two additional rooms and a bathroom up there, but since we don't need that space now, it's not a big deal that it's unfinished. Kitchen cabinets, closets, and a laundry area outside need to be put in before we move in or soon after. Throughout our time living there, we will be working on the house and our rent will be used for materials, labor, etc. Of course, all of the engineers and architects on our team will be excited to help out!

We signed a three year contract, so this will be home for quite a while, longer than any other place we've ever lived in so far. We're excited to get to know our neighbors, who have been so friendly and welcoming (by the way, the man in this story is the same man we talked about in our latest newsletter). We are excited to set up our home and to open it up for ministry. We are thankful for this blessing. Please pray that we will be good and grateful stewards of it!