Dengue strikes...

A fever of up to 105F. Extreme joint and muscle pain. A rash covering your whole body. Severe headache and pain behind your eyes. Nausea and vomiting. Such extreme sweating that your bed sheets need to be changed a couple of times a day. This is mild dengue fever, a disease found in tropical and subtropical places like where we live. Like malaria, it is contracted through a mosquito bite, but unlike malaria, there is no vaccine or medicine you can take to avoid getting it.

We had heard about dengue while we were in language school and we knew that it was prevalent in our province of Alajuela. I remember thinking that the symptoms sounded awful, and knowing that contracting it a second time was potentially deadly made it scary. However, we didn’t know anyone who had had it and I hadn’t really thought about it, or worried about it, at all… until recently.

About two months ago, Iveth, our pastor’s wife, came over to our house on a Wednesday and told us that her husband Jeremy had dengue. As the days progressed, Jeremy was in and out of the medical clinic, and then in a hospital in a nearby, bigger city, but still managed to preach on Sunday morning! Iveth told me tearfully after the ordeal was over that she had honestly thought on that Friday that she was going to become a viuda (widow). We were amazed at Jeremy’s quick recovery and praised God for healing him.

Two weeks ago, one of our new interns, Nick, was diagnosed with dengue. This made it seem even closer to home since he is the first EMI intern (or staff) to contract the disease. Based on Nick’s account of his experience, dengue is now referred to as the “bone crusher” in our office. He was really, really sick for a week with an extremely high fever and terrible pain (hence the new name). We praise God for bringing him through it and causing another great recovery. Last week, he rested and regained strength, and yesterday he headed back into the office for a full work day! Praise God! It was great to see him looking like his normal, healthy self as he sat in our living room last night during Bible study!

I'm happy to be able to write that I'm still really not that worried about dengue (and those of you who know me well know that is something to attribute to the Lord, not me!).  God took care of our friends, and I trust that He will continue to take care of us as well.

Please praise God with us for His healing, and please also pray for protection from this disease, especially for Jeremy and Nick. Contracting it a second time is much more serious. From what I understand, catching it again can cause hemorrhaging, significant damage to blood vessels and the lymph system, and potentially a sudden deadly drop in blood pressure. So, please pray that neither of these men would get it again... and, for the rest of us, pray that God would keep those nasty mosquitoes far, far away!

Dinner by candlelight

Two weeks ago, on Monday, I had a rather frustrating day. There had been no running water all morning (a very frequent occurrence) and then the electricity had been off and on all afternoon (another fairly frequent occurrence). Between having no water and no electricity, very little cleaning got done, no clothes had been washed, and the meal I had planned was not going to happen. When the electricity did come back on, I decided to just make cornbread and heat up a can of soup. About 20 minutes later, while the bread was in the oven, the electricity went off again.

Urgh!

I got upset, "Now the cornbread will be ruined! I didn't even get to heat up the soup! We can't even see anything it's so dark! We won't be able to heat up water for Timmy's bath! Dan won't get to eat anything before his meeting! Why can't basic things like running water and electricity just work in this country!?"

Whoa.

It hit me... I needed a big attitude check.

Be thankful. Rejoice in the LORD. Be content in all circumstances.

As I shifted my attitude, the situation changed. It was still dark, and I still couldn't heat up any soup or water. But, suddenly the situation was... fun. It was... dinner by candlelight! By the light of flickering candles, Dan reviewed his Bible study. Timmy was entranced by the candles on the table. I let the cornbread sit in the oven that was rapidly cooling, and when I did get it out, it was done perfectly, so we had a great candlelit dinner of warm cornbread with extra butter and honey and cut up fruit. We even talked about how we should have candelit dinners more often.

From now on, when the water has been off for a day or two, or the electricity is unexplainedly going on and off, or when I miss my family and friends, or when it seems almost unbearablely hot here, or when any other circumstance arises that threatens joy and contentment, I hope I'll look back on the lesson I learned through our simple little dinner by candlelight.

Haitian Children’s Home

Summer 2009 Project Trip:

Haitian Children’s Home

Jacmel, Haiti

It has been a long time in coming, but I (Dan) wanted to blog about the project trip I took to Haiti at the end of May. It was a great trip and I always seem to be amazed by the ministries that we serve and the volunteers who give so much to be a part of what God is doing around the world.

HCH raises orphaned and abandoned Haitian children in a Christian environment so that, as adults, they will be thoroughly equipped to live out their faith as leaders in their communities. It was truly a great blessing to help them continue that vision by developing their new property to better serve their needs as they serve the Lord.

Danny Pye, the director of the ministry told us that, “Haiti is about 80% Catholic, 20% Protestant, and 100% Voodoo.” That is obviously not true because there are a significant number of true believers that are setting aside their pagan roots, but his point is clear. Voodoo undergirds almost everything in Haiti. HCH is trying to break that cycle by raising up godly Haitians to be the leaders in their communities.

We arrived to help develop a plot of about 15 acres on the southern coast of Haiti. HCH’s vision for the property is, “to create a ‘cul-de-sac’ of 8 homes, each with a family of 20 orphaned and abandoned children living with a house family. In addition this land will have a primary school, a secondary school, a trade school, a clinic, a church, a soccer field, farm land, and a water-treatment facility to support the homes and serve the surrounding community.” This is a big vision, and we started with a master plan for the entire site to include these features:

From there, we focused on the children’s homes. The home is designed to house 20 orphans and a house family:

This will be the only building we design in detail for this trip. In the future, we hope to return to HCH to continue to design the other buildings that we laid out on the master plan.

I came away from the trip feeling blessed and encouraged by what Danny is doing at HCH, but even more impressed with what God is doing in Haiti.

With that, I am excited to return again at the end of this month to design a church for a local ministry in Arachaie. Stay tuned for the update from that trip (hopefully more prompt than this one was).

the América Latina team

Since we now officially have our whole team in country, we finally took a team photo last month. Unfortunately, it was taken in the rain the morning after our family got back from our trip back to the States (so Dan and I look a little tired after only getting two hours of sleep the night before). However, we wanted you all to see our gringo "family" here in Costa Rica!

La Iglesia Vida Nueva

It occurred to me recently that I have not really included much in this blog about the people that we interact with as part of our life and ministry here. I know that all of you back in the States would like to know more about what in the world we're doing here in Costa Rica, so I'm going to try to include more posts about the people with whom we share our life - and the love of Christ - here in Atenas.

It seems fitting to start with our church, La Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva. That's right, we went from a Presbyterian church in the States to a Baptist church here. And, we love it. Many believers here would say that the Baptist churches in Latin America are the most pegada (literally translated, "glued") to the Bible. We have really appreciated the Biblical teaching of the pastor and the elders of the church, as well as the passion Jeremy, the pastor, has for people to know Jesus. It is very much a first generation church in that most of the congregation have become believers as adults. It is also a very materially poor church. I think about a third of the congregation are immigrants from Nicaragua who are very poor. We are the only gringos at the church, but we already feel like we are part of the church family.

You can see our family standing in front of the church building with Jeremy and his wife Iveth, and their two cute kids, Henry and Amy, in the photo above. Our hope in living here is to be a support to the local church, and we are trying to find practical ways to do that. When Jeremy and Iveth mentioned several months ago that they would like to learn English so that they could reach out to Americans and Europeans living in the area, we were happy to volunteer to help. Now Jeremy and Iveth (and sometimes Henry and Amy, who are Timmy's best little Tico friends) come over every Wednesday for clases de ingles (English classes). We started with "hi, my name is..." so it will be a while before they're leading Bible studies in English, but I love to teach students who are so eager to learn!

A couple of weeks ago, our church had a service at a camp out in the country because a number of people were going to get baptized. Here we are worshipping in the rancho: (Can you find me, the one pale gringa there?)

After the church service, we had the baptisms. It was a blessing for us to be there because four members of a Nicaraguan family we have been getting to know got baptized that day. They live down the street from us, and moved to Costa Rica from Nicaragua looking for work under a year ago. They became believers through the outreach of our church. Here you can see my friend Leticia, her husband Mauricio, and their sweet niece Carolina getting baptized:

After the baptisms, we had lunch together and people swam in the pool. And, no Latino celebration could be complete with a game of fútbol, even if it is raining. Again, can you spot Dan, the only tall. blond gringo out on the field (and one of the only guys wearing shoes)?

We are truly blessed to have a church family we are part of here, and we are excited to have the opportunity to share lives with our Costa Rican and Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. You can pray for us to have wisdom and increased Spanish ability as we seek to be a blessing among them.

Volcán Poas

On a clear day, we can see three volcanoes from our bedroom window (yes, it is an amazing view to wake up to!). If it is a very, very clear day and if we are standing at just the right angle at a certain spot on the little side porch in front of our bedroom window, we can see two more volcanoes, one of which is Volcán Poas, one of Costa Rica's main tourist attractions. The week after we got home from the States, we took a day trip to experience this volcano for ourselves. Poas is an active volcano; it had its last major eruption in 1953 (causing the crater you can see in the photo below). The national park it's in has been closed several times in recent years for minor eruptions, and the rumblings of this volcano caused a earthquake that was felt here in Atenas in January of this year. So, it was pretty exciting to get to go visit it!

We walked up a path that took us to a point where we could actually look down into the crater of the volcano. It was impressive.... and it was SO cold! We're accustomed to the heat of Atenas, so the cold (it was probably in the 40's) caught us by surprise. The icy wind and the need for a jacket felt heavenly!

We made the trip with other EMI staff, from our office and from the Colorado Springs office. We also had some good friends from the old EMI Guatemala office staying with us that week, and they went with us as well. We had a fun time together, taking photos and going on a little hike. From the crater, you can walk through a dwarf cloud forest (the trees are really short, apparently from acidic air and freezing temperatures; it kind of looks like something from Lord of the Rings). This trail ends at a lake that has filled in one of Poas' extinct craters. We then took another trail through a taller forest. Our adventure was complete with needing to climb over a huge, slippery fallen tree in the path (a fun feat with two little ones under two) and with finishing off the walk in the cold rain (which, again, felt wonderful!).

We were glad to have some good time with our dear friends before they move far away; it will be years before we see them again. We'll miss you guys!

After our time at the volcano, we enjoyed a great lunch with a beautiful view (shown in the photo above). It was a wonderful, rejuvenating day. It made Dan and me realize that we need to get out and see more of this beautiful country we live in!