Introducing... PHOTO FRIDAY!

Now that we have the wonderful high speed DSL connection, I'm hoping to be able to blog more, including regularly posting photos of our family and what life is like for us here.  I'm starting this out with some beautiful photos that were taken by a teammate's sister who was visiting Costa Rica.  We're really thankful for these great photos, and for her willingness to bless all of the families on our team with her talent.  Here are just a few of our favorites (and you may be seeing some more in future posts):

Our first package!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a wonderful surprise: the arrival of the very first package to be sent to us here in Costa Rica!  A sweet high school friend of mine knows how much I love fall and heard that I just might be missing it a little here in the tropics, so she sent me my favorite season in a padded envelope!  I was incredibly excited when Dan brought home the package she sent.  She was very creative thinking of what she could fit into an envelope: two kitchen towels with pretty fall leaves on them, some packets of apple cider (yum!), fall-themed stickers for Timmy and some pretty decorative leaves.  I'm going to have to have a day when I spread the leaves out on the table, sit back to sip a steaming mug of apple cider, and pretend that I'm feeling the cool, crisp breezes of fall. 

Receiving the package was a good reminder not just of fall back home, but of friends far away who are thinking about us and praying for us.  We miss you all, much more than we miss fall!  Muchísimas gracias, Bree, for your thoughtfulness and these fun reminders of fall.  (And, just for fun, you can look back here to this post to see how we celebrated fall last year).

Some good news

I thought after the rather sobering post about dengue, I should share some good news.  Here are a few tidbits of good news from our family:

First, we finally have a high speed internet connection at our house!!!  We requested a DSL connection in February, and now after about 9 months of waiting, we finally got it!  Dan's persistence in repeatedly visiting the government office in charge of installing it paid off.  Now that we have this new high speed connection, we should be able to keep in touch better with family and friends back home.  Please e-mail us, skype us, comment on our blog, etc.  We would love to hear from you. 

Some fun, but not so important, good news is that we found canned pumpkin in a grocery store in San José!  I know that doesn't sound that amazing, but after not finding even one calabaza (pumpkin), much less canned pumpkin, anywhere last year, I was really excited when we found it last weekend.  So, this Saturday, I hope to treat our Costa Rican friends to some good American-style desserts de calabaza at our host family appreciation event!

And, some much more important good news is that Dan had a very good, very encouraging trip to Haiti a couple of weeks ago.  It was his first time leading a project trip on his own, and he was blessed with a great, unified team.  He will write more about his time there soon, so I won't write any more about it.  But, please praise God with us for blessing his team and their interactions with Haitian brothers and sisters, and thank you very much for your prayers about this trip.  For now, here is a sneak peak of his time there:

with Junior, our Haitian brother and friend

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).