Thankfulness

This post is going to seem a little outdated as it is more than a week after Thanksgiving, fall back in the States seems like it is over as snows and freezing temperatures arrive, and preparation for Christmas is in full swing.  It's hard for me to realize this quick passing of one season to another and one holiday to another here where the weather is sunny and warm year round!  Rainy season does seem to be over, so there is a slight change and our Tico friends are telling me that this is the weather of Christmas time, but so far, I'm still getting used to the fact that fall and Thanksgiving passed so quickly. 

It is also hard to believe that we have now celebrated two Thanksgiving days in Costa Rica!  This Thanksgiving, we felt so much more settled, so much more at home, than we did last year and that is one of our biggest praises to God in this season.

We started out el Día de la Acción de la Gracias (literally "the day of the action of thanks"; isn't that a great name?) with a special family breakfast of French toast and bowls of great tropical fruit.  As we ate, Dan and I wrote out the blessings that we are praising the Lord for this year as we "come before Him with thanksgiving."  This is a tradition I'd like to continue each year on Thanksgiving day so that over the years, we can look back and joyfully praise the Lord for His faithful, constant working in our lives.

After breakfast, Timmy got to experience some fall fun with the fake leaves that I had used to decorate our breakfast table.  I had no idea he would have so much fun having the leaves dropped over his head again and again!  His giggles reminded us of one of our biggest praises: the joy our little guy brings us. We might have to make fake leaf games another Thanksgiving tradition, at least as long as we live in the tropics!

In the afternoon, we joined our team for a Thanksgiving feast.  The food was exactly what you'd expect at a traditional Thanksgiving meal: turkey! (last year we had chicken), stuffing, pies, etc., but the atmosphere was not traditional.  We ate outside in a rancho (a covered patio) surrounded by a beautiful garden with a river running by us.  A short walk away from the rancho took us to several waterfalls.  It was a lovely afternoon!  Here are some scenes of our celebration:

eating together

It's hard to believe that last Thanksgiving, Timmy got turkey in a Gerber jar!

me and my boy

exploring the dark river area with Daddy

one of the beautiful waterfalls

There is so much to be thankful for - Jesus and the salvation we have through Him, our little family, the joy Timmy brings us as he grows and learns, the Lord's provision and grace for us during our first year here in Atenas, the opportunity to live in this beautiful country and to serve God's people in Central America, our health, our marriage, our family and friends around the world, those who support us financially, our church both here and in the States, new Tico friends, the amazing gifts of God's Word and prayer...  We are so blessed.

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.  Let us come before Him with thanksgiving, and extol Him with music and song.  (Psalm 95:1-2)

Photo Friday: So happy together

I am so very thankful for YOU, mi amor.

Meet our interns!

We have had a great group of interns with us since the end of the August. It is really hard for me to believe that they will be leaving us in just several more weeks.  As coordinators of the intern program for our office, the interns are a big part of what we do here, and we are so blessed to get to spend a lot of time with them.  Because of this, it's kind of crazy that I'm just now introducing them to you all, but better late than never! 

I love this photo because it just epitomizes the dynamics of this group.  They are so much fun and are always laughing together!  On a day that they were scheduled to a present their trips to Haiti at a staff family meeting, all four of them showed up to work wearing the matching outfits... completely by coincidence!  They had great fun with it all day, and took the opportunity to pose for some cheesy "family" photos. 

The guys, from left to right are Nick, recent graduate of Virginia Tech; Ben, recent graduate from University of Colorado; and Avery, recent graduate of Texas A&M.  And, Christy graduated from Southern Methodist University in Texas.  This group is obviously different from our previous group that represented five different countries!

On that same day, I showed up to the staff meeting wearing a black shirt and white skirt, also completely coincidentally.  So, of course, another cheesy photo had to be taken (like I said, these interns are funny!).

I meet with Christy every week as her mentor, and I have loved getting to know her.  She gave her life wholeheartedly to Christ just a year ago, and immediately decided she wanted to use her engineering skills to serve Him.  Isn't that so encouraging?  She has a tender heart for Jesus, and a merciful heart for people.  We have been working on scripture memory together by going through the good ol' TMS (for all of you Navigators out there). 

These interns are also in our home once a week for a Bible study that Dan leads.  We are studying faith, and have been doing character studies on the people of faith listed in Hebrews 11.  We have all been encouraged by the study and Dan and I find ourselves challenged by the interns' insight and questions, as well as their great definitions of faith based on what we've been studying. 

Please pray for these new friends of ours as they have less than a month left of their internship.  Please pray for their ability to finish their project work in the office, for continued blessing of their time with their Costa Rican host families, and for God to be working in their hearts to use what they have been learning of Him here to prepare them for what He has planned for them in the future. 

Evangelization Campus in Haiti

Fall 2009 Project Trip:

Evangelization Campus

Arachaie, Haiti

At the end of September, I spent another week in Haiti for a project trip. We went to design a master plan for a ministry that supports various churches north of Port-au-Prince. They had purchased about two acres of land to construct a base for their ministry in Haiti, including a church building for the local church in that area that currently meets in a thatch-roofed space.

The church building will be the first building built on the two acre site. It will be followed shortly by a basketball court.  Then will come a home for the missionaries that also includes team housing.  As the ministry grows, they hope to build a Bible college in order to train pastors, and, finally, some small homes for Haitian pastors who may need them. 

The week started with attending church with the congregation that will benefit from our design. What a blessing to meet the pastor, the people, and especially the children of this small, very poor community! There was a joyous contentment among all of them that challenged me and that which is so engrained in me as important in life. These kids may not have even had shoes, but they were content. Their bright teeth smiling out of their beautiful dark faces proved a fitting analogy for their bright and happy souls in the midst of such a dark place.

The week continued with hot days in the sun surveying and doing other site assessments. After that, it was hunkering down in the heat of the missionaries’ home to tune out the roar of the generator and to do the design. The classic EMI image of a group of people clustered around a small table that holds more computers than people was a common one. But it was often interrupted with jokes, or an odd mix of voices singing (some in English and others in Creole), and even an all-out totally-drenching water fight one night. Despite the distractions and the heat, the team accomplished a lot in such a small time, and by the end of the week, we had a mostly complete design to present to the missionaries.

Haiti is a difficult place to be and a challenging place to minister. Therefore, I have great respect for every missionary who has the endurance to serve the Lord there. In this case, it was Bill and Marylin Fair. They began their life together as central Missouri farmers. Then they took a short term mission trip to Haiti, and ever since, they have devoted their lives to follow God’s call there. They have several churches in different cities that they support in various ways. They do everything from training leaders and providing financial assistance, down to physically building the benches for the churches. Their work there and the joy with which they do it left me (and the rest of the team) with a great excitement for this project.

One team member I would like to spotlight is Jean-Claudy Lamontagne Junior (or just Junior for short). Junior is a Haitian civil engineer whose wife introduced him to EMI, and when he found out about our project, he was excited to sign up for it. He took a week without his family and without work (and thus without pay) to help us on our trip. And while he was a great asset as an engineer both to Mike, our environmental engineer, and to Micah, our structural engineer, his greatest value came to the whole team as a guide to Haitian culture. He spent hours and hours talking with us as a group and me individually, patiently enduring our incredulous looks as he explained the culture of Haiti, its spiritual climate, the challenges and blessings of being a Christian there, some of the language, and much more. There are a few people I have met in my life of whom I think back and think, “it was a special blessing to know him or her.” Junior is one of those.

My baby...

... isn't really a baby anymore.  He is 20 months old, and so interested in everything, is learning so much, and is picking up new words in both English and Spanish so quickly these days.  There are times when I look at him and think, "How did he get so big!?"  Even so, he's still my baby.  Yesterday night, he was sitting on my lap on the couch, and he snuggled down into a rock-a-bye baby position in my arms, and said "baby" very contentedly, as if to say, "I'm still your baby, Mommy."  And, this morning, he started yelling "baby! baby!" and patting the rocking chair, which is what he does when he wants to snuggle for a little while.  When I picked him up, he wanted to snuggle like a "baby" again.  It is so sweet!  Here is my "baby" drinking his leche from a cajita... like a big boy:

just some every day fun

Making do with what we have is a constant theme here that comes up almost daily, and I definitely see that I've grown in this area.  At times, the need to make do just allows us to be more creative than we would need to be if everything was as it was for us in the States and it ends up being fun!  Here are some examples:

What do you do when your little guy loves play-doh, coloring, and other crafts and so far you haven't found a little table and chair set that's in your price range?  Well, fortunately, the stairs in your house are still unfinished and make a great craft table (and a toilet paper roll makes a great play-doh accessory when you don't have any cookie cutters)!

 

Or, here is another scenario.  What do you do when your hands are all muddy from working outside on the plumbing, but there is no running water in the house that day?  Well, fortunately, the combination of the rainy season and the fact that your house has no gutters makes a  great makeshift outdoor shower!

Or, what should you do when you are too hurriedly trying to put the clean dishes away and the glass cover of your electric skillet slips from your hand and breaks into millions of itty bitty pieces of glass that are still being swept up two months later?  Well, just get out your roll of aluminum foil to use as a makeshift lid each time you use the skillet... and be thankful that you have one less dish to wash!  (This definitely beats buying a new expensive skillet to replace the now coverless one you inherited from another missionary last year.)