The title of this post has several layers of meaning for Andrea and I. She's back in action after more than two weeks sick with flu, and the pneumonia that landed her in the hospital for four days. While she was on her "vacation" as the kids and I jokingly referred to it, we had a ton of support from the States and also from our new community here. Our church, La Iglesia Berea, lifted her up in prayer throughout the illness. And our friends and fellow missionaries at the language institute fixed us meals, cared for the kids, visited her in the hospital and prayed for us, too.
All of this love and support really demonstrated the love of God for us and confirmed that He is, "... the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort," (2 Corinthians 1:3). So, thank you for all of your love and prayer and support of us!
Andrea also had another "back in action" moment, when she and our new good friend Helen (she and her husband Steve, and daughter Nisha, are missionaries from England) went to the "Restoration House" and led the women there in a Bible Study. The women in this house are voluntarily living in a home together as they try and overcome drug addiction and life on the street. Andrea reports that all of the women were very eager to participate in the study and engage. It was a real encouragement to her to be back in the game and feeling better physically and spiritually by sharing scripture and discipling women who've known real hardship.
Finally, I've been able to go up to La Carpio several times a week and begun to engage in ministry there. While I've been making some cabinets for the offices above the shop, several young men wandered in and began hanging out, asking if they could help. What a blessing it has been to be back in action in ministry and beginning relational outreach with these young men. Please join me in praying for William, Jeffrey and Ricardo. I'm praying that we'll connect relationally and that by God's grace I'll be able to share my skills, but more importantly my faith and love for Jesus.
Many people told us that one of the fringe "benefits" of being a missionary is how many times you say goodbye to good friends. That's been the theme this week, as the trimester in language school concluded and many of our new friends are heading to the field. Today, we grabbed some pizza and met our friends Anders and Jessica at a park nearby to say goodbye to them and their kids, Addie and Boden. Anders and Jessica became fast friends these past few months and will really be missed. They're off to Chile to serve the Mapuche, an indiginous group South of Santiago.
Later this afternoon, we're going to visit Ronnie and Amanda (and kids) and say so long. They're off to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to plant a church there. They were our "Big Brother and Sister" who welcomed us to Costa Rica by finding us a place to live and stocking our fridge with food. They too, became close friends here and will be missed. So long also to David and Carol, and Darlene, classmates at ILE and close friends. David and Carol work as missionaries in Newark, NJ with World Impact. They serve a large population of Ecuadorians there. Darlene is returning to Mexico City where she's served for more than four years, supporting a church plant there and doing outreach to the poor.
What a blessing it's been to see God's will and call on other's lives and enjoy fellowship with them for a time. We're really excited to hear from these folks and receive reports from how God is using them in their different countries. And at the same time, our hearts ache somewhat to know that they're gone and we may never share the same time and experiences again.
Grace and peace,
Seth (and the gang)
Wow, we have overcome in the last two days two major bureaucratic hurdles of being strangers in a strange land!
Number One: Getting a Costa Rican driver's license yesterday. What an adventure! We went with a friend from school who also needed to do this. After she was pursued by a suspected robber in the morning before we set out, a taxi driver ditched us, an interesting medical exam, lots of waiting at the driver's license bureau, different rules at different desks from the people that helped the three of us (Andrea got a difficult person who made up new requirements that she didn't meet), more waiting, and Seth's name being misspelled on the first shot at his license, we FINALLY achieved a victory. Despite the many hurdles, God was with us: He protected Amy in escaping her pursuer (and had her meet a great "tough guy" protector in our new neighborhood -- they call him "the Russian"), gave Andrea favor with a different worker at the bureau, and got things done and us home safely in the end. Lessons in patience, you think?
Number Two: Getting extensions on our tourist visas today. We had hoped to get this done yesterday as well, but showed up just a few minutes too late to get a number in the line for that day after the ordeal with the licenses. SO, back at it first thing this morning, we were number 5 in line. Woohoo! This was a great experience in feeling like an outsider among other people who have a better idea of what's going on than you do, and don't want to tell you the secret rules of society, or don't understand that you don't know them: where should you wait, when do you know that it's your turn, where do you get the mysterious stamps that we didn't know we had to have, etc.? How humbling! After only and hour and half, we were on our way and hit the worst traffic jam we've been in here. Something was on fire on the highway, the police had close the on ramp where we (and apparently 1/2 of San Jose) needed to get on, and we fought traffic for over an hour to leave the area we were stuck in. After all that, we still made it back to school in time for grammar class!
Praise God for small victories! We're looking forward to a three day weekend, as we don't have school on Monday due to a holiday to celebrate the annexation of the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. More good news: schools here will reopen next week after being closed this week due to the swine flu. No more kid juggling and hopefully the flu risk is subsiding!
Blessings,
Andrea (and the Gang)
Dear friends and family,
It seems like July suddenly crept up on us, along with decisions about what to do at the end of this trimester of language school. This terms ends August 14 (Alden's b-day). We'd been planning on leaving language school and hiring a tutor to help us continue the journey toward fluency in Spanish. However, when we sat down and crunched the numbers, we realized it would be less expensive to enroll half-time at the institute. In addition, we've really wanted to complete the grammar curriculum at the language school, which we won't be able to by this August.
So, we'll be starting a new trimester of language school on Sept. 1. We'll take two hours of classes each day. Once we finish the grammar curriculum, which we expect to take another month, we'll begin focusing on translating. We've heard it's an excellent way to uncover weak spots in your language acquisition and correct them. Apparently, you really can't "fake it" in this class, or use circumlocution to describe what you're translating.
Andrea and I will be in class with one other fellow student from our grammar class now, Amy Lineburg, who is here with Wycliffe Bible Translators. We hope that class will begin at 7:30 am so Andrea can come back home and dive into homeschooling with the kids, while I head North through the city to La Carpio and get started in ministry! The kids will be home during these two hours or so with a maid/nanny. Andrea is really excited to get back to homeschooling the kids soon, and I'm anxious to feel productive in ministry again.
In addition, we're hoping to move to another home in the area that has another bedroom, and more importantly, two bathrooms (5 people + 1 bathroom = frequent emergencies)! In November, friends from the states are coming to stay with us and help us put together a fundraising video. Then, we hope in Dec. Seth's folks are going to come down and spend some time with us to avoid the ice and snow back home and volunteer in ministry here. So, the extra bedroom will be a blessing, too. We meet with the landlord of the other home on Tuesday.
Please pray for us that God would bless and direct our endeavours to find a loving "empleada" to care for the kids and do some cleaning or cooking while were in school. Please also pray that God will bless our move to the other home we've found and that everything would come together.
Don't forget, we love to receive updates from all of you on your lives!
Peace,
Seth (and Andrea and the kids)
June highlights (so far):
- A trip to a park in the city called InBIOParque, a place to educate people on preserving nature and wildlife. See our slide show above with pix! Alden got to hold a Boa Constrictor at its 1st birthday party.
- A trip to Manuel Antonio national park and beach, and Alden petting a white-faced monkey in the wild. Seeing a trend? I think Alden is in heaven. Pictures (and video) coming on that later!
- Staying healthy; I can't tell you how many missionary families at our school are facing sickness and trips to the emergency room on a regular basis! So far, we've been untouched by physical sickness.
- Seth and I celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary on June 4. A fellow student babysat for us so we could have a date. Our gift to each other is learning to scuba dive (there's a very reasonable certification program being taught at our language school for interested students). We can't wait to take our dives on the July 4 weekend!
- Having our class of 7 students over to our place this past Tuesday for a fiesta. We cooked out burgers on the grill and just enjoyed each other's company in English for a change!
- Alden turning around his school performance. Yay for him, and thanks for your prayers! God has taught him much in the last few weeks about working through your problems, being disciplined, not giving up, and forgiving folks when you feel wronged.
Lowlights:
- Having the gas cap to the car stolen right out of the garage (the car barely fits into the garage, so I guess someone reached through the gate and could reach the gas door). Who knew we'd have to have a gas cap with a lock on it -- who knew they even had those?
- Other car problems involving the battery/alternator/radio. We hope they didn't sell us a lemon! If so, we pretty much have no recourse down here.
- Sunburns at Manuel Antonio (we apparently didn't re-apply the sunblock in a timely enough fashion)!
- Nearly getting hit in a car accident yesterday when some crazy driver cut us off in a roundabout.
Check out the new pictures (bigger on the photos page now), and please note that I now have a Facebook account (Andrea Reynolds Sears). It's a kind of fun way to share tidbits and snapshots of what's going on with us, so send me a friend request if you're on Facebook and I haven't established contact yet! Seth also has a new email address, which is seth.r.sears@gmail.com.
Blessings,
Andrea
Two weeks ago, we were blessed to see some friends and supporters from the States who came down on a vacation. On the last day of their trip, Sean and Jenny Evans (and their two girls) hung out with us for a day. In the morning, we went up to a slum on the North side of San Jose, named La Carpio, and took a tour of several of Christ For the City International's outreaches there (including a health clinic, school and home for abused girls). Andrea and I had visited these sites about a year ago on a vision trip to Costa Rica. It was exciting to see how much progress had been made in such a short time! They have a new computer lab set up with a ton of donated computers from the States, to teach kids and adults how to use computers and equip them with this skill that is more and more necessary to secure work.
In the basement of the school for boys, there's a shop with donated power tools (table saws, routers, belt sanders, etc). Delhy, the gentleman giving us the tour, explained that they had a man who was going to teach the boys job skills, but he left after all the equipment was donated without getting the program started. He explained that they've been praying for God to send a man who wants to be more than a teacher, but a mentor and a discipler. At this point, I had to interrupt Delhy and tell him that I'm the guy! We had a good laugh about this and as we were leaving, he told me that they'd be waiting for me to come back soon and clean and oil the tools. It was exciting to meet Delhy and several of the young men whose lives have been changed by CFCI's outreach in this impoverished area (click on the photos link above to see photos of the shop and some young men building a kitchen off of the main office at the school).
I feel an added impetus to finish language training soon and get to work, but I also want to be well-equipped to share my life and faith with young men and to do it fluently. Please pray for my progress this trimester in language school!
Later, Sean and I took the kids to a park near our home while Andrea and Jenny went with another CFCI missionary up into the mountains to a place called Renacer (meaning "rebirth" in English). This facility is a CFCI outreach to girls who've been involved in drugs and prostitution, living on the streets. The first thing they heard when the pulled up was the girls singing worship songs to the Lord; they had arrived right at chapel time for one of the four cohort groups! They were getting ready for a graduation ceremony the next day, in which 6 of the girls would graduate from the program. One of the girls who was about to graduate (also named Andrea) gave the women a tour and explained how things operate. There was a real tug on Andrea's and Jenny's hearts after hearing how this young girl's life had been rescued and changed! She'd clearly received good counsel, come to faith in Jesus, and had good boundaries with her family and a strategy for going forward in life. What else can one need when those basics are in place?
Another ministry opportunity that has been plopped in my lap has been in time spent with our neighbor Juan. He's a retired electrician and now works part-time as a handyman for neighbors on our block. This past Friday, he and I pulled the alternator from our car and had it rebuilt with new diodes and ball-bearings. Yesterday, he put it back in for us while we were on a trip to a park with other students and their kids. Through time working on the car together and through interviewing him for homework for class, I've gotten to know him quite well. He doesn't believe in a personal God and doesn't pray. However, I can see that he's eager to "do good" and serve people, as if there's a celestial supervisor reviewing his behavior. He's really been turned off by the hypocritical behavior of family members who claim to be Christians (in fact, one is a pastor).
Please pray with us that our friendship with Juan will continue to develop and the Lord would give me the right words at the right time to help move him a step or two closer to faith!
Thank you for all of your prayers, support and encouragement!
Seth
OK, the title of this post refers to the fact that this morning I woke up to a centipede (3-4 inches long) crawling on my face! We have purchased mosquito nets to protect us from bug bites at night, but unfortunately ours fell on us in the night and we were too lazy to get up and replace it. I won't make the same mistake again!
What a week we've had! Here are some highlights:
- We bought a car: a white 1999 Isuzu Rodeo. It seems to be in good condition and should serve us well. The rules of the road in Costa Rica are: whoever has the biggest vehicle has the right of way, and you don't hesitate, just GO and expect people to get our of your way! We won't use the car often, but it will help us get across town to friends' houses or on trips outside of San Jose for now, and later to get to work. The car buying process was quite an ordeal (added bureaucracy), and we're very thankful that we had Edwin (a Tico friend) to help us through it!
- We ALL started school! We learned after our arrival that the kids and I didn't HAVE to wait for August to start as we had previously thought, so we turned on a dime and enrolled me in the language school and the kids in Sojourn Academy on the first day of orientation. It's been a shift in expectations, but a very good one. It will shorten our time at the school, Seth and I were placed in the same class so we can learn together (we really enjoy competing with each other), and gives the kids something to plug into right away to find new friends and have something to do besides bounce off the walls in our cozy house!
- Our spanish classes started on Wednesday, and we can already tell we'll be learning SO MUCH. Please pray that we'll be able to learn quickly, eliminate our bad habits (and Mexican words that we picked up in KC that aren't the same in Costa Rica), and that the kids will adjust to going to school every day instead of one day a week. We're trying to get used to homework, schoolteacher expectations, etc. and it's quite a hustle to get the whole family up, dressed, through the one bathroom that we share, eat breakfast, pack lunches and walk to school by 7:30 am!
- Seth and I are experiencing our first bout of "mal estomago" (intestinal unhappiness). Please pray that it will pass quickly (figuratively speaking, of course).
- Sean and Jenny Evans arrived in Costa Rica yesterday, bringing four boxes of stuff that I left with them before we came. What a help they are to us in getting settled and having what we need from home to make a life here! They will spend some vacation time near Arenal (an awesome continuously erupting volcano to the north) and then we'll get to spend some time with them next Thursday before they go back to KC. We're excited to see people from home already!
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has give us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ through the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade -- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:3-5
Blessings,
Andrea
