Santa Rosa: November
Brett has been spending the past 2 months almost entirely in Santa Rosa de la Palmera, in an effort to help move the Pastor and his family into the education building. They´ve been living behind a plastic tarp in the church for 8 months, so they were quite restless to move into their home. The home is temporary until a parsonage can be built, but much more comfortable than living in the church. They were finally able to move in a few weeks ago.
Santa Rosa Youth
We also have been continuing to work with the youth in Santa Rosa on Fridays and Sundays. We are actually starting to feel blessed by this experience, thanks to your prayers. It was a challenge at first, but we are slowly and surely growing in our friendships with these young folks.
Nicholsons: 12.15.08
Brett and I celebrated our one year anniversary on December 15. We went to Playa Grande and stayed one night at Hotel Las Tortugas, where we stayed with our friends Micah and Jane in 2006. Brett had the opportunity to surf a little bit. Also, we met a missionary family there that had just finished a 14 year term in Mexico. They greatly blessed us with advice, prayers, lunch and support.
Brooke´s mom, Betty: 12.23.08
My mom was able to fly here to spend Christmas with us, so we traveled around with her for a week. In fact, we took her on the route to La Paz waterfall gardens, which was most recently the epicenter of the earthquakes we´ve been having here. We recently heard they are thinking of closing this route for fifteen years, since the soil underneath will not be stable until then.
Jerry’s Team visit: 12.25.08
Jerry Russell´s team from Tennessee is always the first team of the year. They arrived on Christmas Day, and stayed until Jan 1. Since my mom was here, we didn´t get to spend too much time helping, but I was able to go with them one day to bible school at the Methodist church in Tonjibe, where an indigenous tribe known as Maleko live. I quickly formed a friendship with the pastor´s daughter and her friends, and they graciously invited me to the wedding of the pastor´s other daughter. We just attended the wedding this past weekend, Jan. 24th, and it was quite an experience. They had the whole town surrounding the bride and groom while Marion was marrying them.
Maestro en Casa: 01.05.08
Brooke has been working diligently with two and occasionally three students in the “Maestro en Casa” program, which was developed by the Ministry of Public Education. The idea is that those who otherwise would not proceed with their education for various reasons, could continue with their studies in their own homes, at their own pace. They then present themselves for exams after which they can qualify for the next grade level and finally graduation from high school. The way in which Brooke has taken to this task of working with these students has been, in my eyes, fantastic and refreshing. The work for her has been taxing, though, as the amount of material she hopes to cover with the students is substantial. So far they are working on three subjects at the seventh grade level: science, civics, math. Brooke is working with one student who in the past has found concentration in class and retention of material to be nearly impossible (she has failed the seventh grade 3 times), and another student who has been out of the classroom for three years. Five days a week they meet for two to three hours to review the material that they covered in their homes. In each subject the students need to finish about fifteen pages a week in order to cover all the material before the scheduled exam. Brooke definitely has taken the bull by the horns. The fact that one of the students is a girl who Brooke befriended early in her visits to C.R. and whom God used to break Brooke’s heart for missions here is even more significant now. For the past few years Brooke has prayed for ways to reach out to her and help her in her education and now that prayer has been answered through this program. We pray now that God will equip Brooke with the stamina and tools needed to see her students through the year successfully.
The photos here are of the 2 girls I am working with, Eylin and Daniela, and their friend, Fani. Our friend, Amanda, was visiting along with our friends Lalo and Antonio, missionaries in La Carpio. Antonio and Lalo have brought their kids on their soccer team to the camp on several occasions to participate in missions. They spend time with the boys in the Orphanage in Linda Vista, and show them Christ´s love in friendship. We tagged along with them on their trip to the zoo…which happened to be the same day as the Earthquake.
English: 01.05.089
I, Brooke, put some English classes and a preschool class on hold over the Holidays, and the 2 adult english classes are picking up again. I was afraid the class with the women in Linda Vista was about to fizzle out, which was upsetting cause I finally got to the point where the ladies were starting to open up, and I was starting to learn about what their lives were really like. Thankfully, Milena from Linda Vista called me up last week and was ready to start the class again. This time, I am helping her son study for his final english exam, so he can get his high school diploma...he failed 3 of his exams at the end of last year.
We also picked up teaching English to some of the employees from the camp and the pastor´s son from El Mirador. We teach them on Tuesday evenings either at our house or at the camp. Pictured here are Yeudi and Cindy from this class.
I also started teaching English to some youth in San Rafael. We stumbled upon this family when Brett noticed their father´s woodshop several months ago. They asked if I would teach their children English, so I started the second week in January. They have been a blessing to work with because they have the interest to learn and they have delightful personalities that always make me smile.
Paige’s: 01.14.08
Our friends Donald, Carol, and Cora Paige were in town for a conference with their mission, the Mission Society. They are missionaries in Paraguay, whom we met while I was in language school. They also blessed us with good company and good advice.
El Molino: 01.19.08
As we have written, Brooke and I have been working on measuring and drawing the Methodist churches in the northern zone of the country. So far we have visited and drawn four of the churches. Our first visit usually includes taking photographs and measurements of the sanctuary and the education buildings on the church grounds. After that we draw up in CAD what we’ve measured. Our hope is that we’ll be providing useful plans that the individual churches can use to renovate their buildings to reflect recent additions to the code.
Today we visited the church in El Molino, a small village about 25 miles away. It was our second visit there and we were able to meet with the pastor for a few hours to discuss some ideas that they would like begin working on at the end of this month. As we stated in the previous update, their membership is expanding and needs more space in the sanctuary. In addition to providing a renovation plan for the code we presented a few schemes for discussion and we were able to get an idea of what they were looking for in an addition. We’ll hopefully meet with them again in a week and have the scheme they liked the most fleshed out to include details and dimensions as well as a budget of construction. It has been nice for Brooke and I to be able to work on this portion of our mission together, as of late we have been working in different areas. We hope to refocus our attention on this part of our mission in the coming months as the date for beginning remediation is July, only six months away. We pray that he churches will make an effort to show the first steps of compliance by this point.
Chickens: 01.19.08
We just put in an order for 35 chickens, so as to provide 5 chickens for 7 families in need. My aunt Carol gave us $100 for this chicken project when we were home in October, on one condition, that the chickens all be named Carol, in her honor. We have had a lot of fun learning more about raising chickens, and we are grateful that she is spreading love in such a unique way to the people of Costa Rica.
Plans for February
Pretty soon we´ll be staying with our friend, Flor, in Linda Vista for a few weeks while Judy and Jerry Russell are in town enjoying their house which they have so graciously opened to us for the past 10 months. Flor recently lost her husband, Isaac, so we believe the Lord would like us there to help her through this tough time a bit. Perhaps Brett can spend some time on some of her home repairs.
Our same friend, Flor, participated in both sewing classes that I taught. After her husband died at the beginning of December, she headed to La Palma in the Southern region of Costa Rica to visit her daughters. Before leaving, I gave her the rest of the materials and cross stitch patterns I had, so she could teach a class there. One of her daughters is a Methodist pastor there, so she will have the ability to take what she has learned to leach the women in the church there. This is truly a blessing to know the sewing classes are now bearing fruit in other areas of Costa Rica. We are starting to learn that part of being a missionary is to empower others to have the confidence to use their spiritual gifts to grow the kingdom. At times we feel like we want to do it all, but really we aren´t doing any good unless we lift people up to be leaders, so we can then move on, and allow the Holy Spirit to sustain the lives of the people we leave behind.
