COSTA RICA MISSIONS

February 2011

2011-02-27T15:29:00.000-06:00

We pray everyone has had a great February!! We would like to share with you some videos that were taken the day of our evangelistic outreach at the end of January. Not as many visitors as we wanted came...but we know that those that were there heard an amazing word shared by our deacon Ruperto. The Lord gave him a wonderful word from 2 Samuel 9 where Mephibosheth was invited to eat at the king's table. It was such a blessing to hear the Word delivered by a fellow servant of the Lord!

The young girls in church, ages 7-12, along with Jeremiah, gave a great dance presentation of the song En Los Montes, En Los Valles (In the Mountains, In the Valleys). The song says...
In the mountains, in the valleys
We exalt who is worthy of praise
In the coasts of the seas
We raise a sound of hope
We proclaim, We proclaim
We make known the voice of praise
With hands up high
We exalt the One who reigns forever.

We rise to worship in Mount Zion
This is the joy of every nation
Where sadness is joy, weeping for happiness
We rise to worship the great King.

Our family presented our version of the skit The Sin Chair. Jeremiah and Rachel did an awesome job with their acting abilities!!

The last presentation was a song that God had on my heart for a few weeks before the outreach. The song is "Surrender" from the Hungry CD. In Spanish the song is called "Yo Rindo Todo a Ti". It is time, as we reach out to the harvest, that WE surrender all we have to Him and allow us to minister to those that NEED to surrender to the Lord.

We know that the Word of God went forth in many different forms. We now wait upon the Holy Spirit, as He hovers over the community, to do His work! Unless the LORD builds the house...we labor in VAIN! He is the builder! We are now in the process of making plans for another outreach service that will be by invitation only for our Easter service. We ask that you be in prayer with us as we make our plans and ask the Lord to direct our steps!

January 2011

2011-01-24T19:52:00.000-06:00

We pray that everyone entered the year 2011 walking in the blessings of the Lord! We have had a very busy January so far! We just recently returned from a trip to Nicaragua. As of October of 2010, we have been back to having to leave the country every 90 days again. Dave and I were granted our residency when we applied, but we have yet to apply for the children. Costa Rica changed its residency laws where minors are no longer covered under their parent's residency status. So in order for us to keep the children legal with an up to date visa, we are required to leave the country every 90 days. However, we are very thankful that Nicaragua is very close to us (the border is only about an hour and a half from us). This makes it so much easier for us to be able to make our trips. This time we decided to make it a week long vacation and enjoy some things of Nicaragua we have never been to before. Rivas is the closest town to the border, so we enjoy spending time there and in a town called San Jorge which is situated on Lake Nicaragua. It is the largest lake of Central America. In the center of the lake is Ometepe Island which consists of two volcanoes, Concepcion and Maderas. We took a ferry ride across the lake that lasted about an hour. It was a fun adventure. While we were on the island we decided to take a bus ride to another town that is on the island, Altagracia. We spent about an hour in town and headed back on the bus again. We are quite accustomed to riding buses...but it has been a while since we have had to ride one. Jeremiah and Levi stood in the back of the bus to allow extra seats for anyone that needed it, unfortunately for Levi..he got pretty squashed! (see photo in slide show) He did manage to make it up to where we were sitting and find a spot to sit! LOL!

While we were in Nicaragua, we were able to go to Jinotepe and visit a friend of ours, Rene Amador. Rene was part of Pastor Serafin's church when we first went to Nicaragua in 2006 and was a part of the youth group then. Rene had recently given up a life of drugs and turned his life over to God. He was beginning his discipleship program then and in 2007 he went to YWAM of Nicaragua and began his training program for missions. This is where he met and married his wife, Migdalia, the director of YWAM. (see photo in slide show) It was great to visit with him and meet his wife and see what a great man of God he has become in the last few years. They are in the process of planning a trip to Africa and I know they would appreciate any prayers on their behalf!

The most amazing thing that happened to us while we were in Nicaragua was the day after we arrived. We took our family adventure to the Island and spent the day. That evening we took the ferry ride back to Rivas and we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset on the way back. While we were riding, a gentleman on the boat struck up a conversation with Jeremiah. They talked about various things, then he asked Jeremiah why we were in Central America. He explained to the man what we did and why we were there and the man just out of the blue asks Jeremiah to have his dad pray for him please. Jeremiah went to get Dave and Dave was able to talk with him for a good amount of time. The gentleman (Cedrit Gomez) began sharing with Dave some health problems his 10 yr old daughter was facing. The doctors believed that she had lung cancer and this man was just distraught over the situation. Dave began sharing the Gospel with him and he just up and asked Dave....what do I need to do to get my life right with God RIGHT NOW? Dave explained it to him and he accepted the Lord right then and there sailing across Lake Nicaragua! The man lives in Rivas and was just so upset about news of his daughter that he needed to get out for a while, so he decided to go to the island. But her never even got off the boat! He stayed on...and that is where we met him. When we reached the shore...we were able to give him a Bible and encourage him on the importance of finding a good Bible believing church so he and his family can grow in the Lord. We exchanged email information and told him that we would have our church and others praying for him and his daughter. We told him we looked forward to the outcome of his daughter's next visit with the doctor, which was coming up within the next couple days. After returning home, we did not hear anything for a few days, so Dave emailed him to see how he was doing. We received a response from him just the other day giving glory to God for the results that he got from the doctor. His daughter tested NEGATIVE for cancer and the doctors were amazed at the change in her! Cedrit said that he is not the man we met on the ferry, he has turned his life over to God and is trusting in Him!! We give God praise and thanks for allowing us to be in the right place at just the right time! He told us that evening that this was the FIRST time he had spoken to anyone about his daughter!! And LOOK WHAT GOD DID!! We serve an amazing God!!

God has been speaking to us about more evangelism in this year. We know that the harvest is great and that the workers are few. When we see the harvest COMING to us...we know God is moving. We are planning an evangelistic service for this coming Sunday, January 30th. We have letters printed up for the congregation to invite friends, family, and neighbors to a special service. One of the special things about this service is it will be the first time for our deacon, Ruperto Hernandez, to preach. We are looking forward to what God will do and we ask for your prayers concerning this service. One of the reasons we are having a service by invitation only is because here in our area it is very popular for churches to have large church meetings or revivials. The only problem we see with this is almost all of the people that come are church goers from other local churches. Our desire is to reach the LOST or the ones that do not have a church home! Please pray with us this week as we prepare for Sunday. We also ask that you include Ruperto (Peto) in your prayers. We look forward to sharing pictures and news with you in our next update!! Thank you for praying with us!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!

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Free picture slideshow generated with Smilebox

December 2010

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot believe it has been a year since I last blogged and I do apologize for that. This year was a difficult year for blogging since we did not have access to internet in our home. As of just a couple months ago...that has changed and we now have internet access for the first time in about 3 years!! It is such a blessing! So we will now try to stay up to date with blogging!

This year we purchased a new sign for the church!

We are VERY excited to report that just a couple months ago we set in our FIRST deacon!! We have had a wonderful family that has been a part of our church for awhile. Ruperto (Peto) and Karla have two children, Danghelo (11) and Franciny (10). They are a very faithful family and we feel blessed to have them as a part of our body.

I have the pleasure every Sunday of being able to teach the children. This year they learned alot about worship and how much it is pleasing to the Lord when we worship Him. One of our crafts this year was letting each child design their own worship flag. The children enjoy using their flags during praise and worship time to bring glory and honor to our Father!!

We have two special parties a year for the children to enjoy and have a great time! In September, Costa Rica has a national Children's Day, and we always use this time to bless the kids with a party. Also, every Christmas we give them a party to enjoy celebrating the birth of our Saviour. It may have been the best party we have had yet, thanks to the new game show Minute to Win it!! The children (and some of us adults!!) had a great time playing games, then eating hamburgers and fries for lunch, opening their gift, and busting open the piñata!!! In the past the parties have been at the church, this year Karla opened up her home for us to have our Christmas party!

Have you ever seen a snowball fight in Costa Rica? The kids had a great time tossing snowballs back and forth to see which team would have the least amount of snow, they had one minute to complete the task! The GIRLS won!!!

Every year we also celebrate Christmas as a church family and have a wonderful meal together! This year Miriam made caneloni!! It was delicious! I made good 'ole Southern cornbread dressing! It was a great night of worship, food and fellowship. We had about 6 visitors at our dinner too and that is always a blessing!!

Back in Action!

2010-01-21T15:44:00.006-06:00

After some time off from the blog due to technical difficulties (our camera died! LOL!) we are back up and running again! We pray everyone had a wonderful Christmas and you have entered 2010 in the blessings of the Lord! We would like to share with you some of our activities from Christmas. We had a blessed time celebrating with a children's Christmas party and had a church Christmas dinner too! Our children's party has been an annual event for the kids of the church and this year we had 13 children in attendance. It is always a fun time for them as well as for us!!

Musical chairs is always a favorite among the kids! We also play several other games...but this is their fave!

One of the ladies of the church blessed them by making a chicken and rice dish to serve. It was yummy!! Just ask the girls...LOL!

Or the boys!!We always end the party with the breaking of the pinata and the kids also get to open presents from the church. We take up offerings all year so that we can bless the kids with at least one gift at the party and lots of candy!!!

Right before Christmas we celebrated as a church family with a special dinner. It was a great night to reflect on the gift of Jesus for us as we shared in Communion and then broke bread together.

Jeremiah (our only youth in the church for now) and a few of the other children helped serve the adults.The women served up the plates and Jeremiah and Danghelo served everyone!It was a wonderful night of delicious food and good fellowship! One of the things we have really been trying to teach all of our members is the importance of fellowship and family time together!The Christmas tradition for Costa Rica, that many people still participate in, is making homemade tamales every year. They make them for their families as well as to share with neighbors. One family that lives next door to the church has blessed us with tamales for the last two years and they are so delicious. The mother and her daughters take about two days to make them. They cook on an open fire outside until they are done and tasty!! This is one tradition we have really enjoyed since being in Costa Rica...although I have not yet ventured to try to make them...having them given to us is much easier! LOL!

We would like to share a huge praise report with you too that took place during this last year! Dave and I are official Costa Rican residents now!! We received our residency status in June and in August. This means that we NO longer HAVE to leave the country every 90 days!! Praise God!! It was a miracle the way our residency came through too. Our immigrations lawyer that was working with us during the whole process told us it would be easy for us to get since we have a baby that was born here. He did not even realize how easy it would be once it came through! Both of our status' were approved within days of our paperwork being received!! He said that this was a miracle and he had NEVER seen it come through so quickly for anyone else! He said he knew that God was on our side! What a wonderful testimony! We had spent time sharing and witnessing with our lawyer and his wife and he immediately realized that it was the hand of God that brought everything through so quickly! At the end of the month we will be picking up our residency cards. Sometime during the year we will begin to work on the children's residency. Since they are minors it is not necessary for them to have theirs until they are 18 years of age.

We want to thank you for your continued prayers and support for us and our church. We are believing that we will see more miracles this year as we pursue the calling to Costa Rica!!! God bless you all....we love you!!

Meet the children of Artolita

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We would like to introduce you to some of the members of the church, beginning with some of the most faithful...our children!

Karen is one of the only children that attends church with one of her parents. She and her father, Ricardo, have been faithful to the church for over a year now. Karen is a very sweet child and always willing to help her dad when it is their turn to serve in cleaning the church each month. She is the youngest of four sisters and is believing with her dad that each of her sisters will become faithful in the church as well.

Marcela is a precious little girl that lives two lots down from the church. She was born with a problem with her legs and they just don't work the way that they should...but you couldn't tell her that! She walks (holding onto things) but mostly crawls wherever she goes. She is at church almost every Sunday so that she can be at her Bible class. Her big brother carries her to church each week and many times her mother comes to pick her up. There have been many times that she left church in tears because she just didn't want to leave! One of her brothers has come to church with her some, but Marcela is always faithful to come bearing her great big smile! Please keep her in your prayers...we are believing God for a miracle to heal her legs and that she will one day walk normally...and even dance!!

Valeria (top) and Jennifer (bottom) are sisters that live across the street from the church. You can almost always find them at church on Sundays as well as Wednesdays. They are very sweet little girls that just love loving on you and being loved on! They both come to church on their own, their parents do not come (as of yet!), but their grandparents do. Jennifer loves to sing and has a stuttering problem that we are asking God to heal for her. If you ever come to visit, you can be guaranteed you will receive a great big hug from these two!

Alejandra and Cristopher live next door to the church. They are also the only ones in their family that attend the church right now. Their parents have visited but have not become faithful as of yet...we are praying for their family to be in unity and come together for fellowship and the teaching of the Word. These two will be found at the church for any cleaning work day we may have. They are servants and always willing to help out!

Jocelyn is almost 12 years old and has been coming to the church for about a year now. She attends church with her aunt, who is a member as well. Many times Jocelyn can be found assisting her aunt with cleaning the church each month. She is a sweet, but shy, girl and loves the Lord. She enjoys being one of the first to quote her weekly memory verse and enjoys helping out the others when they need it.

After each lesson, the children learn a Bible verse to memorize. We post them on the wall along with their attendance chart. The kids love to get candy for memorizing their verses! It is so awesome to hear these kids quoting Bible verses when just about a year ago most of them could not even tell us the Christmas or Easter story!

STAY TUNED.....we will introduce you to our adults!

2008: Year in Review

2009-02-03T11:02:00.015-06:00

It has been quite some time since we have been able to post an update, so we are going to post a review of 2008 so we can fill you in on what transpired throughout the year. As you may remember, and for those that are just "tuning in", in January we were placed in officially as Pastors over the church that was given to us in November 2007. This church is located in a very small community named Artolita. There are only about 70-80 families living in this area. As with any transition that takes place, there were some that were pleased with the change, and others that were not. We knew when we began that God was going to be the one that would have to "build the church". During the time that we started in Artolita we were living an hour and a half from the church, so we knew we had to make a change and move closer. So in February God opened up a small home near the church that we were able to live in for a couple months until we found something bigger. In April we were able to move into a bigger home that was much closer to the church. Also in April we began having monthly fellowships as a congregation. We started to have dinner together as a church family to help strengthen the bond between us. We continued with the dinners until the rains set in so hard that it made it more difficult for many of our members to be able to walk to church. The rains in our area of Costa Rica begin around mid-May and continue until about mid-November. By June it was already beginning to fill up the river that we have to cross in order to get to the church. So during the rainy season we would have to park our van near a footbridge, since there is NO bridge for vehicles in order to get to the other side! We would walk from the footbridge to the church, which is about half a mile. Since the road we walked was a dirt (MUD) road, you can only imagine what our feet would look like after walking!! During this season all I could think of was the Scripture that tells us..."how beautiful are the feet of those that bring good news"...covered in mud and all! In April we began teaching the church on a series of worship and how important it is in our lives as a believer. During this time the children learned choreography to "Shout to the Lord" and presented it for the first time in June for Father's Day at our dinner.
In July we were blessed by the church with a SURPRISE baby shower for Isabella. One of the ladies in the church, Lizbet, that has been faithful with us since we began in January planned and organized the shower for us. There were many women from the community, as well as the women in the church, that blessed us with many wonderful things for our coming baby! It was a wonderful time of fellowship and fun as we celebrated. One week after the baby shower, our Isabella Micaela arrived 3 weeks before her due date. She weighed 7 lbs. 5 oz. and was 18 in. long. Having a baby at a public hospital in a foreign country was an "experience". I would like to give you just a little idea of what it was like. In Costa Rica the doctors do not deliver the babies, the nurses do. So when you arrive at the hospital they assess you to see where you are in labor. If they feel you are progressing, you go straight to labor and delivery, if not, you go to an observation wing of the hospital. They sent me straight to labor and delivery after I was checked in through the emergency room. In the States, when they see that a woman is in labor, they usually send you on to the labor and delivery wing and take care of you there, from what I remember anyway...LOL! Here...you have to go into the hospital through the ER, sign in, and WAIT to be called back for your assessment! There really is no "priority" unless you arrive by ambulance. Once I arrived at the labor and delivery ward, Dave was told he was not allowed in until it was time for me to deliver. In the L&D ward it looked like I had stepped onto the scene of a filming of M*A*S*H 4077! There were beds lined up on each wall and they took me to the wall that was beginning to fill up. Each woman is to labor in a room with 5-10 other women! This was very interesting! There are NO epidurals offered for any of the women unless they need it for a C-section (not that I use an epideral...just giving you an idea of how different it is here)! Everyone is there laboring in their beds side by side until it is time for you to deliver the baby. That is when they let you WALK to a delivery room, but the nurses wait until the last minute to walk the women there so they can deliver quickly since there are only 2 delivery rooms! When I felt it was getting close to delivery time, I told the nurse to let Dave know so that he could get dressed in his scrubs and come in for the delivery. I also warned the nurse that I usually deliver quickly, so they should probably tell Dave ahead of time...they of course did not listen to me! LOL! I was walked to the delivery room...had two contractions and Isabella literally flew out and landed on the delivery table! Thank God she made it on the table! Dave walked in just seconds after she was born...he missed the whole thing! So in the delivery room...you have about 10-15 minutes to be prepared to go to recovery. The recovery area was another wall of beds where the women are placed to recuperate for about an hour before being moved to a hospital room. After recovery, I was taken to a room that housed 6 women, including me, and their babies! The babies do not go to a nursery at all, except for the first few minutes after delivery. In the rooms, the babies stay with the mothers the entire time. The room was joined to another with 6 other women by a bathroom equipped with showers. This one bathroom was for the 12 women staying in the rooms! I noticed as I arrived that the women had their own towels and bars of soap to be able to shower with, as well as their own toilet paper! At this point....I was ready to go home! LOL! This was not my idea of a hospital stay!! I have to say it was rather difficult that one night in the hospital listening to other babies in my room crying most of the night and having to put up with the heat since there was no air! One funny thing that happened too was when Dave was talking to the nurse after my delivery. He asked the nurse,"Do you have very many Americans deliver here at the hospital?" The nurse replied, "Not many....um....HARDLY EVER!" So we knew we were quite unique...LOL! Also, I met a woman at the hospital while I was in labor that came looking for the room I was put in after recovery. She walked around asking where the "gringa" was. Everyone she asked was able to point her down the hall to where I was...I guess it was pretty obvious! Two weeks after Isabella was born we were blessed to have my mother, one of my aunts, and an uncle of mine come for a two week visit. This was their first trip to Costa Rica and it was such a wonderful time with them. Here in Costa Rica Mother's Day is always on August 15, so I was able to celebrate it with my mother! Dave, my uncle, and one of the men in the church cooked Arroz con Pollo (a chicken and rice dish) for all the mothers in the church. The youth served the mothers their meal. It was a great time of good food and fellowship. The following week we were blessed once again by a visit from our wonderful Pastors and two of their grandchildren, Kyle and Moriah! They were able to bring many baby gifts from the women of our home church, Spirit of Life. Thank you so much ladies for the wonderful clothes and items that you sent! They have been such a blessing to us. During their visit with us, Pastor Craig shared the Word on Sunday morning and we had Isabella dedicated to the Lord. Afterwards we had a meal full of typical foods from Costa Rica prepared by the women and men in the church. This was the first time our Pastors had been able to enjoy some of these typical foods. It was a great experience. During their visit with us our Pastors were able to see where we were living for the first time and they noticed how secluded we were from all forms of communication. The only way we were able to check emails or keep in touch with any contacts in the States was by driving at least 8 miles or so to do internet, and that was usually only once a week. So while they were here they suggested the possibility of us looking into being in another town equipped with more of what we were needing. They mentioned that we pray about it and see what God does. We had always been interested in a town that was nearby, Filadelfia, but we had never been able to find a house available there. Not long after our Pastors left, Dave was visiting a friend of ours in Filadelfia and mentioned to him that we were interested in a home there. He told Dave that a home had just opened up next door to him so we checked into and it was exactly what we were needing: grocery stores close by, internet available either in the home with a phone line or an internet cafe just around from the house, the medical clinic is just a few blocks away and the post office is close as well. Our new snail mail address is posted to the right of the blog. Also in September, not long after finding the house, the rainy season set in full force! We had 12 days of straight rain which brought some major flooding of the river near our home by the church. It so much and so hard that the road leading into our town of Artola, close to where the church is, was completely covered in water and there was no way in or out for several days! There were 3-4 days where all public buses were cancelled as well! After seeing this...we felt it was time for us to move to a town! By mid September we were in our new home and very thankful to be away from so much of the flooding! We are still close to the church and we are able to enjoy the conveniences of living in a town now for the first time since being in Costa Rica. Living in town has given us more opportunites to experience alot more of the cultural aspects of Costa Rica as well. This has been a great experience for our family to learn more about the country we are in. One of the things we learned about Filadelfia is every year on Christmas Eve all of the children go out into the streets and go from house to house looking for manger scenes (portales). All of the manger scenes are put out on this day and the homeowners usually have candy, chips, fruit, drinks, etc. to give to the children. We thought this was very interesting and we were talking to our neighbor about it. She told us it was similar to what the States does for Halloween. We explained to her how evil Halloween is and that the significance behind doing it on Christmas Eve makes so much more sense to us as believers! The children go out "seeking" manger scenes and they are given "gifts". What better way to celebrate the one true GIFT that was given to us at this time of year! The children really enjoyed this and look forward to it again next year! In December we had our annual children's Christmas party for the children of the church. We have about 12 children that come regularly, so this was a fun time to be able to celebrate with them. Our children have grown so much over the year, not only physically, but in their Spanish as well. They have become completely fluent and have no problems at all...well...I should say they have trouble deciding what language to speak in! Usually we hear alot of "Spanglish". There are many times that they try to explain something to us and cannot even remember their words in English! So I would say they have grown by leaps and bounds! Here is a fun example of how Levi has picked up on the language! Mariachi music is VERY popular here and it is not hard for them to pick up on some of the songs. One day Levi was playing around with one of the songs he heard and we were able to get him on video imitating the mariachi singer...he sounds just like one of them! EL GRINGO MARIACHI!!

So thoughout the last year we have had many things going on, but the best thing is we know that God is in control of everything. We have gained some people in the church...and we have lost some...but not one has come or gone without the eyes of God watching. We pray that God will complete his purpose in each one that he calls to be a part of our body.

We ask that you keep us in prayer as we are in the process of obtaining our permanent residency here in Costa Rica. Through the birth of Isabella, we are able to request to become residents and we are in the midst of that now. It is a process of mostly paperwork and TIME! Please pray that everything goes through smoothly and that we have no complications. Getting our residency here will free us up from having to leave the country every 90 days to get a new visa to allow us to stay in the country. This is costly and takes alot of our time. We prefer to plan a vacation to leave the country when the time is right for us...not when the visa runs out on paper! So please hold that up in prayer for us, we need all of our paperwork to come in that we have requested without any problems so that we can present it and receive our residency papers. Then we will only be required to renew that each year which will be so much better!!

We thank each of you for your prayers and we ask that you continue to hold us up in prayer as we seek Him for His will to be done! We appreciate you and your support for this ministry. We pray for you and ask God to pour out His richest blessings upon you!

Merry Christmas!!

2008-12-23T14:49:00.000-06:00

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Pictures of the House

2008-04-22T13:14:00.002-06:00

Here are the pictures of our new home. We were able to get moved in last week and have enjoyed our time there so far! You will see on the front of the house it says "Casa Timo". In Spanish this is "Tim's House". The owner of the home is named Timothy. We felt like this was not a coincidence as we feel that God is allowing us to have this home to be able to raise up Timothys, not only in the body here in Artolita, but also in the future, those that feel called to the mission field in Latin America.
1 Co 4:17 For this cause, have I sent unto you Timothy, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance, of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church.

"Unless the LORD builds the house....

2008-04-14T20:52:00.002-06:00

...they labor in vain that build it." Psalm 127:1 We are so thankful for our Father that has been building HIS house! In February, we were able to let you know about us taking over the care of the church in Artolita that was given to us through a Pastor in San Jose. We are so excited to report on the GOOD NEWS of the church growing. When we first started in mid-January, there were some that were not pleased with the change. Those are the ones that we just committed to prayer and asked the Lord to have His will be done in their lives. The very first service that we had as new leaders of the church, we had 6 children come to church. We knew that God had control of everything and we continued to place our trust in Him. Since that service, we have fluctuated from a handful of children, to 4-5 adults and some children, to having up to 48 people! It is such a blessing to see growth taking place! The last few weeks we have been having 18-20 children in attendance and 18 or so adults as well! We have one gentleman that has been a part of the church since it began 8 years ago. In November, he was battling with several health issues and we nearly lost him. God is so faithful...He has completely healed this man and he just celebrated another birthday! He was able to come to church for the first time in months a few weeks ago. After service, he pulled Dave aside and said that he was so excited to see what the Lord has been doing in the midst of the church. He said that he saw people at church that night that he had NEVER seen come to church before! It was so exciting to hear this good report! We knew that God was doing something, so to hear a confirmation of it was wonderful!

We have our mid-week service on Thursday nights, which is normal here in Costa Rica. For the last several months, Dave has been teaching on prayer: how to pray, the importance of prayer, and understanding corporate prayer. We have designated this night each week to take the time to pray as a body for the needs of the church, our community, our country, as well as many other things. Many of them are learning how to step out and lead a prayer for the evening. It is great to see them growing and learning!

On Sunday nights we have our children's classes at the same time as the adults have church. Many of the children that come to class, come completely on their own! Their parents do not attend church or their grandparents may come every so often. About 12-14 of the children that come, do not have their family with them in church. The children have been so faithful in coming each week, for Thursday's as well as Sunday's. In our classes on Sunday, they have been learning how important they are to the Lord, the love God has for them, and for the last few weeks they have been learning about worship. We love seeing the enthusiasm these kids have each week when they come to class. Most of them are learning basic Bible stories for the first time. During Easter week I asked the children about why we celebrate Holy Week (a huge celebration in Latin cultures). Many of them were not able to tell me the significance or importance of why we celebrate Easter! What a joy it was to be able to share with them such a wonderful story!

Starting in March, we began to implement a Missions Sunday each month. The first Sunday of the month is designated to the body learning that there is a need in other countries, as well as in Costa Rica. They are learning to give offerings that will be used to help support Pastor Serafin Pagan in Jinotega, Nicaragua. As you may remember, this is where we lived for 7 months before coming to Costa Rica. The church has truly embraced reaching out and giving to missions! Many people in this area of Costa Rica, that have steady employment, average around $300-$400 per month! We have had two missions Sunday's, March and April, and just recently we were able to send our first offering to Nicaragua for the Pagan's! What a blessing to see these people reaching down from THEIR needs and reaching out to another country of people that is in need! We had one gentleman in church tell us, "We should do this EVERY Sunday!"

This past Sunday we had our first dinner fellowship as a church body. Dave has taught them about how we are all a family, working together for one purpose, and the importance of fellowship in the body. Sunday was just the first of many to come! We plan to have a dinner fellowship once a month as a family. This past Sunday was awesome! We had a total of 48 people at church, adults and children together. That is the most we have had and we believe it will just continue to grow from here! We had a time of praise and worship, Dave shared a few Scriptures with them about the importance of breaking bread together, and then we ate together as a family. Everyone was so excited and are looking forward to the next dinner!

God has been moving so much this year on our behalf and once again He is moving us!! We have been living in a two bedroom, one bath house that is in a town about 15 minutes from the church. We had been praying and believing God to open up a bigger home for us in an area that is close to the church. Once again, God is so faithful!! We are moving tomorrow, the 15th, to a home that is about a mile from the church! The house is owned by a Canadian man that spends half of his year here in Costa Rica and the other half in Canada. He has been NEEDING someone to stay in his home so that he can leave and go to Canada. We are happy to be able to meet his need! We will be able to rent his home for a very reasonable rate each month. He had the home built to be a type of bed and breakfast where he could rent out each bedroom individually. The house has four bedrooms and each room has its own bathroom, equipped with a shower! It sits on two and a half acres of land and has a river at the back of the property. We will be moving from a house that is about 600 sq. ft., to one that is about 1600 sq. ft! This house will be a huge blessing to us! We will now be close enough to the people of the church and be able to have fellowships in our home. Where we are now, we would not be able to have anyone from Artolita in our home because the majority of them depend on public transportation to get around. We are looking forward to being able to have people from church in our home now, as well as reaching out to new people in our area. There are currently no pictures available of the new house. We will be able to take those and post them in our next update. The owner is returning to Costa Rica in December and he has told us that we are welcome to stay in the house as long as we want to! He has begun construction on two additional bedrooms with bathrooms. He has told us he will resume this construction in the fall. What an answer to prayer this house is! We have a vision to not only be able to use the house to raise up the body of Artolita, but to also have space sufficient for our family and extras! Part of our vision for this home is to be available to help raise up any missionaries that may feel a call to a Latin American country. We now will have the space to be able to house them, as well as any visitors we may have! The house is up for sale. The owner has had it for sale for about 3 years now. We are believing God that we will be able to buy this home! Several things would have to fall into place: finances and the dropping of the price, but we know that we serve a great and mighty God and if this is His will for us it will come to pass! We ask that you keep this in your prayers for us as well!

We have recently found out that our baby that is due in August is a baby girl! We are naming her Isabella Micaela. Isabella means my God is a vow and Micaela means who is like the Lord. The Lord has truly shown us His promises through this precious little one. We found out at 11 weeks of pregnancy that there was a problem with the placenta being detached from the uterus. The doctor was very concerned about it, so she placed me on bed rest for almost 2 months. We spent the time praying and trusting in His might for complete healing. By my appointment at the end of March, the ultrasound showed that everything was completely healed and in place! Praise God! He is so faithful! We had another checkup last week and the doctor said that it was as if there had never been a problem!! Thank you so much to those of you that knew about it and stood with us believing for a complete healing! God has truly manifested His promises to us!

We have been able to set up a new post office box to receive any "snail mail" now. Our new address is:
Charles Davis Anderson
Apartado 117-5019
Playa del Coco, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, C.A. (it is important to put the periods so as not to confuse postal workers into thinking it is for California!)

We ask that you continue to stand with us in prayer as we continue to endeavor in the work that God has called us to. We are seeing His hand move mightily and we look forward to seeing more! Thank you so much for your prayer support for us. It makes us so excited to be able to share with you the mighty things He has done because we know that it is the prayers of all of you that help back this ministry. We love and appreciate all of you and pray His richest blessings upon you!

New Year.....New Beginnings!

2008-02-03T09:46:00.000-06:00

We have moved into the new year and have many new beginnings already in the works! Pastor Marcos came for a visit in January and met with the church body of Artolita and let everyone know that the church has been given over to our care! As with many changes that take place, some were happy about the transition and of course, some were not. We know that God is in control of everything and that He is the one that builds the house. We have now gone to having two services a week, a Sunday service and a Thursday night service as well. We have had some new people coming to the church that we were told used to come years ago. We are so excited to see God moving in this direction and we are truly looking forward to what He will do in the coming months! We are stepping into new beginnings as we move more into 2008! Praise God!!

We are in the process of moving to a house that is much closer to the church. Since November, when we began going every Sunday, we have been traveling an hour and a half ONE WAY to get to the church! Praise God, we have been able to find a home that is only 15 minutes from the church! It is a smaller house than what we are in now, but we are thankful that this will enable us to be much closer to the people that God has called us to! We want to be more available to them for any need that should arise. We will be in the process of looking for a bit larger home, as this one is a 2 bedroom one bath house. We know that it is just temporary and that it opens the door for us to be able to look for something more suitable for our family. This move will also place us much closer to grocery stores too! We have been driving a little over an hour to be able to go shopping and go to the market. Now we have at least 3 major grocery stores within 15 minutes of us and a very large market will only be about 30 minutes away in the city of Liberia! We are looking forward to that as well! We will be moving on the 4th of February and for at least the month of Feb. we will not have any internet in our home. We are planning to be able to have it connected again by March.

Since we are moving to a new town, we have canceled our post office box that we had in Santa Cruz. We will be opening a new box sometime in March. We are asking that if you had plans to send any mail to please hold onto it until we notify you of a new address!

There is one other great annoucement we are very excited about! Like I said....a new year full of new beginnings! We found out at Christmas time that we are going to have another baby! This will be baby number five for us and we are all very excited about this new addition! Jeremiah, Rachel, Levi and Hannah all have plans on how they would like to help out with the new baby! Our baby is due in August of this year!

With all the transitioning taking place in this new year, we ask you to please keep us in your prayers. Your prayers are such a wonderful support to us and we appreciate them so much! We ask that you keep the church covered as we continue to transition there, that God will continue to give us wisdom along with His direction!

Thank you all so much for your love and prayers for us! You are greatly appreciated!! May God continue to bless you always!!

Video link of Rachel's Spanish

2007-12-03T12:48:00.000-06:00

Many of you have told us that you just could not imagine the children being fluent in Spanish. Last week while we were in Artolita, I made a little video of Rachel playing with some of the kids there. This is a great example of her with her Spanish. We have had many people tell us that the children sound like they are from Nicaragua! I am still having a bit of trouble getting video and pictures loaded individually, so here is the link to the video and you can see it there! http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=23268791 In this video, the "ball" they are playing with is a grapefruit! LOL!

Church in Artolita

2007-12-01T21:19:00.001-06:00

Last Sunday, November 25, was our second service in Artolita. One thing we did not share in our last post was the way we have to get to this town! There is a creek that separates the town of Artolita from its sister town of Artola. The only way to get to Artolita is to cross this creek in your vehicle, during the dry season that is! In the rainy season, the vehicles have to be parked near the creek, and then you can walk across on a foot bridge. As of yet, there has only been "talk" of putting in a bridge that will allow vehicles to cross all year long! Since we are in the dry season right now, the creek is not too high, and we are able to cross. The kids love the "adventure" of having to cross the creek each week!

Dave began a series of teachings on the importance of unity. We had about 15 people there, and this was also the service where we told the church we will be coming each Sunday to work with them and minister to them. The church was very open to having us return each week! At the end of the service, three of the youth in the church presented a dance that they choreographed. It was such a blessing to see these youth so ready and willing to praise and worship in the dance!

We have made plans to be able to spend each Sunday after service in Artolita to be able to establish relationships with the people, and get to know others that are not a part of the church as well. Last Sunday was a great day walking around and meeting a few of the families there. One of the ladies we met was named Maria. We had the opportunity to pray for her concerning paralysis she has been experiencing in her face. We are believing that God will show Himself strong and bring healing to her body! After we walked around a bit, and the children were able to enjoy the creek some, we went to the home of one of the ladies in the church named Florita. It was a great time of just getting to know each other. We were invited to stay for dinner with her, before heading back home. It was a great time, and we look forward to what God will do each week as we return!! We ask you to please keep us in your prayers as we make this transition, that it will not only be smooth for us, but for the congregation as well! May God bless the little town of Artolita!

More blessings from the Lord!!

2007-11-28T16:26:00.001-06:00

We have received so many blessings from the Lord lately, but we have to tell you about one of the most amazing yet! While we were living in Jinotega, Nicaragua, we met a Pastor that lives here in Costa Rica in the San Jose area. About 8 years ago he began a work in the Guanacaste area, which is the province we are in. He has had a couple of people over the last 8 years working and Pastoring this church, but it was just getting to be way too much for someone to travel so far every weekend to be able to minister. Our province is about a 6 hour drive from San Jose. Dave was in San Jose visiting with this Pastor friend of ours. Pastor Marcos talked to Dave awhile about the work over here and asked him if he knew where it was. He explained where it was and we found out that the church is only about 10 miles from us when traveling by a mountain road that is near our home. Unfortunately, during the rainy season this road is impassable and not able to be used until it is scraped in the dry season. So the other way to get there is about 40 miles, which takes about an hour and a half. After talking, Pastor Marcos OFFERED the church to us and asked us if we would like to take it over. We knew that this would be something we would need to pray about...and we knew that the Lord would have to provide us with a vehicle so that we could make the drive to the church. While our Pastors were here, we prayed with them about the situation, and when Dave and Pastor Craig went to San Jose to purchase our van they were able to meet with Pastor Marcos. We decided to have one service in the new town of Artolita and see what God was saying in the matter. During the service, my husband and I both just felt like we were at "home" once again. We knew that God was opening up our hearts to receive this church and our Pastors are in agreement that this is the will of God for us. We called Pastor Marcos and let him know that we would be accepting the church he offered! What a gift from the Lord! The building is debt free as well as the property that it is on. There is room for about 75 people as it is right now. The church even has all the instruments for a worship team, there just isn't a team yet! The first service we had, there were about 17 people there! It was such a blessing to see! We will be going every Sunday to minister to them and have church service. Pastor Marcos will be coming to share with the congregation, as he is the original authority over the church, about the transition. We are very excited about what God is doing and we look forward to updating you on the progress!

We have a NEW VAN!!

2007-11-27T15:38:00.001-06:00

We were honored to be able to have our Pastors come and visit with us this month! It is always such a blessing to see them and be able to spend with them! On this trip they were able to bring two of their grandchildren, Nicolas and Madison. Our kids were thrilled to have some of their friends come along for a visit as well!! Since we arrived in Costa Rica our home church, Spirit of Life Church, in Tn. has been giving offerings to help us to purchase a van for our family here. Dave's stepfather, Micheal Watkins, also blessed us this year with a donation to go towards the purchase of the van. We are pleased to announce that we now have a vehicle!!! God blessed us with a wonderful deal on a 2005 model Mitsubishi! He gave us favor with the previous owner by bringing the price down to a more reasonable one. The van has low mileage and it is a diesel van which makes it so much more economical! It is a 12 passenger van, if we are speaking in American terms...but more like a 15-20 passenger if talking Latino! LOL! This is a huge blessing for our family. It now means that we are able to get out more as a family to purchase our groceries. My husband no longer has to fight the rains on the motorcycle during the rainy season to try to get food for our home! We are able to do so many more things together now! PRAISE GOD!!! He is so faithful and so good!! We want to say a VERY special thank you to all that gave to go towards the purchase of this wonderful blessing! We are so overwhelmed at the goodness of God..but it takes special people like you that gave to hear His heart and give towards a need. You are all so appreciated and there just are not enough words to be able to say a proper, honorable thank you! We pray that God blesses you one hundred fold for everything that was sacrificed and given!! We love you all very much and appreciate your support!

Our Thanksgiving miracle!

2007-11-22T20:50:00.000-06:00

We have so many wonderful things that the Lord has done lately that we want to share with you. God has truly blessed us during this wonderful season of thankfulness!! I want to start off by telling you about a Thanksgiving miracle that happened to us this week! With this being our second Thanksgiving away from the States, we were really beginning to crave a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving meal this year. Seeing as how Thanksgiving is NOT a national holiday here in Costa Rica, turkeys are not exactly easy to come by. The going rate for a turkey here is about $50 for a decent sized one. That is a little bit steep for us....so we were planning on just celebrating with a nice chicken and then adding some fixings to go with it. But God had other plans for us! On Monday afternoon we had a very nice surprise!! A turkey was delivered to our home, bought and paid for as a gift for us!! We were so overwhelmed at this gesture and we just knew that God was telling us that He truly is in control! It amazes us to think that something like having a turkey for Thanksgiving is important to our God because it was simply a desire that we had! Our God is so awesome!! We want to say a very special thank you to Dan and Hilda Carter for their wonderful gift of having a turkey sent to us. We pray that God blesses you abundantly for hearing Him and meeting this desire of ours. Thank you so much!!

Here are a few Thanksgiving pics. One of course of our miracle turkey and everyone of us Southerners know that Thanksgiving would not be complete without a wonderful dressing! You can see the girls here having a good time mixing it up the right way!!

October update

2007-10-21T14:26:00.000-06:00

It has been quite some time since I have been able to post an update and I have several things to be able to tell you about! First of all, one of the reasons for a delay in posting is because about 3 weeks ago our laptop was struck by lightening! We have had quite a bit of rain over the last month, which is not too unusual, but periodically we suddenly have lightening that comes with the rain. We really have no warnings when this happens and it does not happen often. So this particular night we had been having some heavy rain and within about 30 minutes we literally had ONE lightening strike in our area and it must have either hit our house, or somewhere VERY close to it. Our computer was connected to a surge protector that was untouched, but we did notice that our cable box for the internet was dead. We figured this must have been what was hit and it traveled to our computer. We are praying that it can be fixed! For now we are using an internet cafe that is directly behind our house. It is very nice to have one so close by!

As of October 1st we have been living in our new home! What a blessing it has been! We are really enjoying it. We have more space in the home, but I have to say one of my favorite parts is having a real washer and laundry room! Before I used a plastic washing machine that would have to be stored in my hallway when it was not in use and then carried outside to be connected to an outdoor sink. This washer had two sides to it, one for washing and the other for spinning the water out of the clothes. It seemed like it would take forever to just wash a load of clothes! First of all...the washer only held, at the most, maybe 5 towels. For a family of 6...we go through alot of clothes...and towels...and sheets! I would put the clothes in the washing side, let them wash for about 15 min. until the washer was done, then have to remove the clothes to put in the spinning side. Once the water was spun out, I would place them in the washing side again to go through a rinse cycle. After that was finished, I would once again put them in the spinning side to remove the water. Just imagine going through all that...and then it starts to rain! The old house did not have an area outside to put clothes when it was raining. During the rainy season, which lasts for 6 months, it can rain almost everyday for a couple hours a day. This is not good for a family of 6 that goes through alot of clothes,towels and sheets! LOL! Thankfully now, we have a great carport to hang the clothes when it is raining! And we have had our share of very heavy rains over the last couple weeks, especially the last 7 days straight! I don't think we have seen the sun for more than an hour in the last two weeks! We have had so much rain, that the country has been under a red alert for flooding. Dave left Saturday with Jeremiah to do our weekly grocery shopping. He had to take the bus and when he got about halfway to Santa Cruz, one of the main bridges there has collapsed into the river! There is only a small area that is still connected. The buses have been taking the passengers to the bridge, everyone exits the bus and walks across the bridge to get to another bus waiting for them on the other side. We have seen on the news many areas of Costa Rica that has been flooding and where roads have literally been washed away!

This is our street coming into town! The road and the river are one!

We have received so much favor through the owner of the house. The house was fully furnished with all appliances, including a new stove and washing machine, but the only thing we were going to have to get was a television. The owner decided to go ahead and purchase a new TV and placed it in the house as well! He replaced the living room furniture, which what he had was fine with us, with a new living room set. He also expanded the carport to where it is the full length of the house now. This is a great blessing to us because we are using the carport for our Bible classes now! For our first children's class in our new home, we were outside under the carport and we had 8 children from our neighborhood come! It was the most we have ever had in a kid's class so far and they all really seemed to enjoy themselves. Our neighbor that was watching from her kitchen window seemed to enjoy it as well! We are so thankful for the many blessings we have been given and now we look forward to new souls being added to His Kingdom! Because of the rains, we were not able to have a kids class last week, but today we had 5 children come and two of them were new ones. During our prayer time today, all 5 children gave their hearts to the Lord!! PRAISE GOD!!

First children´s Bible class in our new home!

We have received favor with the public school director in the town of Brasilito where we wanted to hold weekly Bible studies! The director gave us permission to use his personal classroom on a weekly basis to hold a Bible study. We have been going for four weeks now every Friday night. As of yet, we have not had anyone come, but we continue to pray for the town and invite people to come.

We can't tell you enough how much we appreciate your prayers and support for us. As of this month, we have completed our first year here in Costa Rica. We have seen God open up doors of oppurtunity and we are just so excited to see what else He has in store for this next year.

Mother's Day in Costa Rica

2007-08-25T13:22:00.000-06:00

Last week we were able to experience Mother's Day here in Costa Rica. August 15 is always Mother's Day here, it doesn't matter what day it falls on. We were invited by our neighbors across the street to have lunch and spend the afternoon with them. The lady that lives across the street has 6 adult children and most of them live close by here in Potrero. She and her husband have been having a new home built next door to the house they are currently in. We were able to enjoy lunch with her in her new home! This was a special time for Dave and I because we have been reaching out to this family since we have been here in Costa Rica and this is the first time they invited us to be a part of a family event with them.

I would like to share with you a little of our experience having lunch with them. We knew that they had been raising a pig for a special occasion and found out that it would be for Mother's Day. We enjoyed a huge lunch of two different types of pork, rice, salad, potato salad (provided by yours truly) and a tradional drink made from rice, milk and sugar. I have learned that many times I do not really want to ask about what I am eating. To me it is just better not to ask because whether I know what it is or not, I know I will need to eat what is provided for me so as not to offend our guests. So everyone of us enjoyed our lunch without any question of what we were having. Sometime later, after our lunch had already been consumed, I find out that we were eating pig tongue! If I had known this little bit of information before I sat down to eat, I am afraid I would have had trouble getting it down! So now you can see why motto is...if I don't need to know...I will not ask! I have to say though, that the way it was prepared and the spices used, it did not taste all that bad. Of course, it tasted much better to me BEFORE I knew it was pig tongue! LOL!

After lunch, there was a surprise for our neighbor. Her children had hired a Mariachi band to come to her new home and play for her. She had no idea about this until they walked in the door and began singing to her. It was so cute to see her come in the house from out back and dance her way through the kitchen as the band played and sang. The band performed for about 3 hours. It was a great experience to be a part of.

Later that evening there was a competition to see who would be crowned Queen Mother of Potrero. The votes were based on donations given to the local Catholic church in the name of the mother you want to honor. The winner was our neighbor, Casimira. She was crowned Queen and was able to share a special dance with one of her sons. We have noticed that Mother's Day here is a huge event and it was a blessing for us to be able to experience it here in Costa Rica.

July/August update

2007-08-12T10:33:00.000-06:00

We reached another end to our 90 day visas and had to leave the country once again to renew. We are believing this will be the last time we will have to leave the country to renew our visas for being in Costa Rica. We are in the process of working with a lawyer friend on getting a 6 month visa that does not require us to have to leave to renew it. All we have to do is renew our paperwork every 6 months. This will be a huge blessing to us and will be so much better.

We spent another 10 days in Jinotega, Nicaragua when we had to leave in July. It was a good trip. While we were there, Dave was asked to preach at the Wednesday night service. The following Sunday there was a large group of Americans that came to visit the church, so Dave was asked to translate Pastor Serafin's sermon into English during the service. This was a first for Dave and he did an excellent job.

Trying to get home from Nicaragua on this trip was a real adventure! We left Jinotega on Monday to go to the capital city of Managua and spend the night. This always allows us to be able to take the first bus out of Nicaragua to Costa Rica. Tuesday morning we woke at 4 am to prepare to take the 6 am bus. Our bus left Managua at 6 am and it took us right at 3 hours to get to the border. This is always where the adventure really begins! We spent an hour and a half on the Nicaragua side exiting the country and another hour and a half on the Costa Rica side entering! The bus stop that we need is one hour from the border in the city of Liberia. We exited the bus and arrived at the next bus station just in time to get on the bus we needed to head home. I have to tell you that the "bus system" in Costa Rica has been an adventure in itself to try to learn! In our town of Potrero, we are the LAST stop on our bus route. The buses that go to our town only run 5-6 times a day. So catching the bus at the right time is very crucial. Missing the bus means waiting hours for the next one to come through! So we knew we needed to be in Liberia by a certain time so we could catch the bus we needed to get us to the NEXT bus stop to get us home. We were very excited to see we had made it to Liberia "just in time"! We knew it would be at least an hour to get to our next stop and we should just make it! Everything was going great...until about 30 minutes into the trip the bus starts smoking and you could smell something burning! All there was to do was wait for another bus to come by to take us further on. The buses here are always jam packed with people. You not only have all the seats full...but every area of the aisle is usually full of people standing. So waiting for another bus...we knew the ones coming by would most likely be full! After waiting about 45 min. or so we heard the driver say a bus was coming. Our driver knew we needed to get to our next stop, and he knew that everyone that was on his bus would be fighting to try to get on this one. He told the driver we needed to get to the next town...so he allowed us to get on first. There was no room to get in the front door of the bus so we had to enter the back side door. I get on with Rachel, Levi and Hannah. It was so full that we had to squeeze into a corner of the bus where the handicapped area was. I turned and looked behind me just in time to see my husband step in and put the suitcase in with one hand....and the bus driver SHUT THE DOOR! Dave had one arm and one leg in the bus and Jeremiah was still outside waiting to get on with his suitcase! Everyone in the back of the bus was yelling at the driver to open the door. He finally opens it...my husband and Jeremiah get on...and we were off again! We got to the bus stop and realized we had missed our bus to get home. It began to pour down raining while we were waiting, so we proceeded to get soaked along with our bags! We ended up waiting for about an hour before a bus came through that would take us close to our town...but was not going to Potrero. An hour and a half later we exited the bus and took a taxi the rest of the way home. We arrived home 12 hours after we started our journey! Anyone else want to join us on the next trip? LOL! Now you can see why a 6 month visa will be such a blessing to us!

We also ask you to continue to pray with us about the crusade coming up in January. We are very excited about this and we are praying for God to open all the correct doors for us to be able to secure the soccer field in the town of Brasilito for the crusade. We know that God will provide and meet the needs of this event!

We have not moved into our new home yet. We are still waiting either for a renter to come for the house we are in presently or for the end of September which is when our contract is up.

June Update

2007-07-01T09:39:00.000-06:00

The month of June has been a month full of favor from the Lord. Our Pastors from Tennessee came to see us for about 10 days and we had a wonderful time visiting with them. God really used them to minister to us and renew vision and purpose within us. We are so thankful for Pastors that are sensitive to God's Spirit and allow Him to use them to speak truth into our lives. When our Pastors come to Costa Rica, they always stay at the same hotel and God has opened many doors for them to be able to speak to and share God's love with many of the workers there. One of the workers in particular, Milton, is a manager at the hotel. He, his wife and his son came to our home and had lunch with us and Pastors. We had a great time getting to know him and sharing God's love with his family.

We are in the process now of making plans to hold a children's crusade in a town close to us, Brasalito, in January. God is already beginning to show His favor in this area. Dave has been to the town and has talked to the director of the school there about having the crusade at the school, as well as using the school for weekly Bible studies. He has an appointment to go back in mid July to find out what we need to do to secure the school for this. We are asking you to be in prayer with us concerning this. We want to reach out to the children, but we also plan to have a time to minister to the adults, as well as the youth! There are members of our home church in Tn. that want to come and assist with the crusade. We are believing that the Lord will open up finances and provide for them to be able to come.

We have been asking the Lord to open up doors of opportunity to share His love with people and He has been answering. We have reached out to our neighbors across the street to us many times, but had not seen any interest in them as far as God is concerned-until now! One day a couple weeks ago, one of our neighbors had a problem with his neck. It was swollen twice its size and it was very uncomfortable for this man. He knew where to go for help though...he asked for prayer! Dave prayed for him and asked God to show His love to this man and heal him. The next morning we saw him outside and asked him how he was. He said he was doing great! The swelling had gone down and he was able to sleep the night before better than had before! He knew it was God that touched him.

One day not too long ago, Dave was in Brasalito waiting for someone to meet him for dinner. He started talking to several men that were hanging around and God opened the door for him to be able to share several things about the Lord. The men were receptive to what Dave was sharing and invited him to stay there and watch the soccer game while he was waiting. A few days later, Dave returned to Brasalito and saw one of the men he had been talking with. In conversation, Dave found out that one of the men he had been sharing with a few days before was one of the drug dealers in this town! We are asking the Lord to continue to open up doors to talk to him again and many more like him.

June Update (con.)

2007-06-30T14:23:00.000-06:00

Another area we have found favor in is finding a new home for our family. We have found a house to rent that is less than a block from the home we are presently in. The new house is filled with things that we have desired in a home. It has a beautiful patio, a carport (which we want to use to hold Bible studies here in our town), and it is bigger! The home we are in now has just about 900 sq. ft. The new house, including the carport and patio, has about 1290 sq. ft. The inside of the home is opened up so much more than the one we are in too. It is completely furnished with better furniture. There is a REAL washing machine in the house with a small laundry room. In the house we are in now, the small plastic washer I have has to be taken outside and attached to the outdoor sink. We store the washer in the hallway when it is not being used so that it is does not get taken. The kitchen is bigger, as well, and has so much more cabinet space! Right now we have only 3 cabinets, two small ones above our sink and one big one below!We have found so much favor with the owner of the home. He dropped $150 off of the rent, he is going to put in a NEW stove (gas, not electric, for the wonderful power outages we get to experience from time to time), NEW refrigerator, and a NEW washing machine! He knows that we have a contract on the home we are renting now until the end of September and he has agreed to hold the house for us until we are able to move in! We are praying for someone to come along and want to rent the home we are in soon. This will enable us to go ahead and make the move and still get the deposit back that we put on the house when we moved in. Here are a few more pics of our new home! God is so good!!

Prayer requests that we ask you to stand in agreement with us on:

1.Pray for the children's crusade coming up in January. Pray for continued favor with the town of Brasalito to hold the crusade there. Pray for provision for those that wish to come and help.

2.Pray for continued open doors of opportunity to share about God's abundant love and for favor to hold Bible studies in Brasalito.

3.Pray for a renter to be available soon for the home we are presently in or for the owner of this home to release us from this contract and give us our deposit back! We are believing to be in our new home by the end of July!

4.Pray for a hunger and a thirst for righteousness in our town of Potrero.

Psa 5:12 For You, Lord, will bless the [uncompromisingly] righteous [him who is upright and in right standing with You]; as with a shield You will surround him with goodwill (pleasure and favor).

Happy Mother's Day!

2007-05-13T10:10:00.000-06:00

We want to wish a wonderful Mother's Day to all of you mothers that are such a blessing to so many people. May the Lord bless you today and throughout the year.

We had a great trip to Nicaragua once again. It was nice to see and visit with friends there. While we were there, we were able to attend a quincinera, which is a special birthday party for a young girl that turns 15. It is significant of the young lady entering into womanhood. Katia, the girl that lived with us for some time while we were in Nicaragua, celebrated her birthday while we were there. It was a nice celebration and fun to be a part of this popular cultural experience.

Dave preached at one of the services in Pastor Serafin's church and I was able to spend some time with the youth dance team helping them choreograph and practice new songs. It was nice to see the growth in the young ladies of the dance team as they are continuing to minister.

Youth dance team of Nicaragua

The children's Bible classes have been continuing to do well. The children look forward to coming each week and learning more. It thrills us to see how quickly the children learn the Bible verses and the songs we have been teaching them. Last week we did a lesson on fear and how the Lord is always with us. Dave taught on the story of David and Goliath. He asked the children to raise their hand if they had ever heard the story before...noone raised their hand! It was their first time hearing the story! We are overjoyed at the being able to present these stories to the children for their first time. In two weeks, we will be inviting the parents to come to the children's class with their kids and see what they are learning. It will be a good time for the parents to see what the kids do in class...and will give us an oppurtunity to reach out to the parents. We appreciate your prayers concerning this.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support for this ministry. We pray that the Lord will continue to bless you! We appreciate each of you!

April update

2007-04-14T15:20:00.000-06:00

We pray you have all had a wonderful week and that your Easter was blessed as well. We wanted to let you know how things are going here in Costa Rica. We are continuing with the children's Bible classes every Sunday. They are going well. The children really enjoy coming and having a great time learning about the love of God. We have had as many as 9 children here for class so far! Praise God!

We are believing that through the children's classes we will also be able to reach some of the parents in our community. We are already seeing God open up doors of opportunity to spend more time getting to know our neighbors. The parents of one of the little girls in our Bible class invited our family to spend a day with them at the beach last week. We had a wonderful day of getting to know them and just enjoying time together. Praise God for opening doors and pouring out favor that we have been asking Him for!

Easter Sunday our family woke up very early to go to the beach and have a time of reading the Easter story and thanking God for the things He has done for us. Rachel and Levi made the decision to be baptized on Easter Sunday too. What a joy it was to witness two of our children's baptisms in the beautiful waters of Costa Rica.

As a side note, we would like to add a couple pictures from the rodeo that was in our town a little over a week ago. The rodeo travels to a new town every weekend and they set up in the local soccer fields. There is bull riding, cowboys on horses, and rides for the children. We had a great time visiting each night and watching the bulls.

We have been in Costa Rica now for 6 months, so this means it is time to renew our visas once again. We will be leaving tomorrow morning to travel to Nicaragua for a week long trip to visit with friends there in Jinotega. We ask you to keep us in your prayers during our traveling time and that we will have ease crossing the borders going and coming. We appreciate and covet your prayers. May God continue to bless you in all you do!

Children's Classes started

2007-03-18T13:14:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday morning and today we had a children's class in our home! We had two children that live close by come. It was a wonderful time of watching these kids "have so much fun" as one of the children said! We have been teaching them on the love of God and how special they are to Him. It is such a joy to see these kids so excited about wanting to come to Bible class! We began teaching them a Bible verse last week on the love of God and this week they already had it memorized! One of the songs we did in class was "Jesus Loves Me". Now in the States you could probably say that MOST of the children have at least heard the song somewhere, if not have it memorized themselves. Last week we introduced the song to the children and they had NEVER heard it before!! Such a precious song that so many of us take for granted because we have heard it all our lives. Teaching it to children that have never heard it before brought a whole new meaning to the song and the importance of it. Our hearts were singing as class ended with a fun game with the kids, and the little girl that was here (this is the girl that Rachel prayed with several weeks ago) was singing the song over and over throughout that day! Everytime she came over to play with our girls...you could hear her singing "Cristo me ama"! Jesus loves me!! It was so precious to see the joy on this girl's face as she was singing the words! We plan to continue Bible classes for the children every Sunday morning and we have encouraged the kids to invite their friends to come each week.

Update

2007-02-24T14:55:00.000-06:00

It has been a little while since our last update, so we thought we would let you know how things are going. We have had a little bit of a change with the weekly Bible studies. We had one faithful family attending every week, and they have decided to go to the local Assembly of God church that is also in our town. So for the last few weeks, we have had only our family at the Bible studies; but we are still inviting and expecting people to come. It is taking time to get to know our neighbors around us. We make ourselves available to them and also put ourselves in situations where we can be around them more. For instance, Dave enjoys going across the street and just hanging out with the men that are normally there chatting. We are praying that the Lord will continue to place us in the right place at the right time and that He will open up doors of opportunity for us to share His love. We have invited two families to our home for dinner, just to be able to get to know them better, but we have not had any takers as of yet. We are realizing more and more how different we are than the "normal" American family that lives or visits around here. We think our neighbors are still a little taken aback with us and wondering what we are all about. We actually take the time to try to know them and invite them over. I am sure they do not normally see this with "strangers". Our desire is to see that boundary broken so that we will have more of a common ground with them. We continue to ask the Lord for favor according to Psalm 90, "may the favor of the Lord rest upon us, establish the work of our hands Lord".

Our children have been experiencing many lessons on how important it is to always show and portray the character of Christ. For all of their lives, they were surrounded by friends at church in Nashville. They had neighbor friends too, but the bulk of their friendships came from our home church. This was the same for them in Nicaragua as well. Here in Costa Rica, things have been quite different for them. They have made friends....but these friends come from unsaved homes where Jesus is not the center of everything. The children they play with are not Christians...and our children are getting a taste of how important it is to have the attitude of Jesus. At times..it is difficult for them, but we see them maturing and growing stronger in what they believe and why it is important. Rachel has become a little evangelist! She was out playing one day with one of the little girls that seems to be at our house daily, or outside playing with my girls. This little girl is 5 and on this particular day Rachel had asked her if she was a Christian and had Jesus living in her heart. The little girl said no, so Rachel began to explain to her what it meant. Rachel asked her if she would like to pray and ask Jesus in her heart...and the little girl said YES!! Rachel has been teaching her and showing her different things about being saved. We are so excited to see this little child, who has never known much about Jesus or who He is, learning about Him! Dave and I are praying about starting a children's Bible study on Saturday's and ministering to the children. We know that God has a heart for kids...and this is a tender area with us. We love to minister to children.

We covet and appreciate the prayers of all of our family and friends. We would like to ask you to keep several issues in prayer for us.

1. Pray with us as we seek God's will on beginning a children's Bible class.
2. Pray for divine opportunities to reach out to our neighbors, and that God will open their hearts to receive from us.
3.Pray for us concerning residency in Costa Rica. This is a somewhat difficult task because of all the laws here concerning residency. There is a missionary residency available, but one of the laws states that you must be affiliated with the Catholic church to obtain this.
4. Pray for us to have wisdom each day to carry out His will for that day! We do not want to miss any opportunites that He has for us!

We love and appreciate each of you. Our prayer is that God will continue to bless you in all you do. May His face shine upon you!

We have an address!

2007-02-04T13:46:00.000-06:00

We finally have a mailing address! We have been able to set up a post office box in Santa Cruz since we do our grocery shopping there every week. It has to be addressed just as it is listed. Our address is:

Charles Davis Anderson
Apartado 183 - 5150
Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Trip to Nicaragua

2007-01-22T12:58:00.000-06:00

We arrived back in Costa Rica Wednesday after spending 8 days in Nicaragua. It was a great trip....a bit tiring...but wonderful to meet new friends and visit old ones. I thought I would give you a day by day account of our trip to give you an idea of what it is like for us to have to leave the country and travel.

Tuesday

We awoke at 4:30 am to get dressed and ready for our 6 am taxi to pick us up and take us the hour (sometimes hour and a half) ride to Liberia, the capital of our province. We arrived around 7:30 and knew we would have time to get breakfast before our 9 am Ticabus came to pick us up. Since there is not a terminal for Ticabus in Liberia, the bus would pick us up on the corner of town. We finished up our Burger King breakfast (yes we have one!) and made our way across the street to wait for the bus....and wait...and wait!!

That is the main game that you play when it comes to buses here! So around 8:45 we see a Ticabus heading down the road...gather up our bags and get ready to board...and the bus flies right past us!! OK...what do we do now? Dave ran to the office where he purchased the tickets and found out that was not our bus...another would be coming at 9. It actually showed up at 10! It took us one hour to get to the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua but it took us 2 hours to cross the border and get our passports stamped! Everyone has to exit the bus...and when you enter the new country...you have to remove all luggage from the bus to be inspected. But this time after getting our luggage and waiting in line....and waiting...and waiting...we get to the inspection table and they wave us through...no checking! So we board the bus again and settle in for the three hour ride to Managua, Nicaragua, the capital of Nicaragua. We had a Pastor friend meet us there and he secured a taxi for us to get to the bus station so that we could catch another bus to the town he is from, La Paz Centro. We board this bus and ride for about 2 hours. By the time we reached the Pastor's house...it was 6 pm. We walked up the roadway to the Pastor's home and waiting to greet us was his praise and worship group along with his wife and sons. What a welcome committee! They sang a wonderful song of welcome to us and greeted us warmly. At 6:30...after quickly eating..we went to the church building right next door to the Pastor and enjoyed service with them.

Wednesday

I would like to take a minute to describe the home of the Pastor that we stayed with. This house was built 2 years ago...it is a very small rectangle size home with exposed wiring and beams in the ceiling. The rooms of the house, there were only 4 of them, were seperated by sheets of black plastic. They had two rooms set up for bedrooms, one for a living area and one room was the kitchen. They gave us the best room of their home which had a twin bed and a full size bed. The twin bed, where Jeremiah, Rachel and Levi slept, was a wooden bed frame with a sheet of cardboard on top for the mattres, and a blanket on top of that for some comfort. Dave, Hannah, and I slept on the full bed which had a small mattress (maybe an inch or two thick). Not exactly the Best Western...but like I said..it was their best! We awoke early Wed. am and the Pastor's wife had warm milk, coffee, and sweet bread ready for our breakfast. They took tables outside for us to enjoy breakfast. You will notice in the picture of Dave and Pastor Jose outside that there are two buildings outside as well. The building to the left is the bathroom and the brick building to the right is the shower. Just behind the table is an outdoor sink area for washing dishes, hands, face, and brushing teeth. After breakfast, we waited for a little bit warmer temps before we started our showers. Their outside shower is a 25 gallon bucket of water with a bowl in it for dipping and pouring water over yourself. No hot showers here! We were invited to join a family in the church for lunch so we walked to their home. After enjoying a wonderful lunch, the children enjoyed playing in their back patio with the many children that lived here. Many homes in Latin America have several homes behind them where more of their family lives. This was the case at this house. The kids really love playing with the other children. Jeremiah even rode a pig (although it was very brief!). We had many people while we there comment on how easily our children have adjusted to life in Central America. After lunch and visiting, we loaded up one more time to ride yet another bus to go to the city of Leon. The Pastor has two older children living in this city and going to the university there. It took us about 45 minutes to get there and we had just enough time to eat quickly and get ready to go to a house church that is about a year old in the part of town where we were staying. Dave was able to preach an evangelical message to this group of about 25 that gathered to hear the Word. We were told that only a few of the people that come to this home church are believers, yet the house is always full! After service, we took about 2 hours to walk around the city and enjoy some of the historical features of Leon. We spent the night at the home of Pastor Jose's two oldest children.

Thursday

Around 10 am we left Leon and headed back to La Paz Centro. The Pastor wanted us to go with him to visit several members of his congregation. We visited 5 families, Dave read a passage of Scripture to each family and I prayed for each. It was a wonderful time of experiencing different homes, but each family was the same: very cordial, willing to offer food and drinks for each of us, and just so friendly! At 6:30 that evening the Pastor had scheduled a church service with Dave as the guest speaker. The church building they have is still being worked on. The walls are up and finished, mostly, but they still have dirt floors. It was a great evening of worship, word and fellowship. One funny thing was when two ladies were leaving for the night, they overheard Hannah and Levi speaking in English to each other. They both responded how sweet and cute it was to hear them speaking in English! I told them that English was their first language and they were just overjoyed with that!

Friday

We spent Friday walking and visiting more members of Pastor Jose's church. We visited another 5 or 6 homes and each one the same as before...the families were very friendly and open to have us come and visit with them. Once again, Dave read a passage of Scripture and I prayed over the families. That evening, there was another church service. Dave preached and afterwards each member of the church came through and showed us their love through hugs and just blessing us. We really enjoyed our time with Pastor Jose and his wife Reyna. They have four wonderful children, two of them living at home with them and two attending the university. They love God so much and love God's people. They are servants and truly enjoyed having us in their home. We look forward to going back and visiting with them again sometime.

Saturday

We got up at 4 am to prepare to catch the 5:30 am bus to head to Leon and make our way to Jinotega. We arrived in Leon and waited for the next bus to leave. We left Leon at 7:30 arriving in a town called Matagalpa at 10:30 am. We jump off the bus and walked to the bus station to locate the next bus heading to Jinotega. Our bus left at 11 and we arrived in Jinotega a little after 12 pm! We were tired...but it was so nice to be in a familiar place again. We walked with our luggage from the bus station to Pastor Serafin's house, about 6-7 blocks. We arrived at Pastor Serafin's hungry and Pastor Reina had lunch waiting for us. After finishing up lunch, the children quickly got changed and ready for children's Bible classes that are held every Sat. at 2 pm. This was one of the kids favorites when we were living in Jinotega. They always looked forward to Bible class. We had a good time relaxing and visiting with good friends the rest of the day!

Sunday

We spent Sunday letting the children play with some of their best friends. I met with the youth dance team and helped them choreograph a new song for them to begin practicing. It was nice to see that the youth dance team is still growing and continuing to learn more in the dance to glorify the Lord. That evening was their regular church service and Dave preached. It was nice to see all the members of Pastor Serafin's church once again. We have some wonderful friends there and visiting Jinotega is almost like a second home for us now. Everything is very familiar there...the people are just wonderful.

Monday & Tuesday

We spent catching up with friends and just enjoying time with them. I spent alot of time shopping for things that are much cheaper in Nicaragua than here in Costa Rica. There are so many used clothing stores in Jinotega...and I have yet to find one here near me in Costa Rica!

Wednesday

We awoke at 2:30 am to prepare to catch the 4 am bus out of Jinotega to Managua. Which meant more waiting for a bus! Pastor Serafin and Pastor Reina waited with us. The weather in Jinotega was so much colder than here in Costa Rica!(very refreshing for us!) We arrived in Managua at 7:30 am and made our way to the Ticabus station. The one thing that is important with securing buses in Central America...make sure you are early! Especially going to Managua...you never know when you may arrive (Dave has had several buses break down on him!) and you never know how long it can take to get a taxi driver that will not try to rip you off! God was good to us! As soon as we arrived in Managua we found a taxi driver to take us to Ticabus for a very good price; it is not always easy when you have 6 people and we had 7 large pieces of luggage! We arrived at Ticabus station and waited until 12 noon for our bus to leave. It took three hours to get to the border of Costa Rica. Once we reached the border, we noticed there were many people in line! Several buses had arrived ahead of us. Since the line was so long, they were allowing one parent with children to go ahead of the line. I saw when I went through the line that there was one worker stamping people's passports as they were entering Costa Rica. It took us three hours to enter the country! By 6pm we were back on the bus and heading for Liberia. Our neighbor met us there and we crammed all of our luggage...and us...in his vehicle and finally arrived at our home, tired and hungry at 9 pm!

All in all...we had a great trip to Nicaragua. Alot of it was quite tiring...but we are used to the buses by now! The children are old hats at it now! (Maybe we should join the Amazing Race Family Edition next time....we have had lots of practice at it! LOL) Since arriving home, we have been getting back in the swing of things; school starting up once again for the children, Bible studies every Sunday night, and just regular activities of living here in Potrero. We are seeking God on any new direction He would have us take to reach out to the people here more. We feel the people here are still "watching and waiting" to see what we are all about. We are so different than the normal American families that seem to pass through here. We actually have a desire to mingle and live among the Costa Ricans. Please keep us in prayer as we continue to reach out and show love!

One other thing I would like to add in closing...to catch you up more. On Saturday my husband was doing our weekly shopping in Santa Cruz. When he finished up in the store, he came out to where he had parked his motorcycle (which this parking lot was fenced and has only one way in and one way out with a security guard); well...lo and behold...the motorcycle was GONE! Someone stole it right up under the security guard's nose! Dave filed all the paperwork necessary and has declared it stolen. Now we play the Central American waiting game...and see how long it takes for something to happen. We are praying that God will take care of the whole situation. We appreciate your prayers in this too.

3 months already??

2007-01-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

It is hard to believe it has nearly been three months since we have arrived in Costa Rica. For us that means it is time to renew our visas. Until we obtain residency, which is not an easy task here, we have to leave the country every 90 days and stay out of country for at least 3 days at a time. When we arrive back in country, we will have new visas allowing us to stay another 3 months. Fortunately for us, this means we get to visit wonderful friends in Nicaragua! We will head out tomorrow a.m. by taxi to Liberia (the capital of our province), which is a little over an hour away(by taxi that is....2 hours by moto....who knows by bus! LOL). Once in Liberia we will catch the TicaBus that will take us to Managua, Nicaragua, the capital of Nicaragua. It is about an 8 hour bus ride, depending on how long it takes us to cross the border into Nicaragua.

We will spend the first half of our trip in a town outside of Managua visiting a son Pastor Serafin has in the faith. Dave will be preaching at this church in La Paz Centro. We will spend 4 nights there and then take the buses we need to get to Jinotega, another day trip by bus! Once in Jinotega, we will be able to visit with friends for 4 more nights. We will be returning to Costa Rica on the 17th of January.

We ask that you keep us in prayer as we travel; for safety & protection traveling, ease in crossing the borders going and coming, for my husband as he shares in Nicaragua, and for protection over our home while we are away. We will update you on our trip when we return. Thank you for your prayers!

Luke 10:1-2

2006-12-29T14:21:00.000-06:00

"The harvest is plentiful...

...but the workers are FEW."

One day as Dave was out and about on the motorcycle, he came across this scene. A vast field lay before him of sugar cane ready to be cut and harvested. As he gazed across the field he noticed about 5 local workers out at the front of the field working diligently to cut the sugar cane. Immediately Luke 10:2 came to him and he was reminded how great the harvest is, and truly how few the workers are. As I looked at the pictures, first of all of the huge harvest of the sugar cane, and then studied the picture of the workers in the field; I began to think of how sometimes we can look at the harvest of lost souls all around us and think,"But Lord...how can we possibly bring in this harvest that you have before us? There are so many!" I am sure as these few workers were standing before this large field on the first day of harvesting, they asked the same question,"How can I do this?" How do we bring in the harvest? The same way these workers are cutting the sugar cane....ONE AT A TIME. I know that these workers will not rush into this field and start chopping away, their only goal to just bring it in. No...these workers have to take precaution on how they cut. Cut too high...and you lose some of your harvest. They do not want to damage the harvest they are working so hard to bring in. It is nearly impossible...with a simple machete in hand...to tackle more than one stalk at a time. I am sure they would love to cut down about 10 at a time...but that is not possible with the lack of macninery. One at a time.....
Yes...this is what the Lord is reminding us of as we get geared up and focused on what our goals are for 2007! ONE AT A TIME LORD!! Just bring us one soul that needs you...and that is hungry for you...and let that one soul go out and find one more that needs you. You have all heard the saying...each one reach one! This not only applies to where we are here in Costa Rica. This is for those of you at work...at school...in the grocery store. Sometimes we can get lost in looking at the vast harvest before us...and instead of looking at reaching one at a time...we see how big it is and do not reach any. Believe me...I have been there. So we ask that you continue to keep us in prayer as we reach the harvest of Costa Rica...ONE AT A TIME! We pray that your 2007 is blessed and that everything you put your hands to will prosper. HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

Feliz Navidad!!

2006-12-24T16:15:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas everyone !! We just wanted to take the oppurtunity to say that we love you and appreciate you all so much. We pray that your Christmas is blessed with all the wonders of this season. Thank you all for your love, prayers and support throughout this year.
I thought you might enjoy seeing our "white" Christmas. We took the kids to the beach today...the first time any of us have ever been swimming for Christmas Eve! We had such a good time. I have to tell you....Hannah has progressed so much from the time that we arrived in Costa Rica. She has gone from not wanting to step a foot in the ocean...to boogieboarding!! The kids also enjoyed making sand angels too! Hope your Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are special for you! We love you all and miss you.

Bible Studies Begin

2006-12-06T15:38:00.000-06:00

Matthew 28 tells us to GO and MAKE DISCIPLES. Two months ago the first part of that verse was accomplished; now we are beginning the second phase! Three weeks ago we started having Bible studies in our home on Sunday evenings every week. We have ranged from having noone come to having 5 adults and 3 children here! We are thankful for each one that God has placed in our midst. As we continue to show forth the love that God has for His people here, we trust that the Lord will continue to bring the people. The families that God has brought to us are hungry for the things of God and desire to learn more. We ask you to continue to keep us in prayer as well as the ones we have begun ministering to. We know it is only by God's grace and His wisdom that we will be able to accomplish the task He has before us. We look for oppurtinities daily to reach the people in our community. We do not want to pass up an encounter that He has set before us;for this reason, we covet your prayers! Thank you so much for your prayers and your support for this ministry. We ask God to continue to pour out the blessings He has for you and your family!

What's new

2006-11-11T11:54:00.000-06:00

I thought I would update everyone on what the latest happenings are in Costa Rica. While I was gone to the States for my dad's memorial service, Davi was home with the children. He was able to begin meeting several people that are in our area and are interested in learning more about the Lord. Praise God! One particular family he met on the beach, they are a young couple with an 8 month old baby. We spent the day with them last Sunday at the beach just having a fun family day together. They are a very sweet couple. William works at a hotel that is very close to us and has a desire to learn English. He knows that we want to further our Spanish and has offered to help us with Spanish if we will in turn help him learn English. This sounds like a great trade. So last Monday we were able to sit with him and converse alot in Spanish. We found out he was raised Jehovah Witness but he has many questions! We are praying for him and for his wife, Evelyn. One thing that helped open the door to speak with them is they are from Nicaragua and have lived here for 5 months. We look forward to sharing more with him and his family in the future. Please keep them in your prayers.

We have noticed a few challenges we did not have in Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, many things were easily accesible; banking, shopping at grocery stores, shopping at the market,etc. The main challenge we have faced is the shopping issue. Because we live in a beach community the prices here are pretty outrageous for Costa Rica.In our neighborhood, we have a few little Mom and Pop grocery stores we buy necessities at, but even they can be pretty expensive. We have found out that even most of the locals do not shop here. So we found out about a great market that is 25 miles away. Now 25 miles may not seem far if you are going across town, it may take you a half hour more or less. Here in Costa Rica that 25 miles by bus takes 2 hours when you figure in the stops the bus has to make and not to mention the many, many potholes that have to be avoided! So, last Saturday, the whole family woke up at 5 am to catch the 6 am bus and make it to Santa Cruz by 8 am when the market opened. This market is only open on Saturday for a half day. We found a gold mine when we arrived; wonderful fruits and vegetables, great prices, and many booths to choose from!! Let me just give you one example of the difference in prices from the market to what we can get locally in our neighborhood. Dave bought one pineapple from our local grocery store that cost two dollars. When we got to the market in Santa Cruz we were able to buy 3 for two dollars! Boy...those fresh smoothies sure taste good on a hot night!! :) Another great deal we found on the streets of Santa Cruz are the vendors that just set up along the roadways. We had to get Rachel a new pair of flip flops (all those trips to the beach must have worn them out! LOL). Here, there are only souvenir type shops within about 10 miles, so Dave got her a pair on one of his outings. The flip flops alone cost $10.00! When we went to Santa Cruz we found them for $3!!! So.....we are gaining wisdom in the area of shopping!!

Although some things have been challenging, we have seen God begin to move and open doors of oppurtunities. We continue to pray for wisdom and guidance as He continues to lead and direct us in the path we are to go daily. We appreciate your prayers and I want to say a special thank you for all who prayed for me during the time following the death of my daddy. God has truely ministered His peace to me and I know it is due to the prayers of many. Thank you for all of your kind words of encouragement as well. You are all apreciated very much! May the Lord continue to bless you in all you do.

Our Pastors are such a blessing!

2006-10-23T14:37:00.000-06:00

When we arrived in Costa Rica, our Pastors and very good friends of ours, Pastor David and Sheryl Huffman, were there to greet us and welcome us to our new home. We spent a great week with them as we were getting settled. Our Pastors truly are a blessing from the Lord for us. We are so thankful for the training, love, support, and many prayers that have been sent our way. The Lord birthed in them a vision 4 years ago...and now that vision is beginning to come to pass. Pastors...thank you for your love and support. We would not be where we are today if it were not for you pouring into our lives and loving us unconditionally. We thank God to have you in our lives and we pray that the Lord will always bless you in everything you put your hands to.

In the arms of Jesus!!

2006-10-19T10:33:00.000-06:00

I wanted to update everyone on my dad. I found out yesterday that my daddy went home to be with Jesus yesterday afternoon. I rejoice...because I know that my dad is in the arms of Jesus and has perfect peace and no more pain and suffering. All of the goals my dad set for himself were met before he passed away. One of his desires was to see us in Costa Rica. He was able to do that. Even in the end, when things were the toughest for him, he was still encouraging me to continue on with what God wants us to do. I learned many things from my dad. One of which was no matter the circumstance that my dad was under...I never heard him complain. He always kept a good attitude with everything going on around him and accepted what hit him with grace and dignity. The last converstation I had with him was Monday evening when I called and told him how much I love him. I said, "Hi Daddy!! How are you doing?" Just like I always did...and he said with a weak, but somewhat cheerful voice, "Oh I am good!" Even in the end he would proclaim that he was doing good. Many times it was for the benefit of us around him that love him so much...he did not want us to know how bad he felt or how much he might be hurting. I am sad that he is gone...but yet I rejoice in the fact that I know he is with another wonderful Father..One that will never leave him nor forsake him...One that has given him the ultimate healing that he desperately needed...and One that will continue to give me the peace that I need. I thank God for the wonderful daddy I had...he will always be in my heart!!! I love you Daddy!!!

We have iguanas in our yard!!

2006-10-18T14:29:00.000-06:00

The children's prayers are answered.....the beach is VERY close!!

2006-10-18T14:19:00.000-06:00

God blessed us with a wonderful home!

2006-10-18T14:09:00.000-06:00

Heading off to Costa Rica!!

2006-10-18T14:02:00.000-06:00

The Journey to Costa Rica

2006-10-17T14:11:00.000-06:00

It has been two years exactly since the first time Dave and I saw Costa Rica. Since October 12, 2004, there have been many “adventures” that have led up to the day we arrived in Costa Rica on October 11, 2006. We spent 10 days in intense missionary training in Jacksonville, Fla. Days after returning from that trip, our house was sold, and all debts paid off!! We moved into an apartment for six months, had a yard sale and sold everything we owned. A couple days after that we moved to Guatemala for 10 weeks! What a culture change…but yet an awakening to what God was calling us to. A love for the Latin people grew while there…and we learned many things to help us adjust to the culture. Upon arriving back to the States, we lived in an apartment generously donated for a month by friends of ours at our church in Tn. Then we spent 6 weeks moving from house to house and waiting for a home to open up in Jinotega, Nicaragua. In March of this year we moved to Nicaragua and spent the last 7 months there. In those 7 months, God took us through some crash courses in the Latin culture….some good…some not so good…but everything a part of His plan to prepare us for His work. We established relationships that will last a lifetime…and fell even more in love with the Latin people and the land God was preparing us for. Jinotega…you will always be in our hearts. We found that God was rapidly increasing our training time in Nicaragua….and before we knew…He had opened the doors for us to make our ultimate move! COSTA RICA!!! God is so good…in everything.
We began our move to Costa Rica the last week of Sept. when I began to pack everything up one more time. We moved in with the Pastors in Nicaragua and lived with them for 10 days. By this time, transition was just another word in our everyday vocabulary. On October 10 we left many friends and the life we knew in Nicaragua and made our way to Managua…the capital of Nicaragua. We spent the night in a hotel there to be able to wake up early the next morning and catch the 6:00 am bus to Costa Rica. One very interesting thing that happened in the hotel in Managua was the morning we woke up to leave. We awoke around 3 am…as my husband went to get Hannah out of the bed she shared with me…a tarantula came crawling out from under her and made its way across his arm to the end of the bed. We did not realize we slept with a tarantula all night!! We showed a picture to the front desk clerk and found out he was very dangerous!! Thank God for His protection!!! So this was just another…welcome to the mission field statement!!
We took the 6:00 am bus to CR and arrived around 1 pm. Our wonderful Pastors were there to welcome us to our promised land. A vision that God had placed in our Pastors 4 years ago…had finally been fulfilled! We made it to CR!!!! God is so good…did I say that already? We saw our house that He provided for us, and were just amazed at His goodness. Our house is fully furnished…right down to the littlest things that I was desiring and our children. I was making plans to buy a blender….but God had one waiting for me here. Jeremiah went to his closet and looked around and found a boogie board waiting for him to take to the beach that is so close by! God does not despise the littlest desires that we have…and may not even mention!!
We feel so at peace in our new home and our new land. Our neighbors are already beginning to accept us and God is giving us favor through them as well. We are excited about the work we will do here…but for now….it is all about showing His love to His people! We do not know everything God has for us here…but we know that His will will be accomplished here. His harvest in Costa Rica is ripe and we are ready for some picking!!!
I have to say though that throughout the last two years, as Dave and I have drawn closer to beginning our journey, my dad has drawn closer to ending his. He was diagnosed with cancer almost 2 years ago and he has had a long hard battle since that time. Just before leaving the States to move to Nicaragua, my dad was told the cancer was terminal. My heart was broken, but in my spirit I knew I had to press on to the mark of the high calling that He had called us to. In talking to my dad before our departure and when visiting with him before we left, he encouraged me to not let any of this hinder us from continuing on with what the Lord has for us. I honestly let him know that we will continue on with what God wants us to do, no matter what. I have placed my dad in God’s hands and have asked my Heavenly Father to take care of my earthly father. It has been a long hard road, but the time has begun to draw even nearer for my dad. He is beginning to experience liver failure due to the cancer. Only God knows how long he has left on this earth. But what a journey he has ahead of him, one that will take him to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. That is the ultimate journey that we all long for…to be in the presence of our King. Daddy…I love you and appreciate you so much for accepting the call God has for us and encouraging us in it. God has blessed me with a wonderful earthly father! I ask all of you to continue to pray for him and for strength for me as well.
We love you all…and appreciate your love and support that has taken us this far. You have all been a wonderful blessing to us and we ask God to continue to pour out His blessings upon you. We look forward to letting you know about what God is doing in Costa Rica. Until then…….we remain…in HIS service!!