June Update (con.)

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!

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

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

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

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!

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

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??

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

"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!!

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

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

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!

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!!

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!!