Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Thank you to all of you who have remembered us back home as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. Thank you for your well wishes via cards and emails!

We will be celebrating by me cooking for 19 Ticos who we consider dear friends and our Tico family. They are our right hands, so to speak, and work with us and for us at the camp. Without their support, we would not be able to do what we do. This is our way of sharing our American tradition with them.

In the midst of all of this activity, the camp is hosting a Pastor's retreat beginning on Friday evening and lasting until Saturday evening. We expect a minimum of 300 Pastor's and up to as many as 500 to be in attendance. Also joining us for our Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, but coming in for the Pastor's retreat will be the Vice-President of Global Outreach Mission, Len Lane. He will be staying here for a week and we have several meetings to attend with him at the camp with architects, contractors etc. as we prepare for upcoming construction teams.

He leaves next Thursday and on Friday arrives the team from Threshold Church in Charlotte, N.C. as they minister at the camp doing a week-long VBS. Today, we will finish the shopping for the Threshold team, the staple foods since we have so much going on before their arrival. Danielle was a bit embarassed on Monday when we left PriceSmart (our Costa Rican Sam's Club) with four shopping carts full of food.

Needless to say, there may not be too many posts over the next week, but I will see what I can do. On that note, the following are our favorite Thanksgiving verses taken from I Chronicles 29:11-13.

"Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O Lord, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. Now therefore, our God, we thank You, and praise Your glorious name".

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you, our family, our church family, dear friends and supporters. We cannot express to you how much we miss you during this holiday season, how blessed we feel to have you as a part of our lives, but more importantly a part of this ministry with us! May God continue to bless you abundantly and beyond what you ask for.

With much love and gratitude,
Ken & Sherri, Danielle, Heather, Kyle & Jordie

One step forward, two steps back!

Ken went down to the camp pool early this morning to give it a cleaning since we had a school renting for the day to have a party. He returned to the house rather quickly to tell me that the camp had been robbed again (second time in one week) and that this time they stole the pool pump. (insert eyeball roll, here) Last Thursday in the middle of the night someone used tools to cut themselves into the camp through the fencing, stole the battery out of the camp truck, but before they did that, they shut the power off to the camp at the road! This disabled the sensor lights in the driveway. They also cut and removed the brake lines and stole tools that were in the truck. Last night, they used tools again to cut the lock off the pump house, removed the PVC piping hooked up to the pump, and then tore the electrical wires away from the pump itself. They also followed the conduit lines away from the pump; one is for water to the pump and the other is for the electricity and cut the conduit and pulled the wires out. Not too long ago we had drained, cleaned and painted the pool in preparation for the upcoming short-term teams and also rental groups. It was a lot of work for a week for the team! Without the pump and chemicals (I forgot to mention that they stole those also) it will be difficult to maintain the pool. Our initial phone calls to pool supply stores has the cost of a replacement pump at $1,000. Needless to say, while filing a police report, we were informed that several area businesses had been hit in the last week around the Orosi Valley. The police don't expect it to end any time soon with the holidays approaching and just the fact that there are a lot of people with drug problems in this area. Last week, the police strongly recommended that we not leave anyone at home by themselves, adult or teenager. Please pray for our safety here!

Today, Kyle and I thought something had hit our house when we were inside and we heard a loud, deadening noise. It startled both of us and we asked each other "what or who just hit something against the corner of the house". We found out on the news that we had another quake here with the epicenter only being about 25 minutes away in Cartago.

Tonight, we spent some time putting the finishing touches on Heather's birthday party preparations for tomorrow evening. She will be celebrating her 16th birthday on December 3. In Costa Rica, you have a "coming out" fiesta for your 15th birthday and a formal ceremony led by your Pastor or Priest complete with attendees (equal to a bridal party), a father-daughter dance and lighting of ceremonial candles. We have 60 guests expected for Heather's ceremony tomorrow night as she celebrates her 16th birthday, but in the 15th birthday Costa Rican tradition. I hope to be able to post some pictures over the weekend of this traditional Costa Rican milestone!

Wobbly!!!

Last night I experienced a first! At some time between midnight and 12:15 our dog, Luna, began to bark loud enough that she woke me up. I noticed that the front gate to our home was making a clanging sound. I got out of bed to see who might be trying to enter, but when my feet hit the floor, I had difficulty standing still. I felt unsteady and as though my body was swaying from side to side. I spent most of the day with a terrible migraine headache and knew that my blood pressure was up from the pain in my head. While the headache was gone, I figured I must have gotten out of bed too quickly and was dizzy. The barking of the dog and clanging of the gate had no impact on the rest of the family! Needless to say, in Spanish class this morning I mentioned to Marjorie that I hadn't felt very good last night and explained my apparent "dizzy spell" to which she broke out in laughter! She informed me that we had a 7.0 earthquake in the middle of the night and I wasn't dizzy at all; that's just what it feels like when you are in the middle of one! While it was not any "dish-breaking", "pictures falling from the walls" event, it was about a minute of a constant trembling, but strong enough that I needed to plant my feet apart from each other and lean into our bedroom wall for support! A lot of our neighbors slept through it much like my family, but then some were able to confirm to my family that I wasn't crazy, as they had experienced the same effects! Marjorie says that in December we will feel more frequent tremors and not only did we have Spanish class today, we also had a lesson in earthquake safety! Well, we've mastered the "hurricane" procedures, now it's on to earthquakes :)

Busy Days and Perspective

The last couple of days Ken, Kyle & David have been working on building the above stage inside the Celebration Center of the camp. This morning this picture was taken of them putting down a second coat of paint. This stage is in preparation for an upcoming Pastor's Conference that is being held in Jardin Sagrado the last weekend of November. It is expected that 300 to 500 Pastor's will be attendance during the weekend, coming from all over the country. The church that is planted at the campground will also be able to use the stage as well as rental groups who have special services. While David & Katherine were visiting our house last night, it dawned on all of us that lately, a lot of our pictures on our blogs were just showing us working around the camp and not doing a whole lot of ministry. A lot of the work that we have been doing lately is for rental groups, upcoming short-term missionary teams that will be coming down from the U.S. and Canada, as well as the day-to-day maintenance and operation of the campground itself. It's a lot of hands and knees work! I am thankful that all of us at the camp are on the same page as far as reaching out into our community and that we have a strong drive to reach outside the gate of the camp! None of us ever wants to be so "caught up" in the administration of the camp, that we are too busy ourselves to serve outside of it. While cleaning the pool, building stages, cleaning cabins, bathrooms and all of the other things that we do to keep the camp "running" so that other ministries, whether it be Tico groups or short-term teams may carry out their ministries is ministry, we too, have a need to minister to others...it is why we are here! On November 27th we will be ministering to our camp employees and their families by serving them Thanksgiving dinner prepared by Katherine & myself. Costa Ricans do not celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. What better way to share our tradition with them and what better time for them to hear from us how thankful we are for each of them and how they serve us! School gets out in mid-December so we are in the process of planning a family activity day at the camp. Our weekends are booked with rental groups from now until mid-March and between Dec. and mid-February we will be hosting four short-term teams. Please continue to keep all of us here at the camp in your prayers as we serve and as we reach out to proclaim the Good News of our Savior!