Thursday, November 20, 2008

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!

1 comment:

Patty Honeycutt said...

Oh my! I have been praying for you double time since reading this!