Busy Bees!

It's been a few weeks since I've been able to get to this blog, but not because we have been sitting around. Tomorrow, hopefully I can post some pictures and write an update! Ya'll come back now, hear?

This week, the next team and prayer requests

So, hope you've enjoyed the recent slew of updates!

Another team arrives in Costa Rica on this Saturday. This week's schedule includes last minute repairs to our van to be able to transport this smaller team around, the menu and schedule for the team is complete, but we still need to do grocery shopping and supply shopping for the team.

This team is special to us! We've been here two years next month and this is the first team from our home church, Hickory Grove Advent Christian Church, in Four Oaks, N.C....whoot-whoot! They travel to Myrtle Beach on Friday, so please pray for their safety on the road. They then depart Myrtle Beach on Saturday and arrive here in Costa Rica just after lunch. Please pray for safe air travel! They will only be able to stay for four days and we have a lot to do. While our church has seen "pictures" of the ministry here, this team is coming to "see" and understand better what we do, and our prayer is that in the future, more teams from home will be coming to Costa Rica! Pray as we serve in the homeless shelter and one team member shares with the people there, pray as they serve in the orphan home, pray as they work at the camp on a couple of different projects that they would be safe in their work, pray for our free-day and our time together here as we work side by side for Him. Needless to say, our family is very excited about them coming and being able to spend time with them!!!

For church family and friends, I will try my best to update the blog every day while the team is here!

Please pray, team arrival and last preparations

The team, 35 members strong, arrives this Saturday afternoon for two weeks of ministry. They are coming from the U.S. and Canada and their ministry will consist of Construction both at the camp and a remote, poor church; Medical Clinics; Children's Teacher Training; "The Pueblito" orphan home and Children's Ministry during the Medical Clinics. This morning I finished combining the Children's Teacher Training manuals (we are combining some CEF material with our previous manual), and now those are off to the copy center. Last year, we trained about 60 teachers with this training. This year we have had an even greater response and are planning on training 90 teachers. Last night we got the grocery shopping list back from Isa, our camp cook, after giving her the menu, and Ken is off doing the grocery shopping this morning. With the size of the team, plus our volunteers (doctors, interpreters, drivers) we will be housing 55 plus people at the camp; two or three people will actually have to stay in our home for everyone to have a bed. Today, I will be moving beds around in our house to make room. We will be traveling with this team to four different locations to minister. Mon. & Tues. half of the children's ministry team will be ministering at the orphan home. The entire construction team will be working at the camp on the Celebration Center building. The medical team will be at a poor church in Cartago along with the other half of the children's ministry team who will be ministering to the children during the clinic. On Wednesday, the 20th we will be traveling with the team to the Guapiles area and along the way having our "free day". On Thursday through Sunday we will be holding a medical clinic in this area along with simultaneous children's ministry. Thursday we will also be doing teacher's training. The construction team will be working on a building project serving a very poor and remote church. On Sunday afternoon we will begin our trip back to the camp. On Monday, the 25th will be another "free day" just to rest at the camp or walk over to Orosi. Tuesday, the 26th, we will be going to Tres Rios, right outside of San Jose. On Tuesday we will be doing teacher training again, the medical clinic will begin with simultaneous children's ministry, but the construction team will be back at the camp working on the Celebration Center building. We will continue ministering in Tres Rios through the 28th. On Friday, the 29th we will do a clinic and children's ministry for one day in Paraiso. On Saturday, the 30th we will be at the camp, cleaning up our mess, resorting ministry supplies and on Sunday, the 31st, the team returns to the U.S. and Canada.

How can you pray for us?
1. Pray for this team as they travel to Costa Rica on Saturday.
2. Pray for the clinics, that people might receive physical as well as spiritual healing.
3. Pray for the children who will be ministered to in children's ministry.
4. Pray for the teacher's training, that this would bless these remote, poor churches and that their teacher's would be encouraged and blessed!
5. Pray for the team members as they minister and our family as we minister (Ken as he heads up the construction projects back at the camp as well as in the remote church, Sherri as she teaches in the teacher's training and works in children's ministry, Heather as she translates in the Pharmacy, Kyle as he ministers in children's ministry and translates, Jordan as he helps in construction).
6. Pray for a harvest of souls, men, women and children.
7. Pray that all that we say and do would glorify God, not because He needs us, but because He allows us!

Clinic #2 - Pictures of Children's Ministry

Our schedule for the clinics and children's ministry team is that we start ministering at 9 a.m. At noon we take a one hour lunch break because some of the smaller, remote churches have to feed us in "shifts". We always have to lock everything up when we go for our break. Today, when I returned from lunch and the front doors of the church were still locked where the children's ministry team was ministering, I found these two boys peering under the door and trying to get in.

These are two of my newest friends, a little girl named Aslan on the left and her brother, Justin on the right. Next to the church where we are ministering is a "precario". A precario is a squatter village with homes made of scrape pieces of metal, wood and so on. The families are very poor. This brother and sister are from the precario. You might notice Justin's very dirty shirt. This is the only shirt he owns he said. Aslan's hair is pulled up into a pony tail, but it is all matted and her "long" pants are actually very "short". Their older sister came in wearing a pair of rubber boots that were two sizes too small. She showed me blisters all over her feet. After I washed her feet and rubbed her blisters with antibiotic ointment, I sent our bus driver out to buy her some new flip flops. I had found out that their Mom & Dad were both drug addicts. Buying sneakers or fancy shoes that could possibly be sold to obtain more drugs was out of the question, but you can't get anything for flip flops!

While we've seen a lot of this in Honduras, this is the first time we had seen this here in Costa Rica. Today, when looking at the building across from the church I noticed a retaining wall with this at the top, broken pieces of bottles to keep anyone even thinking about jumping the wall to steal - away!

Here's the "happy bunch" of kids that greeted us when we returned from our lunch break ready to get down to some serious business. The crowd grew bigger in a rather short of time!

I never did get any last counts from the second and third days of our first clinic. I'll have to get those. This was the second day of our second clinic. Yesterday we had 81 people attend, 24 of which accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and 30% indicated that they would like a Pastoral visit! (While we provide free medical clinics, we expect that the churches that host us will place a high priority on following up those people that we serve). Today, we had 135 people, so I can't wait to hear how many of those might have made a decision to follow Jesus too. Tomorrow is our last day at this location and we have three more clinics to go before the team leaves! Please continue to keep us in your prayers!

6th months...

This weekend we have to leave Costa Rica, crossing the border into Nicaragua to get our passports stamped. We do this every 90 days. This weekend also marks a ministry milestone, in that we have now been here for six months. One thing hasn't changed in the time that I have been here. That is, the understanding that we ALL have natural and spiritual gifts that God has equipped each of us with. God won't use those who are unwilling and fight against Him. He cannot and He will not force us to serve Him. But, He did promise that He would empower us to do His work and He would prepare us for it. I think there is a misconception that missionaries are spiritual Super Hero's. I can promise you that we have been tested over the past six months in our faith. I can promise you that there have been days when we have really struggled with wanting to come home. There have been frustrating days because of language barriers. But, I can also tell you that on those particular days God was present with us! He has used many different ways to meet our spiritual needs and to encourage us in our ministry; emails, an opportunity to have some free time and check our mail and not ironically find that we had received something from home, specifically a letter from our parents, or from our church, phone calls that we "out of the blue" received from friends at home and the list can go on. I guess, what I am trying to say, is that we are ALL "called"! Faithfulness and availability is all that HE needs because He can, and is able, to fill in the gaps. And while I wish I was "Mrs. Incredible", I realize that these times of hardship and frustration are intended to continue to mold me; my attitude, my actions and my heart so that I might be more like Him.

Important Update & Ministry Frustration!

Somedays it is just plain frustrating working with computers or actually not knowing how to work with my computer would be a more accurate statement! I have forever wanted to know how to put a video on here. Really, I would love to know how to make a video, first of all! Well, Katherine made one for her blog and our team of the two and a half weeks of ministry that we did at the Children's Home in Paraiso. She had Heather load it on her flash drive. We downloaded it to my laptop. I can play it on my computer and it is a really nice video. I just thought you would like to know that since I can't seem to get it loaded on here properly...frustrating! I have also been working on a newsletter in recent days. That has not come easy either. Ergh! The biggest frustration is that communication is "key" to missions work. I am a a communicator by nature. I don't like people to feel left in the dark. I certainly don't want my supporters to feel as though we take their support for granted! Please pray that I can get some things "figured out" this weekend on this computer so that I can better communicate with all of you who take the time to read our blog. Thank you for the really nice comments about the pictures, although, keep that in your prayers also. Our digital camera that we have had for three years broke. To replace it here will cost double the price since electronics are so costly here. Right now, as far as future ministry photos, we have to download them off Katherine's memory card.

For anyone reading the blog from the great state of North Carolina, in particular, the Charlotte area; your loved ones arrived here safely on Tuesday afternoon. They are all a hoot! Great senses of humor! Yesterday, they looked more like a demolition crew than construction workers, but they are progressing in their work. By this afternoon, I hope to be able to join them in painting since I was shooed off yesterday when we couldn't see each other due to "dust" and I am an asthmatic!

The Update: The main reason I wanted to post the video was to be able to show more pictures of the kids from the children's home. I thought it would be nice to hear the spanish music and see their pictures. Also the post would have been about the fact that when we left on Friday, Cynthia, the Educational Director told us that we "are welcome back to the children's home at any time and that the doors will always be open for us to serve there". I left with tears in my eyes. Like I have said so many, many times before, we step out in faith to serve and most of the time we return far more blessed! On Friday, not only did we serve the children, but before we left, we went to each individual home, and we laid hands on each mother and prayed for her, her home and the children that are placed in her care as a team. It was a special time! Please pray for a mother who really touched me. Her name is Carmen. We talked to her for just a few minutes after we prayed for her and before we went on to the next house. She has mainly preschoolers in her home that she cares for. She told us that it was such a blessing to be able to have some time apart from the kids when we came and took them from her home to minister to them in another area of the children's home. She is tired, but she is so gentle in her nature with the children and as I prayed for her, she lifted her hands to the Lord. Her deepest desire is to be a blessing to those little ones that the Lord has entrusted in her care!

How can you help minister to these 115 children and also the mothers? Begin to specifically pray for how you might take part in "Operation Orphan". We will be sending out a letter soon through Global Outreach Mission explaining a Christmas party that we will be hosting for the Children's Home at the camp. Our desire is to serve them through a day-long children's program, again pulling in the Youth Group from our church in order to lead them in serving their people!