Costa Rican Independence Day

Today we celebrated the Independence of Costa Rica. Our school held a special assembly to sing national hymns, hear stories of the national history and see a flag presentation. To celebrate, Reagan marched in a parade around our small campus with the other kids at the preschool and his teacher, Hulda. I felt especially patriotic because inside me is a baby who will be a Costa Rican citizen. This is his or her country of origin. Praise God for this special country.

New People

We are meeting wonderful new people here in San Jose. Of course we are making friends with the other north americans who are at the language school to study, but we are particularly excited about our new tico friends.

Aida and Elsie, our next door neighbors are two very sweet ladies. They are a mother and daughter age 60 and 92. They invited us to their house for cafesito, which included coffee, tea, pasteries and little sandwiches. They were very patient as they spoke slowly in Spanish to get to know us. Apparently, we are the fourth family of language school students who have rented this house, so they have befriended the other families and helped them to progress in Spanish. They told us that the difference between Catholics and Christians is that the Catholics believe in Mary and God, and Christians believe in Jesus Christ. We hope to further than conversation in the future.

Rosa is a Costa Rican friend who is helping me learn to cook some new foods. She's made gayo-pinto (a delicious meal of rice and black beans with cilantro), pollo con tomate (chicken with a spicy, tomatoe, chile sauce), guacamole and fried plantains. She is showing me the tico way of life and helps us practice Spanish even though she gets excited and talks way too fast.

Fernando is a driver who works with people from the language institute to transport their massive amounts of luggage from the airport. We mentioned to him that we had heard that only Costa Rican citizens are allowed to have cell phones since the government has a monopoly on the phone services. He confirmed this, but told us that he used to work for the telephone company. We told him that we were wanting a cell phone for emergencies and especially to get a hold of each other when the baby comes. Two days later he came over to our house with a brand new cell phone. He had waited in a long line and put a cell phone in his name so that we could use it while we live here. What a blessing.

Just today, Mark was making an emergency run to the convenience store for diapers and met the Russian store owner, Alexander. He was showing Mark the scars and bullet holes on his arm, and told him that he has killed three thieves who were trying to rob his store. He said that our neighborhood is safe now because other hoodlums have heard what happens to vandals in our neighborhood. We're not sold on that story, but anyway, conversation ensued. In Spanish Mark told him that the problem is the same in north America, Costa Rica, Russia and all over the world. We all have wicked hearts that need forgiveness from God. Mark was informed that the god of Russia is vodka, but he would like to eat a meal with Mark and talk more. Wait, what country did we move to? We didn't expect to live as US citizens in Costa Rica and share the gospel with a Russian in Spanish. What a multi-cultural experience. Praise God for all these colorful people.

New experiences

We're relearning the basic functions of life. We don't want to transfer our north american ways to a new place. Instead we want to learn to do things the Costa Rican way. We're trying to learn from our neighbors and other locals we bump into so that we learn to live like Ticos.

Some new experiences have come our way as a result. We don't have a car, so learning to get around on public transportation is paramount. We're learning how to walk safely on the streets, constantly dodging the cars which DO NOT yield to baby strollers or pregnant women.

For instance, I crossed a major hurdle earlier this week when I went grocery shopping by myself for the first time. The process starts with a half mile walk in the rain on streets that have no shoulder and then slope off into a deep trench. Once in the store, I use my fledgling Spanish to try to read labels and ask attendants for help. The prices are very high, so I usually about die as I hand over my debit card. To get home, I load my arms with all my bags and scurry across a busy street so that I can hail a cab going in the right direction. Once inside I try to give directions to my home in Spanish and fumble in my purse to find the right coins of colones to pay the driver. It's an adventure.

Yesterday I took the bus with a friend to do some shopping at Office Depot across town. The bus was incredibly crowded. Before any new people could get on the bus, some had to exit the back of the bus. Then we all inched back in the aisle to add the new people in front. Each stop was a new shuffle with my pregnant belly bumping people. The whole time we were trying to stay aware of who we were touching to make sure we weren't being pick pocketed.

La Paz

We took a day-trip about 2 hours out of San Jose to the La Paz Waterfall. Mark's brother, Tom, was in town, and we wanted to explore part of this beautiful country with him. The state park surrounding the waterfall has a humming-bird area, a butterfly garden and aviary. We tried our first cup of hot sugar-cane milk. Wow, I could drink that every night before bed and sleep with sweet dreams.

It poured rain all three hours that we were at the park, but our ponchos worked great, and Reagan loved splashing in the puddles. On the trail, he loved being in his "tent." Really, it's a hiking pack with a rain canopy.

Vosses move to Costa Rica

We first heard the word, "Honduras" 9 months ago. Since then God put into action a whirlwind of circumstances which led to our decision to follow God to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to work as church-planters. Mark will be a pastoral intern at Impact Church. He will also be simultaneously completing and teaching their church planting seminary. In other words, he will take a courses one semester, then teach those courses the following semester while taking new courses. The church was started 8 years ago by 3 missionary families, and is now a church of 1000, 500 of which are new believers. Four other daughter churches have also been planted in the past 8 years. Impact Church would like us to be part of a team planting a 5th church within our first 2 years in Tegucigalpa.

All of this background is to explain that 3 weeks ago we moved to Costa Rica for language school. We spent the 3 months prior to our move selling our belongings, filling out endless international paperwork, traveling to say goodbye to friends and family, sharing the vision that God has for Latin America, preparing our house for the market, and selling our automobiles.

The day of our move to Central America was amazing. Mark’s brother, Tom, flew with us and was immensely helpful with our luggage and with setting up technical equipment at our rental house in San Jose. We anticipated huge luggage fees for the 16 bags that we checked, but somehow American Airlines only charged us $400. At immigration in Costa Rica, we arrived to find more than 200 people waiting in line to be processed, but as we walked up to join the queue, an attendant noticed our two year old and waived us into a line with only two people waiting. We didn’t know if we had all our international paperwork correct, but immigration barely glanced at our passports and granted us entrance. We also expected intense scrutiny from the customs official because of some electronic equipment we were bringing to Costa Rica, but the gentleman didn’t open a single bag and charged us no customs fees. We know that these conveniences are insignificant on the scale of God’s great acts of love toward mankind, but we want to acknowledge them as blessings from Him. We know that many of you were praying for us on that day, and want you to know that God used your words on our behalf.

We are attending school four hours a day at el Instituto de Lengua Espanola. It is a school specifically for evangelical missionaries who are preparing to serve in Spanish speaking countries. They have been successfully equipping missionaries with language and culture skills for more than 65 years. The campus is about a mile from our rental house, so we walk a lot each day. There are more than 100 students studying here. Mark is starting as an intermediate student since he began studying Spanish at age five. He is thankful that his Spanish instruction has flooded back into his mind after 20 years of storage. Monica is starting as a novice and is enjoying classes in phonetics, grammar and conversation. Reagan loves his pre-school. His teacher, Hulda, speaks only Spanish, so he is hearing a new language and responding well.