El Instituto de Lengua Espanola

Over the past year in Costa Rica, I have posted some of the interesting things that we have done, difficult or joyful situations, answers to prayer and other significant occasions. But I also want to give an account of daily life. For the past year the hours between 7AM and 1PM have looked like this: We load up our double stroller (suburban)with the kids and four backpacks. After a one mile walk to school, we drop the kids off at their kinder classes. Reagan's classes are taught completely in Spanish, so he already functions very well in Spanish. The kinder program includes crafts, kicking balls and running in the gym, singing, bible stories, outdoor playground, indoor toys and more. Clarissa is the only baby in the nursery so she has one on one interaction with a sweet Spanish-speaking Costa Rican.

Mark and I attend four hours of class every morning, including classes in grammar, conversation and phonetics. There are about 100 adult students on the campus and also a high-school, primary school and kinder program adjacent to the adult education buildings. Two days a week we have chapel services with worship and teaching time in English. This has been very beneficial for us. When we worship at our Spanish-speaking church on Sunday, we are often concentrating on deciphering the language, so the chapel service rejuvenates us. We lead music once a month for the school chapel, and Mark has taught messages both in English and Spanish. We have many wonderful friends among the other missionaries at the school. We are all preparing to go to different Spanish-speaking countries to share the great message of Jesus Christ. It is wonderful to spend time with incredibly dedicated Christians. This year has been a blessing as we have not only begun our journey of learning a new language, but also have seen the example of many wise and experienced believers.

When we are done with classes at noon, we hurry to load up our stroller and try to beat the afternoon rain. If the rain has already begun, we don rain jackets, pull the plastic rain guard over the double stroller and grab our umbrella. It's another one mile walk back to the house. Reagan eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the way home so that he and Clarissa can take a nap when we get to the house. We try to do our homework while the kids take naps, then play together as a family, eat dinner, do more homework and pack up the backpacks for the next day. And then we repeat the process over again the next day.

In a few days I'll be writing about graduation and our move to Honduras and this routine will all turn into a memory. But it has been a great year and God has used our daily life just as much as the highlights to accomplish His work in our family.

US Citizen

How many trips do you have to make in taxis to receive a US passport for a baby born in Costa Rica? SEVEN! Officially, Clarissa Elena was a US citizen from the moment of birth, but it was still necessary to complete a matrix of paperwork to receive her birth certificate, passport and social security number. So after 2 trips to the hospital records department, 2 visits to the Costa Rican Embassy, 2 excursions to civic registration and 3 appointments at the US Embassy, we hold Clarissa's paperwork in our hands. This is good timing because we are moving to Tegucigalpa in THREE weeks. We will say goodbye to our friends in Costa Rica, board a plane with one-way tickets, and arrive in Honduras. (That is if we can survive as we take graduation exams at language school and pack our 16 suitcases which hold our earthly possessions.)

There are many changes in front of us. We will be changing from a completely outdoor lifestyle to an indoor lifestyle. Without a car here in Costa Rica, we walk everywhere, miles every day. We walk to school, the grocery store, restaurants and stores. But Tegucigalpa is too dangerous to walk, so we will always travel by car. In Costa Rica we have beautiful parks, including a playground directly in front of our house. Tegus does not have parks, so we will probably make endless outings to McDonalds to let the kids play in the playland. This will be an adjustment for us, but we are willing to make this sacrifice to learn from and serve with the Honduran people.

We do not yet have a house or a car in Tegucigalpa, so our first weeks will be spent in search of these two things. A family from the church will be hosting us for 2 weeks while we look at rental houses and shop for a used car. Ten days after arriving, Mark will begin his work and studies at Iglesia Impacto. But we are comforted by the fact that we arrived here in San Jose, Costa Rica without very many details worked out, and God orchestrated things very specifically. If fact, it may be that it is easier to trust God and be flexible when not everything is planned. That way we don't have a specific expectation as to how life will look. And it's pretty exciting to have nearly everything a mystery.

Selling the house

After 10 months on the market, we finally have a contract on our house in Houston. We are so thankful. Our dear neighbors and friends have been incredibly generous while the house has been for sale. They have mowed the lawn and cleaned the house to keep it looking great for showings. We are blessed to have such fantastic people in Houston. The man who is buying our house seems to be in a hurry and wants to sign final papers on April 20th. So the next 11 days are going to be crazy. The people who are buying the house live in Australia. We are in Costa Rica. And the house is in Houston. This is going to be a nightmare international transaction. I think we will have to go to the US embassy to sign papers in front of a US notary. We anticipate that being an all-day errand. Meanwhile, our house still has our furniture in it. So we have to sell all our furniture in the next 10 days. Each piece is listed on Facebook, Craig's List and another web site. We can't wait to stop paying the mortgage, water, trash, gas, house insurance, sewer and electricity bills, but this really brings things to an end in Houston. We realize that when the house and furniture are gone, everything we own will fit in suitcases. And this very well may be the last asset that we have. It makes things feel very final. We are thrilled to follow the exciting plan that God has put in front of us in Latin America, but we still love North America as well.

Clarissa's Tico Party

There is an old tradition in Costa Rica that celebrates the entrance of a child at 40 days old. Many women do not venture out of the house for the first 40 days except for doctor appointments. Although we were not able to keep that part of the tradition, we held a Tico party to celebrate Clarissa's 40 days. Ten of our Tico (Costa-Rican) friends came to our house to see her. We had a wonderful time speaking Spanish for the entire night. We served a Costa Rican style meal of arroz con pollo and other appetizers. Monica played her violin and Mark took a few minutes to talk about our thankfulness to God and our desire to see Clarissa learn to understand who Jesus Christ is and what He has done for her.

Birthday Boy

Reagan turned THREE! We celebrated by meeting some of his friends from school at the local Burger King. It was a wonderful treat to have Grammy and Papo (Mark's parents) in San Jose for his birthday. The kids enjoyed eating burgers and playing in the indoor playground. Our sweet little boy has had some health problems recently. The day after Christmas we awoke as he had a seizure. Over the next five weeks he had five more, four of which happened while grandparents were in town. After several trips to the ER, a CT scan and an EEG, Reagan was diagnosed with epilepsy and began treatment with medication. The meds have changed his personality a bit, making him a bit aggressive with a shorter attention span. But we are thankful that he has been seizure-free for the past five weeks. We are so thankful for the wonderful health-care that is in San Jose. We have wonderful doctors including a pediatric neurologist at a nearby hospital. God has protected Reagan and is a good and wonderful God.

Welcoming Clarissa

Clarissa Elena joined our family on January 29. She is a beautiful, healthy girl. The joy of her arrival was surrounded by lots of drama. For the weeks preceding Clarissa's birth, we were horribly sick. At one point we didn't know if Monica would be strong enough for delivery or if Mark would be allowed into the delivery ward due to his sickness. Mark ended up missing 13 days of school. Our friends here at the Spanish Language Institute took wonderful care of us. They brought us meals every night, took Reagan to the park to get him out of the house and brought us groceries. One brave couple even came into our germ-filled house to wash the dishes that were piling up. God's timing was perfect. Monica felt better for one day and went into labor that very night. Mark felt well enough to be in the birthing room wearing a surgical mask. Deliver was swift and intense. We arrived at the hospital at 3 AM and the doctor told us that we had a baby girl at 9 AM. Clarissa was just over 7 pounds at birth with a head of light brown hair. Reagan welcomed his baby sister by tickling her feet and holding her hand. Our parents arrived a few days later and Reagan enjoyed time with grandparents from both sides of the family for three weeks. We love being a family of four.

Baby Showers

My dear sister, Tonya, planned a virtual shower for me online. It was so cute. My girlfriends from all over the United States visited a web site where they could guess the gender of our baby, suggest bilingual baby names and take quizzes about the unique details of our coming child. Many of my dear friends sent gifts to my parent's house so that they can bring them down to Costa Rica when the baby is born. I was so touched by this gesture of kindness.

Another party was being planned that took me quite by surprise. When I entered a friend's house to run an errand, I was astonished to see 25 of my fellow students and neighbors gathered to shower our child with love. The ladies had gone to great extent to bake special dishes and were very generous to provide many special gifts for the baby. They of course played silly games where each woman had to tear off a strip of toilet paper that she though was the size of my very pregnant belly. When we sold or gave away all of our belongings about 8 months ago, I specifically remember wondering, "how are we going to get all the things that we need for a baby in Costa Rica?" We weren't able to move all of the items we had used for Reagan. I just had to believe that God had provided for us once and that He would provide again. Little did I know that He would use an online shower and a surprise party to stock us with diapers and baby-wipes and cute clothes for our coming baby. Thank you to my classmates, neighbors and friends who planned that special morning.

Bryan is in town

Mark's best friend, Bryan, came to see us for a week. He's fluent in English, Spanish and also in Chinese. With some strange stroke of fate, he sat next to a Chinese woman on the flight to Costa Rica and spoke Mandarin with her for 3 hours before landing in Latin America. You can image the torment of his poor brain as he began speaking in Spanish with us when he arrived at our house. It was so funny to hear words come out of his mouth in all three languages until his brain finally settled on the correct idioma. While we were in school Bryan investigated different parts of San Jose, and also visited a rain-forest park complete with toucans.

Christmas Time

A few days before Christmas an impromptu party was planned at one of the student's house: 60 people showed up. I guess that shows that many of us had no plans and needed a way to celebrate the holiday together. We enjoyed fabulous traditional foods and enjoyed the company of many other people who had no family in town. On Christmas Eve, we made a construction paper nativity with Reagan and let him glue down the characters as we told him the story of Christmas. He loved hearing again and again how Jesus was born in a barn and was laid down to sleep in a manger. The next day we were able to skype with family and Reagan opened various gifts via skype from his grandparents and aunts and uncles.

The beach

At the end of the school semester we traveled with three other families to a beach for some relaxation. One family had completed their language training and was moving on to Ecuador for medical missions. We were very sorry to see them go because they had become close friends. Our days at the beach were full of sunny skies and blue water, a great way to wind down from four hard months of studying.

Thanksgiving

We were so blessed to have our dear friends, Michael and Heather with us for Thanksgiving. We celebrated by spending 3 days at a nearby volcano. Alas, the volcano stayed shrouded by clouds the entire time that we were there and we never saw even a peak of the cone let alone the glowing lava. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time enjoying the hot pools which are naturally heated by the internal lava from the mountain. And Michael and Heather enjoyed an exciting (if muddy) zip line through the rain-forest canopy.

miedo o creencia (fear or belief)

In just a few short days, God gave us 3 great opportunities to choose trust over fear. Last week the San Jose news ran a program about a park in our city that has been taken over by a Chinese gang. The police gave public notice that they leave the park between the hours of 10 at night and 5 in the morning because they are afraid of the gangs that deal drugs and sell arms in the park. This park is 3 blocks from our front door and we walk through it every morning on our way to school. Will we choose to fear or believe? A few days later we flew to Tegucigalpa, Honduras to visit the church where we will be serving after language school. When we arrived and were greeted by the pastor of the church, he informed us that a woman from the church had just been kidnapped and was being held for ransom. Unfortunately, this has happened several times this year because the people at the church are fairly affluent. Will I choose to panic or trust as I follow God to the place He wants us to serve? The night that we returned from Honduras, our city was without power because someone STOLE one of the main power lines. (The copper inside the power line is worth a lot of money.) So we lit some candles, grabbed flashlights and sang songs and told stories to Reagan. A few hours later the power returned. At about 9:30 we heard some strange sounds and some loud thumps on our roof. There was an intruder on our roof. Mark grabbed our huge maglight, yelled in Spanish for the thief to leave and called our guard. The guard checked our roof to make sure the intruder had left, and we thanked God for protecting us from the person who was trying to take advantage of the dark to rob a house. Will we choose to believe or fear? When my heart starts thumping quickly or I let my imagination go places which are not helpful, will I ask the Spirit to take control of my mind, heart and emotions? It's a daily battle, but the only thing I fear more is not following God where He wants me to go. When I choose worry over belief, I am telling God that I don't think He is big enough for my problem. Don't worry. We're living wisely. We asked our landlord to put barbed wire on our fence. We hide valuable belongings in the house every time we leave. We hold Reagan's hand on the street; and we walk in the park during safe hours. But I don't trust in the fence or barbed wire. I trust in a good, powerful, loving and wise God who has my best in mind. Not only has He promised to protect me, He has also promised that He is big enough to take me through whatever circumstances He places in my life. God, please help me to have the strength to live this out.