This past week has been a tough one for our family.  My brother in law, Geoffrey, his mother passed away last week unexpectedly.  With our busy schedule we were not able to be there for them for the funeral, but our hearts and prayers were definately with them.  So Monday we got to spend the day at Monkey Joe’s in Spartanburg for some family fun with her kids!  My mom treated us all to the time there and it was good for the kids to have something to get their minds off of their loss for a little while.  This always gets me thinking about how the Bible tells us that we are not promised tomorrow, or for that matter, the next hour.  We all need to make sure that we are living our lives in a manner that is pleasing to God.  That is only possible with His Son Jesus’ blood covering our sins.  All we have to do is admit that we are sinners, ask for forgiveness from our sins through Jesus Christ and give our lives over to Him to reign. When tragedy comes, we can have Him to turn to and our families and friends.  If you have not already given your life to Christ, I pray that you do so even right now!

Back to Monkey Joe’s, it was a great time.  We are still here as a matter of fact and I am loading these pictures and posting this because they have free wifi here.  The kids are having fun and we are relaxing.  Here is a picture of the kids!

The kids at Monkey Joe's

On Monday while we were doing our Bible time with our schooling, we were learning about Jacob and Esau and we discussed how Esau sold his birth right to Jacob for a bowl of lentil soup.  Well, the kids were like, “Wow, that must have been good soup if he was willing to sell his birthright for it.”  What is it?  Well, I have made lentil soup in the past and they did not like it, but they wanted to try this soup which Lizzie named “birthright soup.”  So yesterday I went to the store to buy the simple ingredients to make them soup and they absolutely loved it!!  Lizzie even said today that she hopes I can make more birthright soup in the future because it really is great.  How funny, with a new name, they love it.

Today I had the priviledge of home schooling my three children today for the first time!!  It took a bit longer than we expected but we did get a late start.  We started around 10 this morning and we finished around 3:30!  Benjamin and Lizzie had Bible, history, geography, writing, spelling, math, reading, science and PE!  Sophia had a time of Bible, reading, writing and art for her K-4!  The kids all loved it and I had a great time too!  It was easier than I expected, but our curriculum pretty much spells out exactly what I need to do.  It helps to have kids that are eager to learn   I am excited about this year and this priviledge of teaching my children!  Sophia’s memory verse sums up my prayers for my kids attention span…..Proverbs 4:20 “My child, pay attention to what I say.  Listen carefully to my words.”  She is so cute, by the time we were finished with her time of learning, she almost had it perfectly down!  So sweet!!  If you think about us, please pray for the kids schooling, that all of our days would be as wonderful as today   Here are pictures of Benja and Lizzie working hard!!

Lizzie working hard!

Benjamin concentrating on his math!!

Over the last two months our home church has been remodeling an old home on the new church property to make it into a mission house!  We were able to move in yesterday!  It is such a huge blessing to have a place to call our own while we are back in SC!!  Thank you to everyone at Mt. Moriah Baptist for this blessing!!  You guys are awesome!! We have finally moved out of our suitcases after a month of living out of them!!   Here are some pictures of our home for the next 2 months!!

The dedication of the new mission house!

The mission house!

The front porch!

The den with the girls enjoying a movie on our computer!

The dining room

Encouraging little touches

Benja’s bedroom

The girls’ room

Lizzie decorated her bed as soon as we arrived!

The kids’ bathroom

Our bedroom

Even a tire swing in the backyard!!

Jacob and I with Dr. Paul Dean and Issac after the radio program

Jacob and I have been busy here in SC.   Today we were on Dr. Paul Dean’s radio program today.  It was so much fun.  We have never done anything like that before.  We were able to share our hearts for missions and for the people of Costa Rica.  Thanks Paul for having us on your show and encouraging us.  It is so exciting to see people excited about sharing the gospel with the nations.  If you would like to listen to the program follow this link

http://www.callingfortruth.org/cft/content/blogcategory/2/10/

and it is called  “We are Created To….”  Wed. September 2, 2009.  Please listen and enjoy!!!  Let us know what you think!!!

We arrived last night around 1:30am at Jacob’s parents house.  The kids did great on the planes and in the airports!  Monica was there to pick us up in Columbia when we arrived and drove us to Jacob’s parents’ house.  We arrived to cumphy (not sure if that is a word) beds and a great night’s sleep.  We woke up around 10 SC time, but that is 8 to our bodies.  The kids were excited that their Grammy had Lucky Charms for them for breakfast and Jacob and I enjoyed Raisin Bran!  Oh the little things.  Then all of the kids got to take long baths!  Another luxury they are not accustomed to because we did not have a bathtub in our house and few Costa Rican homes do.  They were so excited!

Please pray for our time here, that we would bring glory to God with all of the work that has been going on in Costa Rica!  We have about 17 speaking arrangements already lined up and we would love to share with even more.  We are praising God for this time in the States and are celebrating the time and calling that we have to Costa Rica.

And we have moved out of casa verde.  It has been a year of a lot of work and prayers and we can now speak Spanish!!  Praise the Lord.  It was hard to say goodbye to all of our new friends, but we were ready to be out of language school and on to Irazu!!  I don’t have much time to write a whole lot right now, but here are some pictures of graduation!!

Jacob and I getting ready to graduate

Last time singing with the praise team

We just received our diploma

It was a whole family accomplishment!!

Our friends the Hynums!

Jacob and I with our grammar teacher Oscar!

Jacob, Travis and Danny on our last night together

Me, Emily and DarLynne on our last night together

The kids with all of their friends the Mittens and Frederiks

Wow!  It is August 8, 2009!  We have been in Costa Rica for one year today!!   That is so hard to believe.  We have one more week of language school before we graduate and we are spending the weekend with Enon Baptist on Irazu!  It seems that we have a mountain of things to do, accomplish, wrap up, find, buy, organize……before we return to the States on August 25th to raise our support for our second year on the mission field!  We have had such an amazing year.

When we arrived, I could not speak a lick of Spanish.  Now, my teacher has tested me and I received an “Advanced Low” in my ability to speak/fluency.  And that was one level higher than I initially thought I would receive, but hoped I would receive.  Jacob and I both can carry on conversations, listen and understand sermons and fully function here with our Spanish.  It was a lot of hard work and it has paid off.  Even today, I was able to translate for Pastor Scott and his wife Robin while the father of the orphanage we were visiting was explaining in Spanish the origins of their ministry.  It was such a big moment for me!!

This past week, Lizzie turned 6!  Benjamin will turn 8 tomorrow, and Sophia will be 4 on the 22nd!  It seems like they have grown tremendously since we have been here and it is so much fun to hear them use their Spanish.  Although I must say, they do not like to use it with Jacob and I (English only with us), but they use it with other children that they know only speak Spanish!!  They played with the children at the orphanage today and had no problem communicating with them!!

We are certainly looking forward to our next steps on the mission field!  Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we continue to seek and follow God’s direction in our lives.  Our goal is solely to serve Him and bring Him all the praise, glory and honor.

Here are some pictures that I have been slack about posting.  They are random times and photos….

Some of the girls and I at the goodbye party for Dawn and Tully!

Benja and his buddy Gabe!

Jacob and his friend Anthony!

Kite flying in a local park!

A rare treat of going to Burger King with the kids after kite flying!

A beautiful sunset off our front porch!

God’s love is sweeter.   That was the theme this week of a group of 3 – 5 year olds from Columbia, South Carolina.  What does that have to do with us in Costa Rica?  Well, a friend of mine from high school, Ashley Lindler, messaged me on facebook a couple of weeks ago to ask if I could share over Skype with her group of 3 – 5 year olds from Columbia First Baptist summer camp.  I, of course, was happy to do that.  With the time difference of 2 hours between here and South Carolina, I would be able to speak with them at 7:30 here and miss just a few minutes of my first class.  Easy peasy!  They were just adorable!  Well, earlier in the week I had seen on facebook where Ashley had posted pictures of her children holding a lemonade stand with a sign that said, “Lemonade is sweet, but God’s love is even sweeter!”  How cute is that?  When I mentioned to them over Skype that I saw the pictures they told me that they were doing it to raise money for us!!  I was so shocked!  I started crying!  I think it is so amazing that these little ones were working so hard for missions here in Costa Rica!  They ended up doing 3 lemonade stands and raised a total of $277.46!!  Can you believe that?  These were 3, 4 and 5 year olds and they are making a difference for Christ at such an early age.  Their efforts will benefit missions in Costa Rica and the children that we are serving here!  That is why I think it brought me to tears….these little ones already working for the furthering of God’s kingdom and look what they did!!  So amazing!  What amazing lessons these little ones are learning and teaching!  Such a fabulous way to be spending their summer vacations.  I love the idea of getting kids and families involved in missions.  This has truly blessed me and my family.  And I am thinking that they may even inspire some of the readers of this blog….what do you think?

Here are some pictures of these cuties!!  Thank you guys so much!

Lemonade stand advertising!

Lemonade stand cuties!

The firemen came on the first day!

Second day of the lemonade stand

Who wouldn’t stop and buy some lemonade from these cuties?

And the firemen came back for more on the second day!!

Taking a break for some water time fun!!

The Lord has shown us the house that we are going to start renting to begin our ministry!  Two weeks ago, my tica friend Yoko handed me a paper out of the blue with a name and number on it.  She said that she had a long time family friend that has a house in the “campo” of Cartago and this was his name and number and we should call him.  Later that week, I reminded Jacob to call Yoko’s friend, his name is Jorge.  So Jacob called him two Friday nights ago.  Jorge was excited to hear from us and offered to take us the next morning.  So on Saturday the kids went to stay with some friends while Jacob, Kelsey and I loaded up in Jorge’s truck and headed to the house!

We were in the car for quite some time and were wondering the whole time if the house was going to be as nice as we were told it was.  He said it was a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house.  With a big kitchen, dining room and an outside kitchen.  And best of all, he kept using the word farm.  He said that it had turkeys and geese and lots of fruit trees and coffee plants.  We were so excited needless to say!  When we passed the statue of Jesus up on Irazu we began to time the trip.  After about 40 mintues and an unbelievably beautiful trip through what becomes the cloud forest, we arrived at the quinta (or small farm)!  It was like a dream!  It was completely beautiful!  Everything and more than we ever dreamed we would want.  To this point, we had not asked the price and were beginning to think, “Oh no, we have come all this way and there is no way we can afford this!”  But we continued to look around and ask questions.  His previous explanation did not even compare to the beauty of the land!  It is like a paradise where someone can think by themselves and be with the Lord all at the same time.  If teams were in, there is enough space to be with the group or off by yourself, checking out the fruit trees or just listening to nature and God.  A place where people can come and minister to the people of Costa Rica and be ministered to by the beauty of the land.  A place of contemplation and praise.

Last wendnesday we borrowed some friends’ car and picked up Francisco to take him to the house.   As most of you know, we have desired for Francisco to be part of our family.  He is such a wonderful minister to the people of Cot and we have all along hoped that we would be able to find a house big enough for him to be able to stay with us.  So his opinion of the place was important to us.  When we arrived, he absolutely loved the place too!  He was so excited with us about all of the possibilities for the property!  So today we have finally worked out an agreement for rental with Jorge and we have the house!!!

He is going to allow us to transform one area in the back (that he had originally built for a jakuzzi) in to a bunk room and the garage into another bunk room, even though we are just renting.  This is such a blessing and we feel this is where the Lord wants us to move to.  Here are some pictures!

The house!

The back area we are going to make into a bunk house!

A view of the house from the back!

Kelsey and I in the front yard!

The garage we will make another bunk roon

A view of the driveway!

Some of the turkeys and geese!

A picture of us and Francisco on the farm!

The kiddos on the farm!