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!!
Tags: Children, christ, Christianity, church, costa rica, faith, family, friends, fun, God, grace, happiness, Jesus, joy, language, life, love, Missions, praise, prayer, relationships, religion, school, shepherd, worship
Tags: celebration, Children, christ, Christian, Christianity, costa rica, faith, family, friends, God, grace, Jesus, joy, kids, language, laughs, life, love, Missions, photo, praise, prayer, relationships, religion, school, Spanish, travel, worship
A couple of weeks ago, we realized that we did not have any water when we went to flush the toilet. This happens every now and then. This time we were told it was because they were doing road construction and broke the water line. Well, we usually have drinking water that we have purchased, depending on the day of the week and how close it is to the time to buy again. The closer to time, probably we will have less water. Well, we had plenty of drinking water, so we were prepared for that However, the harder part was that with 5 people in the house, we could not flush the toilet! Not fun….
We took the kids to school that morning, so that was the first blessing of the day! We could use the bathrooms there!!! The next blessing was that it is the beginning of the rainy season here, so that afternoon we got a nice downpour! Why was that a blessing? Well, I was talking to a friend about how funny it was that we were without water to flush toilets, but there was plenty outside. He laughed and he said, yea, too bad you could not put buckets outside and collect it and use it to flush your toilets. See, he and his family have a reservoir at their house, so they always have water. We however do not. But I thought, that was exactly what I was going to do. I only had one bucket, but I had bowls in the kitchen and I could use that! As I was going to get the bucket from the wash area, I noticed the gutter spout with water pouring out of it! I decided, we are not going to drink this, so this would be much quicker to collect it from the gutter!!! So that is exactly what I did! I have never been so happy to have functioning gutters!!! Oh, the little things
It did get me thinking about how quickly each of our situations in life can change. Are we prepared? When the water would cut off regularly when we first arrived, we always had wipes handy for cleaning hands and bodies. We had water stored in what we had on hand at all times, just in case. Then it quit going away as often, so we dumped the stale water out and lapsed in refilling them. Then when it went off again unexpectedly, we were not prepared. It reminds me of the virgins and their lamps with their oil, prepared (or in some cases not prepared) to meet their bridegroom. The picture is meant to make us realize that we need to be ready to meet our Lord at any moment, because at any moment, our situations can change and our time might be called. Are you ready to meet your Lord? Our God is perfect, whose perfection demands that we come before Him white as snow, covered only in the perfection of His son Jesus Christ who died for us on the cross. It is my prayer that everyone examines their relationship with God. Make sure that you are prepared, because our situations can change in a heartbeat and we may be called to stand before God. Are you going to be white as snow before Him? If not, ask right now for forgiveness of your sins and for Christ to deliver you from them. He is ready for you to come to Him.
Here are pictures of me collecting water from our gutters, making up for not being prepared……
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Precious water flowing into our bowl!
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Me, so happy to be catching water!
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Precious water
Tags: Children, christ, Christianity, church, costa rica, faith, family, friends, God, grace, Jesus, joy, kids, life, love, Missions, photo, praise, prayer, prepared, Preparedness, relationships, religion, school, shepherd, worship
Friday night, Jacob and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with a bunch of friends. A mission team was visiting the school and offered to keep the children of our school for 3 hours so the adults could have a night out. It happened to fall on our 10th anniversary. So we went to this restaurant with our friends. It was quite an exciting night…Tully ended up needing to do the Heimlich on one of our friends who got chocked on a piece of meat. Everything ended up fine and she is now okay, but it was scary there for a bit. God is good. Dawn (Tully’s wife) was going to sit next to Esther, but for some reason Tully ended up sitting next to her. God provided, because he responded so quickly and literally saved her life. We will try not to get chocked up everytime with remember our 10th anniversary! 
10th anniversary dinner
Tags: celebration, Children, Christian, Christianity, church, faith, family, food, friends, fun, God, grace, happiness, Jesus, joy, kids, laughs, love, Missions, party, photo, praise, relationships, religion, school, Spanish, worship
Old friends, new friends, far away friends and close by friends. We have been so blessed by all of the relationships that the Lord has brought our way. Over the holidays while we spent our first Christmas in Costa Rica, I have been thinking about how blessed we are. However, being here with most of our friends and family being somewhere else in the world has been a hurdle that we have had to jump over with the Lord’s help. Being a missionary at this point, we have had to get used to being separateand saying goodbye. And little by little it is getting a little easier. Don’t get me wrong, it is still hard, but with the Lord’s help we have endured it. Some people facing the dilemma of constant goodbyes have the theory that it is easier to not get close to people so that you don’t get hurt with the separation. However, it seems that that is not God’s theory and that is not what we are capable of doing. Using Christ as our example, He knew that He would only have a couple of years with His disciples and new He would have to leave them. But He still loved them and poured His life into theirs. He loved the people that came into His path and gave them what they needed – whether it was an honest word, a healing touch, a truth kindly taught or love, understanding, forgiveness.
We are currently in a unique environment where we have to say goodbye every 4 months or so because we are going to a language school where graduates move on to other places and countries to serve the Lord. We have made wonderful friendships these past 4 months that I hope will last a lifetime. And all though a couple of weeks ago we had to say goodbye to many missionary friends…it is not the end. We may not see them again on this earth being that we are each spreading out through out Latin America, but we will see each other again in heaven. And all of our family and friends that went through the holidays missing us/us missing you…God has been faithful to fill that void. I was sharing with a friend the other day that I had started to get down while I saw pictures of the holidays happening back in the States without us. I started focusing on myself and how I was “missing out.” Praise the Lord that He did not allow me to stay in that spot and get depressed. I could have easily kept on dwelling on that, but instead I started focusing on Christ. When He left heaven to come to earth He was ”missing out” on many of the glories of heaven and time spent in perfect fellowship with the Heavenly Father would be different for the next 30 odd years. Did He pout and feel sorry for Himself? No. When He was going to the cross, what did He do? He prayed to the Heavenly Father and said, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” As I focused on this and spent time praying to our Lord, He took this pouty/selfish feelings away. I felt joy in the Lord and His peace. It is not easy to follow what the Lord tells you to do, but it is important to do what He says. And we are so blessed by the family and friends that support us and love us. We do miss you guys, but we rest in the Lord. Here are some pictures of some of our friends here in Costa Rica that many of you might not know….but we have grown to love despite the fact that it will hurt when we have to tell them goodbye. Some of them we already have had to say goodbye to…
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Tricia and the kids up in Cot – her last Sunday with us.
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Lynn and Cathy with Francisco – The Prathers are missionaries now to Ecuador
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All of our new friends from our grammar class
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Jacob and some of his ping pong buddies
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Lizzie and some of her friends during the Christmas program
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Sophia dancing with some of her friends during the Christmas program
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Benjamin and his buddy Gabe
Tags: Children, christ, Christian, Christianity, church, costa rica, faith, family, friends, God, grace, happiness, Jesus, joy, kids, life, love, Missions, relationships, school, Spanish
This learning Spanish thing is very time consuming. It takes a lot of memoria (or memory) to keep up with what is what. Basically we just have to sit down each night and work on memorizing the information that we have been taught. So tomorrow I have a test on 50 verbs that I have to know. It takes a lot of time to memorize that many verbs. One of the verbs that, as of last night, I was struggling to memorize was “llorar” or in English it is “to cry.” No matter what I did I could not remember the verb. I would look at the picture and my mind would go blank. I knew that it was similar to “llover” or “to rain.” But that was all I could remember. Well yesterday a classmate said that word is similar to “orar.” It did not hit me then what he meant because I did not remember the word, so I just let it slide. Then last night as I was working on my verbs I noticed what my friend was talking about. “Llorar” or “to cry” is similar to the verb “orar” or “to pray.” How beautiful is that? To cry out to our God in song, praise, pain, love…is to pray to Him or to talk to him; “llorar” and “orar” are similar in sound and in meaning to the Christian. So last night I cried out in prayer to our Heavenly Father about our ability to learn Spanish. I cried out that He would make it stick in my head and flow off of my tongue. All for His glory that we learn this language and take the message of GRACE or GRACIA to the people on Volcano Irazu. And amazingly today I had such a great day of recall. My teachers would say a word and I would remember the meaning! It was so exciting. It also brought a huge amount of peace to me. I know that I am not learning Spanish and living in Costa Rica for my own gain, but for that glorious day when we will all be praising the Lord in Heaven and every language. There are people here that need to know about God’s grace and Jesus’ finished work on the cross. We are learning Spanish so that we can take that message to the people in their own language and love them. All for God’s glory.
Filipenses 2:9-11
9 Por eso Dios lo exaltó hasta lo sumo
y le otorgó el nombre
que está sobre todo nombre,
10 para que ante el nombre de Jesús
se doble toda rodilla
en el cielo y en la tierra
y debajo de la tierra,
11 y toda lengua confiese que Jesucristo es el Señor,
para gloria de Dios Padre.
Philippians 2:9-11
9For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Won’t that be a glorious day? Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we work hard to learn Spanish.
Tags: Christian, Christianity, church, costa rica, family, Jesus, life, love, Missions, prayer, school, Spanish
Wow what a week. We started language school on Tuesday. But let’s go back a little to last week and orientation and testing. Last week we were tested with an oral evaluation and a written test to determine where they should place us for our classes. Well Jacob had studied a lot of Spanish before we left and I had not studied much before we got here. Well Monday we got the results of our placement and classes. Okay so the most basic class placement starts at 101 and our group that we are in the most advanced goes to 118. Well, I was placed in 101! And Jacob was placed in 106. That was no surprise. We knew going into it that he was well ahead of me. And classes started at 7:30 on Tuesday morning.
So we get the kids up Tuesday and boy the Lord knew what He was doing when He placed us in Casa Verde being that it is just a few minute walk to class. We got up around 5:30 and we needed every bit of that time to get everyone to school in time. We showered, made lunches (p-nut butter sandwiches for everyone), got everyone dressed, hair fixed, teeth brushed, shoes on (Sophia has a 50/50 shot at getting hers on the right foot and twice this week they were on the wrong feet once we got to school), back packs packed, checking for rain gear, unlock the front doors, lock the front doors, unlock the front gate, lock the front gate and we’re off! And it is already 7:15 and we have to have the kids in their classes and be in our class rooms by 7:30!
We each have 4 classes a day. 2 hours of gramatica, 1 hour of fonetica, and 1 hour of linguaje. You stay with the same group of people all day. And for gramatica they combine two groups. My class has four ladies all together in it. Dawn Stoudemayer and I are in the same class! The kids are doing great. Sophia is in the 3 year old class and the teacher only speaks Spanish to her! Lizzie is in K5 and the last 1/4 of class is taught by a Spanish teacher. Benjamin in 2nd grade has a typical 2nd grade day with an hour of Spanish every day. Benjamin took his first spelling test here already and made a 100 on it. YEAH Benja!!! Here are some pictures. Please continue to pray for our health and our ability to grasp the language.
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Benjamin and Sophia on the first day of school
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Me and Lizzie on the first day of school
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Lizzie and her teacher and Benjamin
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Sophia and her teacher in her class
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The walkway to the three different areas of the school
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One of the views from the school
Tags: Children, christ, Christian, Christianity, family, friends, kids, life, love, Missions, school, Spanish
