School started today with orientation.  As we awoke to the airbrakes on the passing bus, the honk of a passing taxi and the cries of our ten-month old, we weren’t certain what this day would hold for us.  We knew we’d be at the school by 7.30.  We knew we’d sit in hard chairs listening to policies and procedures.  We knew we’d meet a lot of people.  We also knew we’d speak some Spanish today.  Beyond that, we didn’t know. 

We didn’t know what types of relationships would build today.  We didn’t know if our Spanish would be good enough.  We didn’t know if we’d make it in time with four kids to get ready (thankfully three of them are pretty self-sufficient).   This evening we have some answers:  good ones starting…it was passable…we did.  It was a good day.

We met people from all across the United States and even into Canada and South Korea.  People who have spent the past months and years doing what we have been doing.  People who have a passion to share the love of God with people in Latin America.  People who are willing to become children again so we can learn another langauge.  It was a good day. 

After we’d registered and dropped the kids off at their school, Audra and I were walking around the campus looking at different things and talking to various people.   Stepping toward the chapel, Audra turned to me and asked, “I wonder if we’ve met our new best friends yet.”  She wasn’t saying we are letting go of any of our current friends…y’all are very important and special to us, and nothing could ever take your place.  She was wondering if we’ve met the people with whom we’ll be hanging around with and doing things with during our time here in Costa Rica.  Maybe we have.  Maybe we haven’t yet.  Who knows?  But still, it was a good day.

The kids went to the park after school to play soccer.  I went along to watch.  To be honest, I got a bit bored until three Costa Rican youth rode up on their bikes.

“You can play with us,” one of the gringos said.

“Us against all of you?” asked the Ticos.

“Si,” said the gringos although they had a slight advantage with six players to the Costa Rican three.

They should have chosen different teams.  The Ticos grew up with Futbol.   Watching them and smiling I kept thinking the three Ticos were playing with the three Gringos a lot like a gato plays with a mouse.  In the end, everyone had fun.  It wasn’t about winning; it was about playing the game (of course, I can say that since the gringos lost).  But still, it was a good day. 

A friend of ours from college asked people on her blog to pray for us today.  It was a good day!

It’s now dark, and time for dinner. 

Be blessed in your day and in all you do. 

I was making breakfast yesterday morning when our empleada arrived.  She walked by the kitchen, glanced in and said, “Buenos Dias” to me before continuing on to the pantry to get ready for the day.  She then came back and asked me if I was making breakfast.

“Si,” I said.  “Yo preparo el desayuno.”

“El desayuno?” she asked me.

“Si,” I said, a bit uncertain now of my Spanish (I often confuse the words for breakfast and lunch…dinner I’ve got down fine.)

“Papas? Potatoes?” she asked me. 

“Si,” I said, “Papas fritas.”  (Yes, fried potatoes.)

“Para desayuno? For breakfast?” she asked.

Ah, now I understood the source of the questions.  I was dicing potatoes to fry with some onions and garlic.  Once fried, I’d make some scrambled eggs for a great breakfast.  “We never eat potatoes for breakfast,” she said.  “For lunch and dinner, yes; but for breakfast…never!  I’ll eat them, but for me it will be a new experience.  I’ve never had potatoes for breakfast.”

It was my turn to laugh.  “We have potatoes for breakfast a lot in the states,” I said, “but we never have rice for breakfast.”

“Oh,” she said smiling, “We have rice all the time!”  In fact, she’s made some fantastic gallo pinto for us for breakfast.

Cultural differences are fun, and we have been really enjoying learning the differences. 

Another example of a difference we heard about, but didn’t experience ourselves:  At a church service recently, the pastor wanted to celebrate the birthdays.  To do this he invited every person with a birthday in August to come forward.  A handful of people made their way to the front (including a woman visiting from America), where they stood as the congregation sang “Happy birthday” to them.   The song complete, the pastor then went down the line asking each one how old they are…in public…regardless the age…  The American woman experienced a bit of culture shock when she had little choice but to admit in public that she was 54. 

I can’t wait to discover more differences.

Be blessed in all you do today.

The kids really wanted to go to the beach before school started.  We’ve been here more than five weeks, have a pretty good feel for the city and how this run around here, and school starts next week.  Kia has been looking  a lot at hotels and places to stay.  Aylis’ has been checking out a lot of the beaches.  Saturday, we decided to try.  Soraya had never been to the beach before…

Taking a trip here is different than in the states.  There we could decide that morning, put our stuff in the car and hit the road.  Here we have to hire a taxi (two for us because of our family size), find the bus station, buy a ticket, load up on the bus, get off the bus, and find out when the return bus leaves so we can go home.  We made it, anyway.   Puntarenas (sandy point) is a fishing community about two hours by bus from San Jose.  Not many people go there for anything but a jumping off point for other places, so we were the only gringos we saw on the beach.  That didn’t bother us, though, as we enjoyed the warm (yes, warm) waters of the Pacific ocean and jumping in the waves (I am offically sore from battling the waves yesterday). 

Audra and Soraya made friends with a girl named Kasey.  She lives near the beach with her younger brother and parents.  She was there by herself, and simply gravitated to them.  Soraya loved watching her and playing in the waves and water.  During times of rest, Kasey sat in the wet sand near Audra and Soraya, telling them about the islands we could see in the distance.

Todd, Kia, Aylis’ and I played in the waves.  There was a lot of water there and a lot of waves in which to play, but despite that, a boy of about 12 or so continually brought his boogie board into the waves near us.  While watching the waves, he also kept watching us.  After we took a break, we went back into the water a hundred yards or so away from where he was.  Within twenty minutes, though, he was back near us, watching the waves and looking at us.   When it was time to go, we brushed off the black sand and packed our stuff into our bags.  Kasey sat beside us until the very last minute.  The boy with the boogie board walked by on the edge of the surf, turning to watch us as we left.

I wonder why we were so interesting to them.  Was it because we were gringos?  Was it because we were in a sense “exotic” to them (there were, after all, very few other gringos there)?  Or was it because we were a family at the beach together having fun together and obviously enjoying one another’s company.

When we got back to San Jose and got our two taxis, my driver said he wanted to give us a ride because he likes to see big families doing things together.  That was the first thing he said to us (after finding out where we wanted to go).  Maybe yesterday wasn’t so much about going to the beach, but more about being a family.

Be blessed with your family today.

We got some new neighbors today.  We’re getting a lot of new people in the neighborhood, in fact.  School starts with orientation next week and so a lot of new families are moving into the area.  Some people call this area “Gringo Central” because so many non-Ticos live here…and our numbers continue to rise.  Last night a family from South Carolina with seven kids moved in just down the street.  Next door, we met a family from California with two kids.  Last week we met a family from Alabama with three kids and another family from New York with four. 

All of us are missionaries. 

All of us are headed someplace in Latin America where Spanish is spoken. 

All of us have a lot to learn.

Please pray that we don’t become a clique, clinging to a gringo raft in a beautiful sea of Tico life and culture.  Pray we build relationships with all of our neighbors, not just those who look and act like us. 

Thanks…and be blessed.

If your interested, a few more videos have been posted.  Just click here to take a look.

Across the street from the house is a bus stop.   It’s handy if we want to go somewhere.  Not so handy if we wan’t some peace and quiet (often the vehicles here have less than perfect brakes).  Some of the bus stops are just awnings where those waiting to ride can stand out of the sun or (more often) the rain.  There is no awning across the street, but we have a bench.  Poured concrete molded into a place to sit.  It’s covered with grafitti.  Not the pretty kind with all the colors.  Just black on the white.  Some things I can read.  Some of it I think I’m glad I can’t.  Leaf Cutter ants parade by on the hillside into which the bench is set.  Abandoned garbage artistically complete the scene. 

Whether or not we like the noise or the convenience, we do have a continually changing parade of humanity walking by the front of our house.  Men and women, children and youth waiting for the bus.  Stories waiting to be told:   

A woman with a tired look on her face, huddling under an umbrella with her suitcase as she waits… 

A young couple sharing one space on the bench–she on his lap–in the relative darkness of the evening…

An older couple, sitting side by side, holding hands…

A woman with her children, dressed in their best clothes…

A man carrying an infant in his arms…

A teenaged boy with long hair, leather jacket and tight pants; jewelry and metal hanging from various parts of his body…

A gringo…

We sometimes smile.  We sometimes lift our hands in a small wave.  We sometimes simply say, “Buenos!” (a typical greeting when you pass someone on the street). 

The bus makes a loop around the city of San Jose and returns to the same place.  It takes about two hours for the whole trip.  We don’t know where they are going.  We don’t know why.  It’s really none of our business.  Some we will get to know.  Some will always be strangers.  Some wonder about the gringos who live across the street from the bus stop.  Others don’t even notice. 

One thing we do notice, though:  people are people no matter where they are, what language they speak, or what they look like.   People are people with stories to be told.

May you notice the people around you today.  Be blessed!

Audra and I left the kids at the house and went to the feria this morning.  It is a farmers market that takes place every Saturday morning and people from the surrounding country bring the produce from their farms and gardens to sell.  We love the feria!  This is a picture of what we bought for around $15.  The dark things in the front are tamales sold by the local Lion’s Club as a fund raiser. 

For those of you who are interested, Todd has posted another video from Costa Rica.  Just click here to see it…

One of the hardest things about living here in Costa Rica is knowing what to do when someone knocks at the gate.

We live in a part of the city where a lot of gringos live.  Because we live here, it is assumed we have a higher standard of living than most in Costa Rica; and the truth is, we probably do.  (When I was pastoring and teaching about when Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I would often say if we lived in the United States, we are that rich person becuase we are richer than three-quarters of the rest of the world.)  According to the United States Central Inteligence Agency, the 2007 estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita for Costa Rica was $10,300.  For the United States it was $45,800.  When compared to others, we are rich. 

That’s why people knock at our gate.  Some of them have a true need.  Others see a handout.  Others see an opportunity to try to take advantage of a situation.  It’s hard to know what the motivation is for each person.  As Christians, we are called to act with justice, to seek kindness, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6.8).  We need to be prepared to entertain angels unawares (Genesis 18.1-3).  We need to do all we can to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.  At the same time, we need to be careful.  We need to watch out for our physical safety.  We need to be good stewards of the money and resources that have been given to us to use as we serve God. 

It’s hard to know what to do when people knock at the gate.  Some of the stories we’ve heard at the gate:

… I don’t have a job and I don’t have any food.

… It’s a long walk to my house, and I have blisters on my feet (they even show us the blisters). 

… My baby was born two and half months premature and my milk has not come in.  I need work so I can feed him.

… I need money to get to the hospital so I can get treatement and the hospital is a long journey away.

… I need to raise $1000 American to buy a machine so my child can live.  (She even had official looking documents from a hospital.) 

… My two-year-old son has no food to eat and needs diapers. 

… I’m hungry.  Do you have any beans and rice.

It’s hard to know what to do.  It’s hard to know whom to believe.  Pray for us to do the right thing.

It was a beautiful morning, so Todd, Soraya and I decided to take a walk to a local cemetery.  There is something about cemeteries that draw me to them.  It’s not that I’m morbid or like death.  I don’t want to die and want to enjoy life to its fullest.  Jesus said, after all in John 10.10 that he came so that we might have life and have it in abundance!  I think it might be the stories and the relationships involved in the stories of the people who’s lives are represented there.

Desamparados is the next “suburb” from where we live, although I have no idea where the line is.  It took us about 15 minutes to get to the city cemetery from our house, so it wasn’t too bad.  The street was busy and difficult to cross, but once inside the gates, the sounds began to fade.  Walking through that space was unlike anything I’d experienced.  The people are not buried in the ground at all.  Instead, they are placed in large rectangular rooms above the ground.  Whole families share the space.  It was interesting that the earliest date I think we saw was from the 1970s (maybe even the 1980s).  Nothing earlier.  I have some theories, but still I wonder why…

A few families were busy scraping and cleaning and repainting the family space.  Mother’s day (Dia de la mama) is this coming Friday here, and I think they were getting ready to honor mom.  There were a few photo copied signs posted in a number of places around the cemetery.  They said something like, “The city of Desamparados invites you to join us this coming Friday here at the cemetery to celebrate a sacred mass in honor of those whom we love who have died.” 

Leaving the cemetery, we decided to take the long way home and look at the large catholic church in the center of the busy commercial district of the town.  Outside was a beautifully manicured lawn with a great fountain.  All sorts of people of all different ages sat in the shade surrounding the fountain, talking of the day.  Todd, Soraya and I spent some time feeding the birds (actually, Soraya slept most of the time). 

By the time we made it home we’d covered another three miles.  A great walk on a beautiful day.

Enjoy life today and be blessed…

This is a time of observations for us.  Living in a new place with new ways of doing things.  New ways of looking at the world.  There are some things that make a lot of sense:  people going to parks with their families on a Sunday afternoon.  And there are some things that don’t make sense:  buying internet from a private company and having to pay a separate monthly charge to the government company (even though you never actually see them…ever). 

This is a time of obersation.  A time to try to figure out why things are the way they are.  We like to look and observe.  See with different eyes.  See what is so common to the people who grew up here, but so different to us.  It is a time for us to wonder why things are the way they are.  We don’t want to change things…just understand them better.  Why do people do things this way…

Today we went to a big park not too far from the house.  It is called Parque de la Paz (Park of Peace) and it is huge.  It is so large, it is in two sections separated by a large four lane highway.  To get from one side to another they built a bridge over the highway.  It was designed to help us to remember the importance of peace in the world.  Costa Rica is sometimes called the Switzerland of Central America becuase the country does not have a standing army.  Instead, that money was shifted toward helping build the people from the inside out:  education, health care, and so on.  In the middle of one of the lakes at the park, there is a monument to peace built out of old machine guns.  The guns are planted in the ground and there are flowers (of sorts) growing around them.  Above it all, a man sits and plays the violin.  The park was built to be a beautiful monument with stone sidewalks and bridges and a dock for fishing.  At one time I bet it was beautiful.  Now it is a nice place to be, but it is not beautiful to my still American looking eyes.  The moment is covered with sometimes crude grafitti.  The dock is missing half of its boards.  The water in the lakes is murky and the ground is covered with litter. 

We still had a nice day.  We enjoyed being outside.  We tasted local food from a vender.  We watched the fifty or so kites flitting through the air.  It was good.  But…we still have questions.  What happened?  Why so much litter?  Why so little (at least, again, to these American eyes) pride in the park? 

At our training in Colorado, we were told many times to withhold judgment.  We know that is important, and we are trying hard to do that.  Everything in a culture happens for a reasons.  It might be a good reason; it might be a bad one…but there is a reason.  As our proficiency in the Spanish langauge increases, we are anxious to learn more about those reasons…

Kia and Aylis’ had a friend over to visit today, and they asked if they could go to the park across the street.  We had never let them go by themselves before, but since they would be in a group we decided to let them try.  We weren’t worried about them, per se.  We were just cautious about the other people in the park.  You never know who might be there… (no matter where the park is).  They did great, but I did watch them from a chair in the carport.  While keeping an eye on them, I had a chance to watch other people. 

Two teenaged boys (probably about 14 or 15) found an umbrella stroller someone had left behind.  They didn’t look like hoodlums or juvenile delinquents or anything.  They look like typical teenaged boys one could see anywhere.  Being boys and being bored, they started throwing it around.  Hearing the satisfying crush or bending and breaking metal, they picked it up again and threw with all their strength.  After a few minutes, the stroller was a mess.  I don’t know if they knew what they were doing was wrong or not.  Maybe they just thought is was something to do.  I considered going and talking with them about respecting other people’s property and all, but I knew with my limited Spanish and my outsider status in the community, it wouldn’t get very far.  So I watched…

At some point, I looked up from the book I reading (Spanish Grammar–Yippee!) and saw the boys walking away, heads bowed, dragging the pummelled stroller behind them.  Occasionally they looked behind them.  Following their gaze, I saw a man in a yellow shirt walking the across the park, across the street, and into his house. 

What happened?  I don’t know for sure, but this is what I gather:  the man saw what they were doing, came out of his house to the park and told them to stop it and to throw the stroller away.  There was no yelling.  There was no argument.  He simply told them to leave and to take their mess with them, and they did it. 

This is interesting to me.  I think the man was a stranger to the boys, but they still obeyed without complaint or hand gestures or grumbles under their breath (they later came back to the park without the stroller).  There is at least some semblance of respect for elders. 

I wonder if I would see the same sort of behavior back in the states?  I would like to say yes, but my experience says, probably not. 

Just something I saw today…

Be blessed in all you do.