I´ve never really liked roaches. I still don´t. They are nasty. We have to get used to them, though. In the houses here the doors to the outside world don´t reach the floor and there are no doorsweeps to keep the outside… well, out. The windows don´t have screens either. They are just louvered glass.

We keep a clean house. We don´t leave scraps of food out. But the roaches come in. Others a few inches long. Some are small. Most of the time I think they are just passing through. Moving from one place to another. They don´t live in the walls. It´d be kind of hard considering the walls are made of concrete. Still, I don´t like ´em. The roaches, I mean. When we see them, we find the nearest shoe and try to chase them down.

It´s a part of life here. Not good or bad. Not fun. Not the most pleasant thing to see scurrying across the floor. But, I guess, they are part of God´s creation. They have a reason. I don´t know what, but I guess that´s where faith comes in. Why roaches? If you have an answer to that, please let me know.

Be blessed in all you do.

Todd and I went hiking on Saturday with our pastor and the youth of the church (youth meaning the people from about age 15 through 26 or so) to one of the many mountains surrounding the city of San José. (To see some pictures, click aquí.)

At one point our Pastor (he´s the one that kind of looks like me in one of the pictures) were walking together and we came upon the old ruins of a house. Just a few poured walls of concrete. From the looks of the foundation, it looked like the builder had more plans, but they didn´t come through.

“When I look at things like this,” he told me (in Spanish, por supueso), “I wonder about the people who built it. They obviously had big dreams. But for whatever reason, they weren´t able to make those dreams come true.”

There are a lot of people like that, I thought. Myself included at times.

“Dreams are good,” he continued, “It´s good to have a goal. But what a lot of people forget, though, is that they keeping lookiing at the goal…at the tomorrow. What they need to do is look at the goal, but live in today. A lot of times we think the little things of today are too little to really worry about…to focus on. But what we forget is that the little things of today lead up to the big things of tomorrow. I wonder if that´s what happened with this house.”

Good question, I thought. I also wondered about the little things of today that lead up to my dreams of tomorrow.

I have a pretty smart pastor.

Be blessed in your little things today.

Because our last name is McEuen, we like Saint Patrick´s day. I know, I know, that was a few days ago. I´m just slow getting to writing about it. We are actually Ulster-Scots (from what I can tell, anyway). What that basically means is that we are both Scottish and Irish and moved back and forth between the two countries. The land that the McEuen Clan once owned (like 800 years ago or so) is on the finger of Scotland that reaches the closest to Ireland. We love our Irish roots (as well as our Scottish). Connecting us to Saint Patrick, I´ve found some anectodal evidence that it was our family, a long, long, long time ago who kidnapped Patrick in Wales and brought him to Ireland to be a slave. Okay, it´s not the best part of the story to be a part of, but, hey, at this point, we´ll take what we can get!

At the dinner table, Todd was talking about Saint Patrick, and asked us, “Isn´t he the guy that chased all the snakes out of Ireland.”

“Well,” I told Todd, “That´s the legend, but I don´t think it really happened.”

“It was Saint Urho who chased the grasshoppers out of Finland,” Audra added.

I looked at her. “Do what?” I asked (for those of you not familiar with the southern expression, that means, “What?” or “Huh?”).

“Saint Urho,” she said. “He chased the grasshoppers out of Finland. I learned all about it from Mr. Carlson in fourth grade.”

I have to admit, I´d never heard of Saint Urho. I was doubtful. She looked it up. She was right… there is a Saint Urho and he is claimed to have chassed the grasshoppers out of Finland. Hm. I had no idea.

…but she wasn´t completely right. The legend of Saint Urho and the grasshoppers was made up by a guy in either Bemidji, Minnesota or Virginia, Minnestoa. No matter. There´s lots of celebrations and parades and such on his day, March 16.

I think we might try to remember to celebrate Saint Urho´s day next year.

Be blessed in all you do.

(By the way, I did get her permission to post this…)

In one of his letters in the Bible, Paul wrote something like, “It´s not that I´ve already gotten to the place where I am the person God wants me to be…but instead I reach forward toward the price to win the prize for which God is calling me to win.” (I know, it is a veryloose translation, but the idea´s there, I think.) Anyway, those words came to mind this morning as I was doing my devotions and thinking about yesterday. There is still so much to learn.

Yesterday? Oh, yeah. There was another knock at the gate. Standing there was a young man whom we´d helped out before with some clothes and some food. He was from a town about halfway between here and the beach, had been on drugs, wanted to go home, mom said “no” until he got cleaned up, he went to a halfway house for a short time, told us he was working at a construction site around the corner, etc., etc. He is 26 years old, speaks decent English, and seems to have lot´s of potential. When we first met him he really wanted to get home, so Todd and I offered to take him to the bus station, pay the driver, and get him home. He was open to the idea, but when he came back, said he´d called his mom and she refused to let him back in the house. Okay. He got some food and a change of clothes that I don´t wear.

Yesterday he was really sad and wanted to go home. Okay, I said, I´ll take you to the bus station. No problem. Together we rode one of the city busses to downtown San José, and then walked about five blocks to the big bus station (called Coca Cola because there used to be a bottling company there). The bus he wanted was just getting loaded. He asked for a soda, so I got him one, and then we stood in line. As the line grew short, I handed him the money for the driver, and stood back to watch what would happen.

I watched him get on.
I watched him pay the driver.
Watched him move to the back of the bus.
Watched him sit down in a seat. (He waved at me, and I moved from where I was standing to a bench nearby.)
Watched the bus closed it´s doors.
Watched the bus leave it´s parking place.

Okay, good, I thought (notice a bit of foreshadowing here?), he´s on his way home. I´d heard of people scalping their tickets at the bus station when people have helped them like this. I beat that system. This guy´s not going to cheat me…

Then I watched the bus stop.
I watched him get up and move to the front of the bus.
Watched him talk to the drive.
Watched him get his my money back.
Watched the doors open.
And I watched him walk off and disappear into the crowds.

I tried to follow, but there were too many people. The city is too big. I couldn´t catch him.

Okay, maybe the verse doesn´t connect with the story very well. I guess, I thought about it because there is so much to learn. There is a lot about people I don´t understand. A lot of things I can´t comprehend.

Thanks for who you are and for all you do.

Be a blessing in all you do.

We´ve had our first visitors from the states. Okay, technically, our second group, but the first group was here for our regional gathering and even though we loved having them here, they wouldn´t have been here if it weren´t for the meeting. Okay, technically, this second group isn´t here for us either. Officially they are college students from Georgia here on Spring Break. We knew a few of them from Ball Ground. We know their family.

They are touring around Costa Rica this week, but we were able to hook them up with a great guy who drives buses and speaks English (a really nice combination) and a cheap place to stay last night. They came over for a “typical” Costa Rican dinner of beans and rice, arroz con pollo (that is, rice and chicken), roasted chicken and bunches of fruit (papaya, pineapple, mango, and canteloupe). We finished with leftover birthday cake (one was carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and the other was a chocolate tres leches).

I´m glad they came over. They brought some treasures from the states for us which really made us feel good, but what really made me feel great was seeing what great kids young adults they seem to be. They had great questions. Were really interested in our lives here. Very polite and sincere in their words of thanks and gratitude. I saw the busdriver later on last night and told him how impressed I was with them. He was, too. “Do you know?” he asked me, “that they are going to visit three different churches this week.” These are kids on spring break in Costa Rica from a known party school. That doesn´t happen much. I think some parents and communities did a great job raising their kids.

What a blessing to be blessed by this visit.

Be blessed in all you do.

Saturday was our day to work at a ministry a few blocks from the house. We really didn´t know exactly what to do, so we decided to take the kids to the park across the street to play some kickball. The directors of the program have been trying to get us to take them out for a while anyway, so with the weather being so nice, we took them. I know they play soccer all the time so we wanted to do something different. Baseball? No, we didn´t have the right ball and bat. Basketball? No, the court might be busy. Hmmm. I know. Let´s play kickball. Kind of soccer. Kind of baseball. Sounds good.

We didn´t realize there is no word in Spanish for kickball. They don´t play it here. They do play baseball, and the games seemed to be close enough, that we thought they could get it. They did… eventually. It was hard to get them to realize that they had to run the bases from home to first to second to third and then back. But they got it… eventually.

When they did get it, they liked it. At least the boys did. The girls were kind of luke warm about it all. We´re learning. We´re having fun.

Be blessed in all you do.