¡Hola! Dios lo bendiga. This is Chris sitting in for my "primera vez" (first time) with writing the blog. Rose has done a wonderful job and is definitely not being fired but she has asked me numerous times to write and I've wanted to, just never got around to it, maybe you can relate.
Hard to believe we have been "in country" almost 10 months and that this is our final trimester of español. It's so amazing to see how God has worked and still is working in so many areas. Rose and I knew almost no Spanish when we came down here and, solely through His grace and mercy, we can now understand most of what we hear and speak w/confidence even though we know not even close to everything we say is 100% correct. If any of you reading this has a problem w/pride, and don't we all, I'd highly recommend language school. haha Trust me...the pride needs to be checked at the door. Just today myself and then later a good friend, "had a stellar day of mistakes" with a couple words you'd never guess could cause a problem. Maybe I'll be able to share more later! :)
One of the highlights of the entire year for me occurred just a couple weeks ago. I was invited by Dr. Longworth, our school doctor, along with another M.D. good friend of mine to help w/a medical team. A group of pharmacists from West Palm Beach, FL comes down every year and does the clinic in various towns out in the country. They bring an incredible amount of medicines w/them but no doctors so Dr. Longworth always helps along with some other Tico doctors. The clinic I helped at was held in the town of Orósi which is at the south end of the Central Valley heading up into the mountains and south towards Panamá. The church, Puente de Esperanza, (Bridge of Hope) was used for the clinic, which is completely free, and when we arrived there in the early morning of May 16th there was already a couple hundred people waiting! I ended up doing physical therapy on a wooden workbench, first time for me w/that, in the upstairs corner of this building the church uses. Concrete floor, not finished...only stud walls, no glass even in the windows, the stairs needed to be condemned, (OSHA would go NUTS), and it was AWESOME!!! :))) I saw, of course, back issues, but also a torn ACL, needed Dr. Eby for that one, some knee and ankle issues, and a possible rotator cuff tear. I had a great day and I believe there is another opportunity of this type in July which I'm already excited about. The main thing in my mind that day was the verse in Matthew 25:40 "And the king will answer them, saying, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Verses 31-46 in context)
This little old man had come the day before and Dr. Longworth had seen him w/his X-rays, he has severe degenerative joint disease with almost no cartilage left. He really needs a total knee replacement but Dr. Longworth had told him I'd be there on Thurs. so I was able to show him a few exercises and hopefully help him a little. He was very easy to talk to & I could've spent the entire day w/him. The picture below is his wife. I just wanted to show her his exercises so they could remember for at home...welll, she proceeded to let me know her hip & low back hurt and she needed therapy too...all this as she hopped up on the "table." They rode their horse in to the church! :)
Tomorrow, June 8th is a huge evangelical outreach in one of the large parks close to our house/school here in San Francisco de Dos Ríos. A good friend of mine from school had the vision of churches coming together and just sharing the love of Christ in the park. There are going to be people from many of the area churches plus a good number of us students from the language school doing a number of things from passing out candy w/verses attached, to dramas, to sports. I'll be helping w/ultimate frisbee and Rose will be taking blood pressures. Please be in prayer for this and if you see this after the fact please pray for the gospel to reach and touch hearts as God desires for the Kingdom!
Here are few pictures of the girls. They have 4 more half days of school so they are super excited. They had a gymnastic program this past Thursday and got medals. Katie said she thought they were pretty young to be getting their first medals :) They worked very hard this year and their coach "Profe" is amazing and a very gifted, patient man.
We recently celebrated our 15th anniversary! Wow, I think if you would've told us we would be in language school in Costa Rica 15 years ago, I don't know if we would've believed it. God has been faithful and we give him all the glory.
One last thing.....we wanted to share a recent picture of all the families that are in language school right now that will be heading to Peru. We had a get-together a few weeks ago since some of the families will be heading out a bit early. We are excited to see what God is gonna do in Peru!
As always, thank you for your continued prayer support. We have plans to return to the States August 15th and the Lord willing, head to Peru on September 9th. We want to invite you all to Providence Mennonite on Sunday evening August 18th. We hope to share a little about our year in Costa Rica and even a taste of this amazing country. We will post more details closer to date, but mark your calendars! We look forward to seeing you :)
