Ministy in Costa Rica

While our time here in Costa Rica has been mainly focused on the preparation phase for our future ministry, God really blessed both Amanda and I with an ESL ministry for several weeks here. What made this so great for me, was that it helped me to see how this might be apart of our future ministry in the future.

Why is ESL such a great ministry? Glad you asked! This is almost the perfect environment to introduce spiritual things to those who might not have any spiritual sensitivity yet. Outside of our knowledge of who God is, our language is an extremely valuable commodity. People all over the world are trying to learn English in the hope of having greater opportunities to both communicate and to acquire a better job. The reality is this...English opens doors.

So inside the classroom you have a group of people who are very eager to speak and read English; so many times we would use Scripture as our text, and use that as our basis for conversation. What a great opportunity to start to talk about spiritual things. So it was such a fun experience to encourage a great group of Costa Ricans, not only in their English, but I was able to communicate about Spiritual things as well.

I also was able to see how quickly relationships could develop in this context. They want to teach me Spanish, I want to teach them English and about God. Perfect!! Relationships seem much easier to form in the Spanish culture, and for that we are extremely grateful. We look forward to seeing how God can use our language to open up doors for ministry in the future. If we ever make it back to the States, I would love to be apart of a church that does this kind of ministry.

These are a couple of my "advanced" students. They were so kind to me, and they knew about as much English grammar as I did.











This is a picture of Regina. She is the one who Amanda wrote about who came to our school looking for us. She is from Santa Marta, Colombia, and she has been praying for our family for over a year.

It was so fun to meet her and her family. We went to their house and had cake and coffee. What a great blessing it was to meet one of our future neighbors.

More than likely we will be living in her apartment building when we get to Colombia


One of my favorite students. This fellow really wanted to learn English. Just really a very loving fellow.











Surprise!!!













My ESL class. Best thing I've done while in Costa Rica

The End Is In Sight

Well, we have a little less than a month left in Costa Rica. It's hard to believe that we have been here for almost 7 months. Things have been about the same and school continues to be tiring. The kids are actually out of school this week due to the swine flu. The government closed all the schools in Costa Rica to avoid more cases. There have been about 300 cases of the flu here, but no one at our school has it. Since the kids don't have school, but we do, Jon and I have been taking turns staying home with the kids. I must confess, I did not object to staying home with them. Not being with the kids all day has been my biggest struggle. I know that this has only been a temporary part of our lives, but I have needed comfort and confirmation from the Lord that we were following His plan for our lives. Veteran missionaries often talk about making sacrifices on the field--this has been one of mine. Though the God of all has continued to show me love and kindness during this time. The kids not having school is in a way a gift for me.

Spanish is coming along day by day. It will be nice to have practical and more natural conversations with people. Two weeks ago I had to give an hour long presentation about Colombia (yes, in Spanish). My classmates and I about went over the edge that week. Jon was certainly glad when I was done with it too. Jon and I are now on the last couple of conjugations. When we leave, we will know how to correctly form all verbs and recognize all the verb tenses. It's now a matter of practicing, building vocabulary, and reinforcing when to use which tense. No problem, right?

We will arrive in the US on August 15. Our wonderful friends from South Carolina are planning to pick us up. Everyone is counting done the days, especially our parents. We plan on being in North Carolina for about a week in a half and then we are going to Columbia, SC for a few days. Jon and I are going to celebrate our 10th anniversary in New York for a few days while his parents have watch the kids. After our trip, we will be going to Virginia to spend time with my family and my parents' church. They have been wonderful supporters and encouragers while we have been here. Our goal is to meet with all our supporters while we are in the States. This will be a challenge though since we have supporters all up the east coast.

We still have some more support to raise and we need to work on securing our visas for Colombia. We don't have a definite departure date, but we are thinking early October, about 6 weeks.

Praises:
1. Three new SAM candidates have been assigned to Colombia. This is great news for us so that we will have more teammates in a city that has very few Americans.
2. Our ESL classes are finished and we both had an amazing time with the people we worked with. ESL has probably been our highlight here because we were actually working on building relationships. Ministry is all about relationships, plus it was excellent practice for Colombia.

Prayer Requests:
1. My dad has had a blood clot in his leg and has been receiving blood thinning shots. Pray that this problem will heal and that my mom can receive some rest too. She's been going non-stop.
2. Pray that we will preserve through the last couple of weeks here.
3. Pray for the details of packing and preparing to leave. It's going to be a challenge to get everything together because we have classes right up until we leave.
4. Pray for the transition back home and then to Colombia.
5. Pray for the members of the Esperanza Church in Colombia as they are working towards a new vision and unity within the body.
6. Pray for a couple from SAM who is living in Colombia for the next three months to learn the language and work on getting to know the ministries and people of the Esperanza Church. They will be returning to work in the home office in Fort Mill, SC in October.
7. Pray for good health for the last 4 weeks for school. We had another round of stomach viruses that went through the whole family about 2 weeks ago. Pray that our bodies will adjust to being back in the States.

Much love,
Jon, Amanda, Kendall and Parker