Bon Fire

You've heard of a one horse town... well this is a cow town. We have to literally wait for the cows to cross the road daily. We have to honk and push our way through with the car to get by. It makes me laugh every time.
Last night we had a going away party at the beach for 3 pioneer sisters visiting from San Jose. The moon was so bright that we played volleyball and soccer until late. We roasted marshmallows and hot dogs and had a lot of fun. After soccer everyone jumped into the waves and cooled off. The next morning I met for service because i had plans with Tenessa, the sister from Michigan to accompany her on a few Spanish bible studies. On our way out of town her van broke down. We had no choice but to start walking home, even though it would be a few hours before we made it. Fortunately, a Tico family saw us walking and pulled over and told us to jump into the back of the pickup for a ride to Esterones, the town we live in. I took a picture of Tenessa while we were in the back riding on the rim in our service clothes. We jumped out from the back once we got to the town pay phone and gave him our presentation and a track in Spanish. I needed 1 hour that day to get my time in, and it all worked out!

English Service

Since the Circuit Overseer visit last week the English group has been finally given much needed direction. Before we would go out in service with the Spanish Congregation and talk to English households when the opportunity arose. Now we have all been given a very important assignment. We need to map out and create actual english territories. Our area spreads out over a few hundred miles, so this is a very in-depth project that will take I think at least a year. I started helping with this project on Tuesday and was in charge of drawing the map with roads and adding the houses. The roads are all gravel and bumpy and by the end of the day i couldn't even read my own writing. There's a lot of driving involved, we drive to a town and just start taking every gravel road to see where it will lead us. Sometimes there's a house sometimes it just a dead end, but with a beautiful view. At this point we aren't even trying to figure out if they speak spanish or english yet, we just need to know where the houses are in each little town. Once a territory is created, a group works it and then writes down next to the house icon on the territory whether they speak english or spanish. So you can start to get a feel for how long this project will take! But up until now, english has never been worked beyond a 20 mile radius- and even that has never been worked in an orderly fashion with any sort of records kept. With at least 12 visitors here to help english right now, the CO feels we can focus on this and get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time.
I'm finally posting a picture of the kingdom hall and a little peek inside during meeting on Sunday. Most of our meetings will now be in english except the Theocratic Ministry School on Thursday. There's enough visitors right now to support our own meeting, which is awesome because I won't be speaking or understanding spanish anytime soon! David was brave and signed up for the school to do a bible reading. His spanish is pretty good, I'm very impressed - we're all jealous.

Beach Trip

After service today and after a nap, we all went down to "Mel Gibson Beach." It's the next beach over about 2 miles from us and it's where Mel Gibson owns a lot of land and built a house. It was a very beautiful beach with lots of shade from palm trees for the kids. We watched an amazing sunset. Here's some pictures of Finn, since I'm sure grandparents must really miss his "finny face."
That evening is when things got exciting! We went to dinner in town about 5 miles away on our potholed dirt road all the way down and couldn't get the car to start to get us home. We walked to the main road in Samara to get a taxi. No taxi would take us across the river, so we agreed to be dropped off at the river and walk the rest of the way. So with 4 kids at 9 pm and pitch black (there are no road lights of any kind or for that matter phone lines) we crossed the knee deep river on foot. We still had a few miles to go, it was like hiking through the woods at night with no flashlight. Fortunately David and Amber had learned about a shortcut straight up the hill a few days before. That saved us about a hour of walking with tired children and Finn asking us if snakes and alligators were going to eat us. We made it home tired and sweaty and figured it was just another adventure in Costa Rica, wonder what will be next?

I finally made it out in service! Finn is still sick so Marty had to stay home. I think he was a little relieved though because today was Spanish territory. My first day and I had to do it in Spanish! One of the sister's visiting from Michigan helped me put a presentation together and I just read it to the householder. Spanish literature is a little hard to come by, so I offered a track and asked if i could come back. If they said yes, I left them with a question, Who is God? That way I can go right into the first chapter of the teach book on the return visit. If they are still interested, I leave them a copy in Spanish and start a study. To think that I will be expected to start studies in Spanish is overwhelming. But from what I hear, it can be done. The sister from Michigan has only been here two months, no Spanish experience and is conducting 4 studies. I have renewed zeal to practice my Rosetta Stone for a hour per night!

We met for service today at a Y in the road, that's what the first picture is of. The second picture is us working door to door, way different from home! The English group only has organized service times about 3 days a week. Most of the English territory is unmapped and needs a lot of help because it expands such a far distance. The days that we work in English, we drive to particular areas and towns that we know are mostly English speaking. You can totally tell an American home from a Tico home! More to come soon.

We're here!

Crazy few days... Marty and I we're denied boarding in Denver and my luggage didn't arrive until last night. We did make it on the plane, we just had to buy one way refundable tickets within the 90 day time period to get on. This only happens on Frontier airlines, so if you want to visit over 3 months, take note! It is so beautiful here! We live in a small village called Esterones, about 3 miles outside Samara. We have to cross a small river to get to our village, and 4 wheel all the way up. Our house is on a hill and overlooks Buena Vista beach, we went on Sunday with some from the congregation to take the kids swimming. Marty and David went surfing and fishing this morning with some of the brothers and had a fabulous time. Finn has been really sick and I haven't even been out in service yet, hopefully on Wednesday.
No one speaks English. We definitely need to do our Rosetta Stone just so we can buy groceries and do the simplest tasks. I feel totally helpless! All our neighbors are witnesses and it's been nice not to be totally alone, they have helped us out a lot. We love it here and cannot wait to tell you more!