Sunday, March 6, 2011

Week of Orientation

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  Tomorrow marks a week exactly of the student’s arrival. In this last week we decided to give the students a relaxing week, and just let them get settled in. Costa Rica is a different atmosphere than most would expect. Most of the students expect it to be just like Mexico, but in honestly its really nothing like that.The Spanish a tad different, food is not a like, and the cultures are really not too similar. Our town is also thought to be a little country mountain town, and even though in a sense it is, its really not. I know its confusing but more so San Isidro is a fairly busy city with outskirt residential neighborhoods, all in the middle of a jungle mountain forest. So basically its more of a city than a bo-hunk mountain town, but still beautiful nonetheless. The students now being here have been able to experience all this greatness first hand. A couple of them looked a little overwhelmed and culture shocked last week when we picked them up, but now the students seem to have comfortably settled in. We have been taking them all over town; showing them our favorite places to eat, taking them traveling to some of the local fun spots, and also taking them to our city’s weekly ferria(farmer’s market). It has been an amazing fun filled week, but tomorrow the classes fully start. If you remember please keep both the students and staff in your prayers. We all got a lot of things still yet to be done, but we know by His grace He w100_3138ill finish it. In His mercy and love lies our hopeSmile

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Students Arrive

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   The Students have now arrived! Yesterday we spent all day picking up the six students from the San Jose airport. We rented a 26 passenger micro-bus to transport the students in style and comfort from San Jose to San Isidro . The students came in pretty tired and slept a good amount on the windy mountain roads, so that worked out in accordance of avoiding any car sickness…praise the LordSmile. It’s definitely still a shock having these students here. We spent three months at CCBC Murrieta preparing and conversing with them about this semester, but it still seems weird that its actually all happening. We have a very good group here for our first semester and I’m definitely excited to see what the Lord is going to do. He has been faithful so far to bring us here, and it’s definitely going to be for something good that He is going to do here.                                                                                                     Here is a list of the students names;

  1. Ecna Perez
  2. Justine Marees
  3. Chandler Walker
  4. Taylor White
  5. Tarah Joi
  6. Korina Bowman
  7. Gerry Carrillo

These students are such great brothers and sisters in the Lord and will definitely be used by God greatly here. But also no doubt will go through some hard times as well. Please keep these students in your prayers. Thank you guys, Lord bless you.

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Calvary Chapel in San Jose

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“Blessed are the flexible”-Chuck Smith. One aspect of being in Ministry is definitely the willingness to be flexible. Many times God isn’t  giving us a detail by detail blue print plan, but more of a step by step moment by moment call of direction. This last weekend we found out that the Pastor of Calvary Chapel San Jose(Costa Rica’s Capital), had to return to the states for a family emergency. His father in law became very sick, and he and his family had to return there on a very short notice. I don’t know all the details about it, but please keep them in prayer. With all that said, the church did not know who would be able to teach the Sunday morning English service. Ryan and I were going to be in San Jose that afternoon to run some errands, so with God directing it all we left on the 6:30am bus early for the church service. Ryan was definitely used by the Lord to share a great message on the Holy Spirit, which blessed me and the entire congregation. He not only spoke by word, but showed by action who the Holy 100_3087Spirit is and how He empowers us to do His will according to His ways. He is a person and leads us in His power for His glory. It was a blessed time of just fellowshipping with the folks there and seeing the Lord glorified. It was also really neat to have lunch with the group on the top right corner. They’re great family in the Lord. Two of them are actually missionaries from Jamaica, and it was so interesting to just listen to them speak and hear their accent. They’re just in love with Jesus and love to share about His name.