Seminary, I'm coming

To all of you who keep up with my life plans and such, I've got a small update for you: I'm currently applying to seminary schools, so that I can enroll in the fall of 2010.

That means my days here in Costa Rica are numbered :-( I'm planning on stickin' around this country until April/May of next year, when I'll move back to the States, move to some new city, and then prepare myself for another 3 years of school.

With that being said, Ray is in need of some new interns. Whether full-time or part-time, the help is needed. I'll be doing some recruiting around Texas in November, and I'll be receiving emails from now until May, hoping that new people are called to ministry in Costa Rica.

However, all is not lost. We have Kim Baldwin and, potentially, Alli Adams who will be serving here full-time, so I'm not leaving an empty nest. There is plenty of help available, yet plenty more work than just the 2 of them can handle.

So please, pray for us. Pray for your friends. Pray for your family. And if you know of college students, college grads, or anyone else who feels called by God to come down to CR, don't hesitate to let us know.

Texas-sized Choir Tour

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to take a 10-day tour of Texas with the Colegio Metodista (Methodist School) Youth Choir. It was a blast.

17 high school students and 6 alumni / college students joined their director, Rolando, on this spectacular trip through Texas. They started in Dallas, then headed to Ft. Worth, then made their way down to Llano (outside of Austin), and then back up north to finish their trip in Plano. For the majority of them, it was their first time in Texas.

They sang approximately 30 times, in 4 different churches, in 4 different schools, in 2 different nursing homes, and in umpteen other locations--and they were exhausted by the end. But if you can picture an old, European cathedral near Christmas time, with a beautiful choir singing in the nave, then you can picture the voices of these students. They're incredible. And every church they performed for in Texas was simply amazed.

For the students, they got to see downtown Dallas, to tour the stockyards in Ft. Worth, to shop at some huge Texas malls, to climb a huge granite rock (Enchanted Rock, as pictured above), to swim in a Texas river, to attend a Texas high school football game, to drive through downtown Austin, to take pictures at the Dallas Zoo, to sing at the new Cowboys Stadium, and much more. I think they enjoyed it a bit :-)

For me, it was an opportunity to see my family for the first time since January, soak in some Texas sun for the first time in a year, see new parts of Texas, and show some excited kids all around my stomping grounds. I felt at peace.

As I flew back into San Jose with the choir, I couldn't help but thinking about how, for the first time, I was flying into Costa Rica with a bunch of friends. What a blessing.

Spiritual Emphasis Week

From August 31 to September 4, the Colegio Metodista got rocked by Spiritual Emphasis Week.

Our guests were the Mark Swayze Band and Pastor Ryan Barnett from University United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas, and they were awesome. Every day they played to a packed out house, for 550 high school students (some days the students were split in two, but still . . .), bringing praise music, excitement, energy, and the Word of God to the school.

By the end of the week, hundreds of students were responding to the band's message by coming up front and praying with the band, praying for a renewed relationship with Christ, praying for their families, praying for their friends, and many praying to receive Christ for the first time.

One teacher, who doesn't speak English, came up to me and said, "Next time you're translating the sermon for me!" I asked him why. "Because my kids are coming back to class crying all over the place, and I need to know what that pastor is saying!"

It was great. The entire school was touched by the Holy Spirit in a way that had never happened before at the Colegio. God moved through this ministry team from San Antonio, and we hope that the school and its students will never be the same. May God continue to show his presence at the Colegio Metodista.

Thank you Mark, Allison, Steven, Kyle, Andrew, Callen, R.T., Vicki and Ryan. Y'all are awesome.

Progress at the Children's Home

House #1 at the Children's Home is comin' along nicely!

We've started laying block on the side walls, and we've finished pouring the concrete for probably 80% of the foundation. In the next few weeks, we're planning on having nothing but block-laying on our hands. It's tedious, but it's great that we're getting there . . .

Below you can see Bryan and Beth Tatum, our new house parents for House #1! The view behind them is what they'll see out of their back window. Not too shabby, huh?

Hanging out in Puerto Viejo

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to spend some relaxation days hanging out with the locals in Puerto Viejo. It was wonderful.

I went to school and helped teach English to 3, 4 and 5 year-olds, I bathed in a river surrounded by lush green trees and plants and hillsides, I played pick-up neighborhood soccer in a muddy cow pasture (yeah, you never wanted to know what you were slipping in) with a bunch of 20 and 30-something-year-old Ticos who put me in my place, and I played a version of Scattergories with some of my best friends up there, cheating through my use of both English and Spanish vocabulary words.

I'll just say, you haven't lived unless you've played soccer in a muddy cow pasture until the sun goes down (or until you've accepted Christ, but hey, either way . . .). By the end of the game, I think the final score was 11-10 (they only count who's up and by how much they're up), we couldn't see 15 feet in front of us. You'd pass the ball into darkness, hoping that your teammate was there to score the game-winning goal. The guys I played with looked like they had just gone swimming, due to the amount of sweat that clung to their bodies. I can't say the same about me, but that's just because I don't have to put nearly as much effort forward as they do in order to play well :-)

All-in-all, it was a marvelous set of days. 2, to be exact.

Post-VBS baseball

So I've determined something over the past couple of months: Costa Rican kids are good at baseball, even though seemingly no one in this country plays baseball.

Granted, when I say "Costa Rican kids," I'm talking about the numerous kids at VBS in the Sarapiqui / Puerto Viejo region who have knocked the ball out of the "park" in recent weeks. And, when speaking of Sarapiqui, especially the economically challenged areas of Sarapiqui, one must assume that many of the children are from Nicaragua, or at least have Nicaraguan parents.

And all the Nicaraguans around here talk about how good their homeland is at baseball. In order to test this fact, I went to the source of all knowledge in today's world: Wikipedia. It lists 9 Nicaraguans who have played in the MLB since 1976. That's not too great of a track record.

The two best players are pitchers Dennis Martinez (who definitely has some clout) and Vicente Padilla (who just got released by my hometown Texas Rangers). Good pitching does not answer why these kids know how to knock the crud out of a whiffle ball.

Anyways, all that to say that I've been really impressed with the skills of these little kids during our Post-VBS Home Run Derbies.

Progress at the Clinic

We've broken ground and made headway on the Methodist Medical Clinic!

Above you can see a picture of our Learning Resource Center container which will be relocated to the new slab of concrete next to it, as well as the first ditches for where the Clinic will be. The Learning Resource Center and the Clinic will reside next to one another, so our overall project encompasses both of these ministries.

While no more teams will be coming to the Puerto Viejo projects this year (the rest are all focusing on the Children's Home), we're hoping to hit the ground running at the beginning of 2010.

Below, you can find the funniest groundbreaking picture ever. Kim, our resident Clinic nurse, in full fashion.