Manualidades Navidenas

Back in September, the Lord placed on my heart a desire to have an outreach activity at our local Costa Rican church.  Christmas here is a pretty big deal, and the season starts very early as they obviously don't celebrate Thanksgiving.  The idea was to have an afternoon of Christmas crafts where ladies from the church would attend and invite their friends who do not know Christ.  It turned out that the only day we could host the event at the church was the Saturday after Thanksgiving which just happened to be the day my sister and brother-in-law left after their 1.5 week visit.  I felt very much like the Lord was leading me to ask our church back in Atlanta, Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, to partner with us in this event by donating the supplies needed for the crafts.  They gladly said yes, and found a weekly Bible study class who was interested in partnering with us to donate all the materials needed.  Through the generosity of the class, my sister and brother-in-law arrived with tons of supplies and materials...everything we needed and more.  Parts of the next week were spent organizing everything into craft packets for each activity.  By the day of the event, I was pretty tired, but the Lord was faithful to give me strength and endurance.  We ended up having almost 60 ladies attend the event.  We had two craft sessions with a time of cafesito (coffee and pastries) and one of the church ladies gave her testimony and a very clear presentation of the gospel.  Praise the Lord at least one woman chose to accept Christ.  It was a wonderful time of fun, sharing and loving on the ladies.  This has been the first time in a long time that the Lord very clearly placed an idea on my heart of what I can do to help spread His Kingdom.  The feeling of having been used by the Lord to bring people to Himself is a little overwhelming and just really cool.  I praise Him for all that was done at this event and the new sister in Christ we have today. 

 

Visitors

Although being far away from family is difficult, living in Costa Rica does have its advantages.  It's incredibly accessible from the States, especially Atlanta which is where we are from.  Our first short-term visitors for the year arrived the week before Thanksgiving.  My sister and brother-in-law came down to celebrate their 5-year anniversary as well as celebrate Thanksgiving and spend time with us.  I cannot fully express the joy that I felt in their coming.  It was a wonderful time or rest, renewal and relationship deepening.  We spent many hours just laughing and talking about life, family, God and everything in between.  It was such a special time.  During their visit, we finally went to visit volcano Arenal.  I can't believe it's taken us almost 3 years to go visit for the first time, but we were very excited.  I had hoped to get to see more of the volcano, but it was raining almost the entire time we were there.  So, we spent long hours reading books, talking and resting.  I think the Lord gave us the best, and what we needed most which was rest.  Here are some pictures from their visit.

                                       Jenn, Patrick and Josh at the central market in San Jose

                                                                         Orosi Valley

                                              Central plaza in Zarcero on the way to Arenal

                                     This is pretty much what we saw of the volcano for 2 days

                     Jenn took a surf lesson on one of their last days here.  She even got up on her first wave!

Tribu

So, I (Allison) have been helping with the newly re-formed youth group at our local church here in Costa Rica.  The group is called "Tribu" which means "the tribe".  It was an interesting start, and has definitely taken some time to get to a point where the youth feel comfortable with me and are starting to open up.  This past Saturday marked an important point in my life.  For the first time, I lead the teaching part/Bible study part of the youth meeting.  Needless to say, I was totally nervous.  The time was covered in much prayer and thought...and practice.  Practice because, just like in English, I hate talking in front of crowds and the words just seem to leave my head.  I think I talked through the entire 30 minute Bible study 4 or 5 times.  Praise the Lord, I lived through it.  I hope that the Lord used it to speak to their lives.  I will say one thing, we also have had in the past few weeks to make some conduct codes due to disruptive behavior.  I was a little nervous about this because disruptive behavior could've been very distracting.  I don't know if it was the Lord's provision just for me or what, but they were the most attentive, well-behaved group of 25 youth I'd seen at Tribu yet.  Praise the Lord!  Please continue to pray for me as I seek to speak into the lives of the youth at Valle de Beraca church, sharpening them and pushing them towards holiness.

In the Trenches

I feel sometimes like I'm back in college.  Life in college was very cyclical.  You had very definite beginnings and very definite endings, beginnings and ends of semesters and classes and activities.  There was the excitement of the first day and overwhelming joy as you walked out of that last final, along with some relief that you actually made it through.  And then there's the part about 3/4 of the way through where both of those joys and excitements don't play into your daily life, but you just are walking daily to learn more or get work done.  I feel like that's where we are...at the 3/4 mark.  In the EMI Latin American office, we have intern and project cycles.  Three times a year, we have new interns come in and with each semester comes new projects where the team members serve the Lord and help to spread the gospel through their professional design and engineering skills.  You have the relief and joy when the final project report is completed and sent off, knowing that you have fulfilled a divine purpose and have served the Lord with your life and skills.  Then, some weeks, somewhere in this 3/4 point of the semester, you're just living daily to serve the Lord, trying to get work done and move towards the completion of projects.  We praise the Lord for the opportunity to serve him.  We praise him for the excitement that comes with the fresh faces of new interns and new projects and look forward expectantly to the finality of the project and the sad goodbyes to the interns (and time with family to celebrate Christmas!).  But in this moment, we are simply praying for continued daily perseverance, motivation and encouragement.  Praise the Lord that He is always with us!

SOME PICS FROM THE LAST MONTH:

 
With Fall interns at Host Family Appreciation Party

 Duke with our 11-month great dane Duke