Wednesday, December 30, 2009
new slideshow on the left!!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Mushy yet Moving... or Sappiness and Sloths
You've likely all seen, heard or read those cutesy little Christmas songs, poems and stories about people who arrive empty-handed to the manger scene to worship Jesus. Their endings are mushy, yet moving. Tonight I'm asking myself why.
“What can I give him poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb. If I were a Wiseman I would do my part. But what can I give Him? I'll give him my heart” -Christina Rossetti
This is one poem among many. There are even songs in Spanish about not having anything to give Jesus so I'll give him my heart.
My adorable Daddy wrote one last week for and inspired by my equally if not more adorable niece and nephews that said they wanted to be sloths in the church Christmas pageant. In part 2 the slow moving sloths meet the Magi and ride with them on the camels to go worship the Baby Jesus. They arrive and the Magi present their gifts and Stevie, the youngest sloth (who correlates to my nephew Isaiah-who I also identify with the most since I'm the ba
by of my family) wants to give Jesus something too, so he gives him his tree-branch snack that he brought along for the trip. So sweet I had tears in my eyes!
What makes stories like this so sweet? Yeah, the stories like this are mushy and almost lame. But they are so sweet and powerful that they can't just be brushed aside. There is real truth in them. This isn't to philosophize and make a puddle a trench -which I think Christians do far too often.
But really-what do we, mere humans, creatures have to offer our Creator and King? He made us and we belong to him! We have nothing to offer but ourselves! And that is what God wants! He wants us to turn away from our selfish rebellious lives and turn to him and give Him the worship and praise He deserves. This can be done through giving God gifts. The gifts the Magi gave Jesus were very fitting and actually prophetic (gold because He is the King, frankincense because he is the Great High Priest, and myrrh to prophesy about His death). And Stevie the Sloth's offering, like the widow's 2 nigh worthless coins that she offered to God (see Mark 12), was pleasing to God because the gift was all that there was that could be given.
How amazing is our God! How great is His love that He makes us and gives us life and loves us and redeems us, even though we are rebellious rotten jerks. And Christ the King and High Priest came to earth and was fully God and fully man, lived a perfect life and then gave it up that we might be saved, even though we are rotten, rebellious jerks. Giving ourselves to Him sure isn't much, especially since we're rotten jerks. But He still loves us and accepts us as we are. And when we give ourselves back to Him, he has a way of transforming us and making us not so rotten and rebellious anymore. What amazing love and grace! And that is all the more reason to worship Jesus!
Tico Tuesday, December 29th
Thanks be to God my first Christmas out of the country was fantastic! I spent Christmas Eve and morning with a dear family from church that has a daughter close to my age (I am good friends with the mom as well since we work together at church). Then there was a big luncheon at my house for all the young people from church who have been participating in the study with Ana. We had a blast playing volleyball, taking pictures (that unfortunately didn't turn out very well) after getting wet in the random down pour, and playing Apples to Apples and Catchphrase. Head to the blog for my latest Christmas contemplations...
Much love to you all,
Carrie
Sunday, December 27, 2009
2 pieces of Advice and a foto link
NEVER EVER go shopping on Christmas Eve!
It's really almost not worth it. I had never gone shopping on Dec 24th before and now I know why. Something that could have taken an hour and a half-or maybe less- took 4 hours! I don't ever plan on going again, but I was desperate. I was longing to make some Christmas cookies and the plan was to make them that afternoon and I hadn't had the chance to go shopping earlier. And of course the cookies I wanted to make required ingrediants that aren't supercommon here. Molasses-oh man I should have looked for that in AutoMercado (the expensive grocery store). I just ended up doubling the brown sugar. Thankfully chocolate chips do exist here, but not in Mas x Menos (a not so expensive grocery store). So, yes we went to 2 jam-packed full with ridiculous lines grovery stores. But, mint extract was nowhere to be found. And not ONE candy cane was able to be found in AutoMercado. Rich snobs. Who doesn't sell candy canes? Maybe they'd sold out. I don't know. I know they exist here though because I saw them in Palí (the really cheap grocery store). Whatever. I used round peppermint candies. They're pretty much the same anyway. And as for the mint extract, You won't believe this. I think it's hilarious. Peppermint Altoids! They are curiously strong... And let me tell you, those chocolate mint cookies were SOOOOOOOOOO DELICIOUS!!!! I made the cookies at my friend Ana Victoria's house and I am also friends with her kids (Diana, Felipe and Verónica), so I spent the night too. To testify to the amazing deliciousness of my cookies, Felipe got up at 3am to go work at the airport and found some cookies for breakfast and couldn't help but exclaim aloud ¡Qué buenas galletas! (What great cookies!) That made me laugh, and feel very happy. Pictures will be appearing soon.
Piece of Advice #2
This is especially for guys because we girls already know this. Girls never cry about just one thing. I feel like maybe I've talked about this before, but I don't know. Sometimes the littlest thing will set us off and make us cry, so we're not really crying about that one thing, but that is part of it.
I'm not big on talking about crying. I'm definitely a weep by myself kind of girl, unless my parents or a really really really really really really really close friend is around. But, I'll tell you a little bit to explain myself better.
This year was my first Christmas out of the country and away from biological relatives. Last year I wasn't with my parents, but I was with my aunt, uncle and cousins that are closest to me and then we went to Grandma and Grandpa Gates'. And I saw my parents a couple days later. (I'm not going to see my parents again until August. That's a long time, but I know it will come quickly!) Thanks be to God, Christmas this year went really well and I had a great day (more on that later). But yes, I did miss my folks.
So, there I was at the Christmas Eve service at church. it was really nice-with lots of special music. And a few times I got quite choked up. Was it because I missed my parents? Yes, but it was also because of some other things. As I believe I've mentioned in previous posts and definitely in e-mails to various people-sometimes throughout the month of the December I would totally forget it was even Advent and that Christmas was coming. It made me contemplate a lot about the way Christmas is/perhaps should be celebrated, but I wasn't able to really meditate on the season. Maybe that's my fault more than anything else, but I didn't have much around me encouraging me to do so. And that always helps. People around here celebrate Christmas really differently.
So on Christmas Eve it finally really started to feel like Christmas. And again realizing the amazing love of God, the holy mysterious miracle of the Incarnation of Christ, contemplating that night in Bethelehem and the shepherds and and angels-it was just one of those "wonder of Christmas" kind of moments I used to always read about the in Guidepost Christmas Treasury and that brought tears too. get it? good.
And here is the foto link. These are pictures of the trip to Isla Venado. Sorry I forgot to give you the link last time. Christmas pictures will come soon!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tico Tuesday, December 22nd
I wish you all much joy and time with loved ones as we celebrate together the Incarnation of our Savior Jesus Christ!
This past weekend I got to go on a trip to share some Christmas joy with the children of Isla Venado, a little island in the Gulf of Nicoya (inside the thumb of the mitten of Costa Rica). I got to play in mud, swim in the ocean, hang out with the cool young people from the church there, play with the kids and had out gifts to them, eat delicious coconut apretados (simplified homemade ice creams) and enjoy hammocks made from fishing nets (I LOVE HAMMOCKS) and hula hooping. Head to the blog for more stories and pictures!
Much love to you all,
Carrie
Several years ago my friend Oscar started collecting presents to give to the children of Isla Venado. Isla Venado is very poor. The people there live almost completely off of fishing. The only trouble is, fish are often hard to find! :-( And there is great temptation to make a little extra dough helping out the narco-traffickers. Not cool. But, this little island of about 850 inhabitants, around half of which are Christians! In spite of Costa Rica being such a Catholic country, there is actually not a Catholic church to be found on the island!
To arrive, we had to go on land to Puntarenas, then on a ferry to Paquera, then on land another 30-40 minutes, and then in lancha (like a long speed boat that doesn't go very fast) 15-20 minutes to get to the island. Total time in arrival is 5-6 hours, but it's very enjoyable (if you have the right attitude and aren't afraid of the hot sun, mud or water).
Going on the ferry was fun. I have another ferry story to share with you, but I'll save that for another day. It reminds me a lot of going to Isleboro when I was little. I'll tell you more about Isleboro some day too. Good times and great family memories!!! Anyway, when we first left the dock there was some breeze or waves from something because we were pitching a little bit, enough to show us we definitely don't have sea legs! But, not enough to really make us nervous. I know Mommy wouldn't have liked it though.
The next interesting part was getting to the boat landing where we had to wait for the lancha. The tide was wicked low, so we had to walk 300-400 meters (about 3 football fields) through crazy thick, slippery mud to where there was enough water to meet the boat. We had been warned this might happen, so I had my super duper rubber boots along that I purchased in México de Upala in October. But I was told the mud was great for exfoliating the skin on your feet and I kind of wanted to walk in it, so I lent my boots to somebody that didn't really want to walk in the mud and had at it. We all had to make several trips back and forth carrying all the bags and boxes of gifts, plus our luggage. It was really hot, but I had fun. (Don't worry I was wearing lots of sunscreen.) And I'll tell you, boy are my feet smooth!!!
We got to the island, met Pastor Eladio and his wife (amazing people!), filled up the goody bags, cut material for the kids activity the next day while chilling on the nifty hammocks, and then went to the beach. I didn't have my suit, but I didn't care. Unfortunately the water was so warm it didn't even feel refreshing, but it felt good to be in water and it was fun.
That night was probably the highlight of the trip-we were going to have a bonfire, but it began to rain, so we hung out inside instead. A whole bunch of the youth from the church don Eladio pastors came and we got to do some icebreakers with them, have a little devotional and get to know them. It was great!
We got up really early on Sunday-the howler monkeys, roosters, cats, and Richi's snoring helped make sure. But with 24 of us plus I'm not sure how many of them and 1 bathroom makes life a bit difficult. I showered Saturday night and didn't worry about it Sunday morning.
We had yummy gallo pinto and eggs for breakfast. Every other meal we had was balck beans, rice and fried fish. YUM! A little repetitive, but yum. And it wasn't for long enough for us to get sick of it. At least. Not for me!
Then we had the kids activity on the plaza (right across the street from Pastor Eladio's house). It was crazy, but a lot of fun. I had to partner up with a girl in a skirt in the wheelbarrow race-so you know who go to the the wheelbarrow. I never realized what good exercise that is! Especially trying to do it as fast as you can! I was a little sore from that yesterday.
Then we handed out the presents. That was madness too. Well, we started pretty well organized, but by the end, that was a little harder to maintain as we quickly had to decide how to hand out gifts from kids who didn't show up to kids who weren't on the list but somehow showed up anyway. Then we had a brief time of prayer and sharing and away we went! We had to wait a long time for the boat that was going to take us and we thought we were going to miss the ferry and have to wait until 9pm (we were trying to take the 5pm one), but we made it on time, and the ferry actually left like a half hour late, so it was really fine. I had a nice talk with Alejandra processing things. She is a sweet lady. And then, unfortunately after the Puntarenas-Heredia soccer game ended they started blaring reggaton and we witnessed some really dirty dancing. That was disappointing. I just tried to look away and at the ocean or sky instead. The stars were really pretty. And, finally, we made it home. And I went to bed. The end.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tico Tuesday, December 15th
Today I would like for you to rejoice with me because
-that little card in my hand in my CEDULA!! This little card means that I now have proof that I am an OFFICIAL resident of Costa Rica!! Praise the Lord!! All those hours waiting, expensive mailings, ridiculous automated phone menus, times we had to wait for the lawyer, driving all over San José, and that mound of paperwork that covered the dining room table have been rewarded! It also means that I can pay several times less what most other foreigners (tourists) have to pay upon entering a national park, zoo or any other place tourists really get ripped off. :-)
God is so good! Thank you so much for all your prayers and to those of you who helped me out in any way (superthanks to my parents and the Harps!!!) and listened to me rant and rave and stress through the crazy process.
God bless you all!
Love,
Carrie
PS As always you can find more interesting stories and thoughts on my blog!
Today I just want to clarify a little bit on what I talked about last time. I feel like I came across like I'm trying to make myself into this superholy person that is above and removed from normal life here on earth. That's not what I was going for. As any good Grover learns (and all good Christians should know) we aren't supposed to shun the things of the world and condemn them. We are to learn about them, think about them, try to understand them, and learn from them. In classic InterVarsity speak, we need to engage the world, not just scorn it or scuff it aside. Do I want my life to be centered n things of eternal value? Absolutely! But can I still play games and learn about things that aren't directly related to the Bible? Absolutely! Now if I start acting like any other Josefine Schmo and still claim to be a Christian I've got issues. Christians are supposed to be different, but we are also supposed to be known by our love. We can't just run around cutting people down and criticizing them. Unfortunately we suck at that whole loving thing a lot of the time.
So, I think it's a lot more an issue of mindset. I can watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and get angry at how it's all about Santa and toys and dumb flying reindeer and has nothing to do with the miracle of the incarnation of Christ. Or I can watch it and be reminded to look out for and love on the misfits around me, to not judge too quickly, and know that there is hope for everyone, even those who are as bad as the Abominable Snow Monster.
Oh, excuse me. Is this your snowbank? -Hermie the elf
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tico Tuesday, December 8th
(yes those are pineapple plants). And Santa stuff just looks ridiculous. But it's helping me concrete-ize (concretar in Spanish) a bit more some of the things I've been thinking about in relation to Advent and Christmas over the last couple years. Head to the blog to read more! Http://smithcj1.blogspot.com/
God's joy and peace be with you!
Carrie
My family always had an Advent wreath growing up. For those of you who may not know, a lot of people and churches make a distinction between Advent (the celebration of the coming of Christ) and actual Christmas (Jesus' birth). There is a Christmas season, it just happens to begin on December 25th. Advent starts 4 Sundays before Christmas. So, an Advent wreath has 4 candles, one for each Sunday preceding the big day. And, of course each candle means something. If you ask me, they mean Prophecy, Bethlehem, Shepherds and Angels, but a lot of people will tell you Faith, Hope, Joy and Love or a something else. And that's ok. I think the important thing is that they mean something that serves to point us toward Christ and focus on Him as we anticipate His coming.
We all know Christmas is way too freaking commercialized and that all the reindeer, snowmen, stockings and trees don't really have anything to do with God becoming flesh. But, I still grew up with tree, a homemade stocking, a pretty little musical thing that plays “Silent Night” (whoever said it was a silent night? I don't think I'm gonna be silent when I give birth!!!!), a cute pink nutcracker, etc. Is there anything inherently wrong and evil in these things? No. And all those objects are of HUGE sentimental value to me. Will I make them a part of my household when I grow up and have a family? I don't know. I think my husband should be able to have some say in the matter. I know a family that makes a manger and puts it in the corner of the living room instead of a Christmas tree. I think that's cool. I like the idea of having decorations that focus us more on the Incarnation than... shininess or senselessness. Because really, if I'm going to say that I'm a follower of Christ and let Him be Lord of my life, I need to truly let Him rule my life. I believe that He is all that matters and that I need to focus on things of eternal value and not get caught up in things of the world. Does that mean I'm going to be a Santa-hater? No. I think we could all learn something from St. Nick (the original one). But, I want my life to be pleasing to God, not full of trains and tinsel. I want to be purposeful, intentional.
The family I'm living with here doesn't do much for Christmas-no decorations whatsoever. We have a Christmasy tablecloth, but I think that's about it. It's weird to me-I'm not used to it at all. It makes it feel like it's not Christmas/Advent-time. Hence, I've become more pensive. Sometimes I feel like I am on the brink of getting really homesick. I didn't spend Christmas with my parents last year, but I was with my closest cousins and I saw my parents and one of my brothers a few days later. I've never been outside the country and not with blood relatives for Christmas before. I've been a little hesitant to listen to Christmas music. It brings back so many memories. And a lot of it is full of meaningless warm fuzzies too, but there is still a lot we can even learn from Rudolph and his fellow misfits (even though it might not directly have anything to do with Jesus).
I feel like I'm not making a clear point. I'm not trying to prove my holiness because I'll be the first to tell you what a jerk I can be. I guess what I'm trying to say is-- I think it's important to focus on what is really most important: celebrating the coming of the Christ-Child and anticipating His coming again (and of course, remembering and praising Him for what He came here to do. Being born was just the first step). Everything else is just a chasing after the wind. And yes, I'll admit it. I'm reading Ecclesiastes. ;-)
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Adv... Randomness
I was going to contemplate Advent and Christmas. I feel like I'm on the verge of getting homesick and I need to sort my thoughts. I think that will be better done in my journal though and not a space quite so public as this. I'll let you know what conclusions I come to though.
I will share this. I adore Richi, one of the pastors here at CCI (the church I attend and serve in). He is one of those people that exudes love. It is so obvious that he cares about people-he really loves them. And he is great at making people feel welcome. I wish he and his family didn't live so far away (they live on the other side of San Jose-2 hours and 3 bus rides away). I told him that he and his wife should have had a son a couple years before their 1st daughter. They would be wonderful in-laws. Jajaja!!! Anyway, I really appreciate Richi (You can see a picture of him in my Thanksgiving album on facebook). I'm looking forward to getting to know him and his family more.
That's all. I'm going to bed. More another time.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
My Birthday!
Birthday month has come to an end, but I got another card in the mail today, so I don't think birthday season is over just yet. Somebody else told me they sent me something. Hey, I milk it for all I can!!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tico Tuesday, December 1st
Hello!
It's been another full Tuesday here in Costa Rica! Today I want to share with you the bulletin board that we put up. This time it didn't fall down after 2 weeks!
It says “Bringing the light to the nations” and has information from Centro Cristiano Internacional's Global Missions Network, a sweet Thank You note from La Carpio for the donations and Dia del Nino activity we did there, and some pictures and info from Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, where a coworker of mine is serving on weekends. I'm getting ready to put another bulletin board up for the month of December. It looks so easy, but it really does take a lot of time and assistance from others!
Have a blessed rest of the week!
Carrie
Tico Tuesday, November 24th
I feel so loved, and I know that is because I am loved. Today is my birthday!! I was awakened this morning with a little “Happy Birthday” serenade from the Vieras and their friend Leslie that spent the night with us last night. It was really sweet. Then a little later I got to talk to my parents and open the package they sent me. Here is a picture of what they sent me.
The nativity set is actually on lend to me while I'm here. My Daddy made it for my Mommy for their first Christmas together (or maybe it was their second, but I think it was their first). Isn't he talented? And the little clown candle is of incredible sentimental value to me as well. My Grammy gave me one every year until they stopped selling them. Isn't that adorable?
May you have a blessed rest of the week!
Carrie
PS I'm hoping to post some pictures of me when I was little on my blog http://smithcj1.blogspot.com/ soon. Be sure to keep an eye out for the clown candles!!
Whoops! I didn't post this last week! Life is so crazy! Hopefully more soon!!!