This past Wednesday there was a terrible accident in Sta. Bárbara, a nearby town. A man from my church has a furniture store there and one of his workshop/storage spaces caught on fire. Unfortunately, 2 people were not able to get out, and one of those people was his 16 year old nephew, Natanael. Natanael's family doesn't go to CCI, so I never met the kid or his parents, but I do know the man (and his family) that owns the furniture store. And Natanael's family is very close to Pastor Rolando and several other families in the church. So, though he wasn't a congregation member, it still hit a lot of people in the church pretty hard. Natanael's family are all solid believers with an impressive faith. God has given them incredible peace and strength in this time, though I wouldn't be surprised if things get harder for them as life dies down and Nati never comes home, and isn't there for x event, and misses Y's birthday, etc. Please join me in praying for the Villalobos Vargas family and their loved ones.
Thursday I went to Natanael's church with a friend of mine to drop off flowers from CCI. It was really depressing to see the coffin there in the front of the church. The last time I'd seen that was about 8.5 years ago when my Grammy Smith died-so a lot of memories of her came flooding back. But it was also sad to know that the body of a 16 year olf boy was inside that coffin. I heard his mom say that she knew her children were on loan to her from God, and it's true.
Friday I accompanied friends of his (that are also friends of mine) to the funeral. And I was really impressed-the ceremony was very well done. It was a celebration of the life that God gave Natanael. He was in God's hands and now he is in God's presence and that really is something to rejoice about. As the Apostle Paul said, "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1.21). And Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. I long to be where Nati is: in the PRESENCE of my Savior, Maker, and Lord. God fulfilled his purpose in Natanael's life, and He hasn't finished with me yet, because I'm still here. So this is where I'll be until that happens.
The whole service was worshipful, beautiful and downright inspiring. It got me thinking once more. So often we take our lives for granted-but we really are just a breeze, a breath, "a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow" (Casting Crowns). And so-what am I living for? I am making the most of the time God is gifting me? Here one could easily fall into some kind of legalistic self-lashing I-must-make-myself-holy-and-perfect deal, but I know I can do nothing to make myself be any better. But I dedicate myself wholly to God. I want to live for Him and be purposeful in all I do. May He be glorified in me, and may I grow deeper in my relationship with Him and fall more in love with Him. I want to be focused on the eternal-because when it comes down to it, that's all that really matters. I pray these desires may be yours too. Thanks for reading and thanks for being part of my life. I'm so grateful to God for you!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tico Tuesday, January 26th
Wow was it hard to choose a picture to represent the past week! I had almost 2000 to choose from. The week at camp was amazing: fun, stressful, exhausting, hilarious, hard and sweet all at the same time. And I faced a whole bunch of things I thought I was afraid of and got to do all sorts of new exciting things! I learned a lot, though it was more life lessons than from the actual chapel talks. Those were aimed at an audience a little younger than me (and that's ok, because that was the real audience!). I got to take care of 9 wild but sweet 11-13 year old girls in my cabin and lead my team to 3rd place (out of 6-not too bad, though we were winning at one point during the week). More to come on the blog. I hope to post pictures as soon as I can too. In the meantime you can enjoy watching me fly through the air. Have a fantastic rest of the week!
Carrie
Wow, where and how to start to tell you about the week of madness at camp? I've already had several conversations, written 2 novels (1 to my parents and 1 to a friend) and journaled for pages. I have never had a more exhausting week before in my life!! It was packed to the brim with activities and fun, and the chapel and devotional times were really good and very well done. The theme of the week was METAMORFOSIS (betcha can't figure out what that is, jajaja!!! j/k). the chapel was all decked out with cardboard greenery, lights, and everything else to make you feel like you're in a garden. There was even a giant chrysalis with a silhouette of a person curled up in it. Wicked cool! Romans 12:1-2 were the theme verses of the week and the speaker did a great job expositing them piece by piece.
We had a lot of team building activities and a lot crazy competitions-and a few fun times to just play.
We were divided up into 6 teams-each one named after a Transformer. Oh this is hilarious. I was sent up as the team rep to choose which Transformer we were going to be. I've never even seen the movie so I didn't have a clue which to choose-somebody helped me pick one out. And over the course of the week they divided us into Autobots and “Escepticos” (Skeptics? I don't know what they're really called in English) I didn't know which one I was! And here's the real kicker. I got home and was talking things over with Josue and only then did it click –Metamorfosis → being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12.2) → Transformers. I'd gotten from Point A to Point B, but never would have made it to Point C without Josue's help. I can be such a blonde!!! Jajaja!!
At camp we were on the go pretty much nonstop. We did tons of icebreakers y silly games -jumping up and down and repeating strange syllables while doing ridiculous motions. As a team we got to make up a cheer, create a choreography to part of a song and decorate and protect an egg all week and have it participate in all the activities. We sumo wrestled with giant inner tubes to make us fat (that would be what the picture above is of), played volleyball with a 6ft diameter ball, jousted on the floating trampoline, went through the muddy muddy muddy bad smelling obstacle course, and more. I also got to go on the high ropes course (which I thought would be scary but it was actually a blast!), go flying off the blob, jump from the Tarzan rope into the lake and more.
I think more comments shall come with the photos. Coming soon!
PS. You're probably wondering what that green thing on my face in the picture is. Well, it was Spriti day and we had to dress wacky, so I put everything on backwards-including my goggles! It was so fun!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Tico Tuesday, January 12th
Tuesday is upon us once more!
Sunday was a very exciting day for me. A friend of mine from Grove City that has also done missions work here in Costa Rica stopped by to visit me and see what my church and life are like!!!
She is serving here for a couple weeks-I'll put the goosebump-giving story of how she got here this time on my blog because it is a little long, for a Tico Tuesday. It meant so much to me to have someone I know from the US come here and see what my life is like! Let me know when you're coming to visit! :-)
Have a joy-filled week!
Carrie
So my friend Rachel was an El-ed (Elementary Education) major at Grove City. She was doing her student teaching at a Catholic school in the area last semester and her supervisor (At Grove City) encouraged her to pursue a chance to speak to the students of the school about her missions work. Rachel served in an orphanage in Honduras for 2 months a couple years ago and she had regularly been coming to Costa Rica to to missions work for several years now. So, she definitely had plenty to share. But, she was a bit hesitant to ask if she could share with her students. Her supervisor continued to encourage her and so she decided to go ahead with it. I think she ended up addressing the whole student body of the school, but that might not be true. Anyway, the students were moved when they heard Rachel share. They decided that she should keep going on missions trips-so they raised $150 for her to go back to Costa Rica!!! We all know $150 isn't enough to buy a plane ticket to get here, but with some of her graduation money, she was able to buy and ticket and come down for 2 weeks! What an incredible blessing! Definitely a "God thing" - each piece of the story fits perfectly. I love it!
And as you recall me talking about Avatar last time, it was so cool to have someone from my "world"of the US come and join my "world" here in Costa Rica. It was really bizarre, but cool. I'm psyched for my friend Brenda to come in April!!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
AVATAR, for real?
We were going to see Avatar for my friend Albeiro's birthday last week, but it was sold out when we got there. So then we were going to see the Princess and the Frog, but my friends in line ahead of me bought the remaining tickets... :-( So the rest of us saw the next Chipmunks movie. Albeiro put it well - entertaining, but not great.
So, we decided to try again on Saturday. I went with my friends Vivi, Christian and Laura to buy tickets ahead of time, and this time we got to see it for real. And I must say- good movie! I'd heard that it was really good, and I'd heard that it was good for its effects and not its storyline. So I had no idea what to expect going into it. I only knew it had to do with an ex-Marine and beings from another planet, so honestly I wasn't even that excited. It sounded like a boy movie. I didn't think I was going to like it, because I much prefer a good plot to good effects (as one of my Grover friends told me-I'd never make it in a film history class!). But, I wanted to be with my friends and I tried to maintain an open mind (whereas I didn't even consider watching New Moon since I found out it was a suspense movie and I KNOW I don't like that kind of movie), so I got quite a pleasant surprise.
Being someone who lives in a culture different from the one I grew up in, I found myself identifying a lot with the protagonist (oh man I can't remember his name. I saw it in Spanish so a lot of names slipped by, I had to focus more to understand what was going on). I think it was Ben. Well, that's what I'm gonna call him. If you are interested in traveling, foreign missions or just learning about other people/cultures, I highly recommend this movie (ahem ahem Grovers going to MAC). If you've seen it already and it didn't make you think about this, see it again and start contemplating. Ben does some good things, some bad things, and some things I don't understand.
Good things- Ben went in with the position of a learner. He wanted to learn and understand, what were the natives called? Navi? You know who I mean. Did he commit a lot of mistakes? YOu bet, they didn't call him "Idiot" for no reason. But, he learned and adopted their ways. Was it necessary for survival? I'd say so. Did that also gain him the appreciation of the natives? YOU BET!! Would the natives listen to anybody else? Only the other people that respected and tried learning their culture. Are things the same way in other countries on this globe? Yup!
Of course there had to be a girl for Ben to throw some romance into the storyline. But another important thing I've learned (especially when going through bureaucratic hoops), is that it is SO helpful to have a native/local by and on your side speaking up for you and supporting you. They understand the system and give you more credence. Otherwise you're just another foreigner.
If you haven't seen the movie stop reading here because I'm going to give the end away. Ben ends up joining the side of the Navi -truly becoming one of them. In some ways this is good, in some ways perhaps not so much. In cross cultural ministry terms there is a difference between being incarnational and going native. When you're incarnational, you're still you, but you live among and become like the nationals/natives/locals. When you go native, you pretty much abandon yourself, you lose your past and who you are and you just become one of them. Maybe that's not the best description but I hope you get the idea. I think it's kind of a fine line. But, there is a definite difference between me being a gringa living like a tica and me just trying to be a tica. I know I can never really be one of them. I will always be a gringa to the core, though I maybe la gringa mas latina... ;-)
Anyway, Ben went native. And really, I think it was more taxing on him than anyone else, and I believe that would be the case for anyone who tries to go native. It was so taxing psychologically. It's hard enough for me to be here, away from my life in the States. Though, at this point I feel like my life is more here than it really is there. I'm actually really grateful it takes hundreds of dollars and 3+ hours in a plane to go back and forth, because I'm sure I would lose my marbles if I could go back and forth more easily. For Ben it was just a dream, the push of a button and he was in his other reality. And especially having such limitations-having nonfunctional legs and not being able to leave the base on Pandora- in his "real life" and such an incredibly contrasting freedom, it's no wonder his realities basically got inverted. It was like his life as an Avatar was more real than his actual real life. This is where more of the unrealisticness/fiction comes in and makes it harder to make comparisons. But, sometimes I know how he must have felt, being so torn between those 2 worlds!
What I don't understand is why he told the dudes on the base that he could get the Navi to move when he knew it was impossible. I guess he was just covering so he could continue his "fantasy" life there. But lying is never cool. What was the solution to the problem? That's not easy, but I think I would have to side with Ben and the scientists. Perhaps economics and progress would have pushed and said move on, and that's almost understandable. But if you're threatening a whole unique life system, I find that too big a pill to swallow.
And what a fascinating culture the Navi are/have!! Talk about creativity when they were being thought up! And I always admire stories that have their own language-like the Elves in the Lord of the Rings books (and movies-but the credit goes to Tolkien!!) And all the effervescent stuff, hammerhead boar-like animals and the whole interweaved nervous-system plug the end of your haid into anything like a USB outlet was wicked cool. But, I prefer my Judeo-Christian roots and grace and love and salvation rather than the more Lion King "Circle of Life" kind of deal. I think we can learn from them-we don't often respect and steward nature as we should. If anyboy feel like being romantic just tell me "te veo..." (I see you).
I think I might have had more to say (can you believe that?), but this is it for now. I just watched a trailer and his name is Jake. Oops. Sorry.
So, we decided to try again on Saturday. I went with my friends Vivi, Christian and Laura to buy tickets ahead of time, and this time we got to see it for real. And I must say- good movie! I'd heard that it was really good, and I'd heard that it was good for its effects and not its storyline. So I had no idea what to expect going into it. I only knew it had to do with an ex-Marine and beings from another planet, so honestly I wasn't even that excited. It sounded like a boy movie. I didn't think I was going to like it, because I much prefer a good plot to good effects (as one of my Grover friends told me-I'd never make it in a film history class!). But, I wanted to be with my friends and I tried to maintain an open mind (whereas I didn't even consider watching New Moon since I found out it was a suspense movie and I KNOW I don't like that kind of movie), so I got quite a pleasant surprise.
Being someone who lives in a culture different from the one I grew up in, I found myself identifying a lot with the protagonist (oh man I can't remember his name. I saw it in Spanish so a lot of names slipped by, I had to focus more to understand what was going on). I think it was Ben. Well, that's what I'm gonna call him. If you are interested in traveling, foreign missions or just learning about other people/cultures, I highly recommend this movie (ahem ahem Grovers going to MAC). If you've seen it already and it didn't make you think about this, see it again and start contemplating. Ben does some good things, some bad things, and some things I don't understand.
Good things- Ben went in with the position of a learner. He wanted to learn and understand, what were the natives called? Navi? You know who I mean. Did he commit a lot of mistakes? YOu bet, they didn't call him "Idiot" for no reason. But, he learned and adopted their ways. Was it necessary for survival? I'd say so. Did that also gain him the appreciation of the natives? YOU BET!! Would the natives listen to anybody else? Only the other people that respected and tried learning their culture. Are things the same way in other countries on this globe? Yup!
Of course there had to be a girl for Ben to throw some romance into the storyline. But another important thing I've learned (especially when going through bureaucratic hoops), is that it is SO helpful to have a native/local by and on your side speaking up for you and supporting you. They understand the system and give you more credence. Otherwise you're just another foreigner.
If you haven't seen the movie stop reading here because I'm going to give the end away. Ben ends up joining the side of the Navi -truly becoming one of them. In some ways this is good, in some ways perhaps not so much. In cross cultural ministry terms there is a difference between being incarnational and going native. When you're incarnational, you're still you, but you live among and become like the nationals/natives/locals. When you go native, you pretty much abandon yourself, you lose your past and who you are and you just become one of them. Maybe that's not the best description but I hope you get the idea. I think it's kind of a fine line. But, there is a definite difference between me being a gringa living like a tica and me just trying to be a tica. I know I can never really be one of them. I will always be a gringa to the core, though I maybe la gringa mas latina... ;-)
Anyway, Ben went native. And really, I think it was more taxing on him than anyone else, and I believe that would be the case for anyone who tries to go native. It was so taxing psychologically. It's hard enough for me to be here, away from my life in the States. Though, at this point I feel like my life is more here than it really is there. I'm actually really grateful it takes hundreds of dollars and 3+ hours in a plane to go back and forth, because I'm sure I would lose my marbles if I could go back and forth more easily. For Ben it was just a dream, the push of a button and he was in his other reality. And especially having such limitations-having nonfunctional legs and not being able to leave the base on Pandora- in his "real life" and such an incredibly contrasting freedom, it's no wonder his realities basically got inverted. It was like his life as an Avatar was more real than his actual real life. This is where more of the unrealisticness/fiction comes in and makes it harder to make comparisons. But, sometimes I know how he must have felt, being so torn between those 2 worlds!
What I don't understand is why he told the dudes on the base that he could get the Navi to move when he knew it was impossible. I guess he was just covering so he could continue his "fantasy" life there. But lying is never cool. What was the solution to the problem? That's not easy, but I think I would have to side with Ben and the scientists. Perhaps economics and progress would have pushed and said move on, and that's almost understandable. But if you're threatening a whole unique life system, I find that too big a pill to swallow.
And what a fascinating culture the Navi are/have!! Talk about creativity when they were being thought up! And I always admire stories that have their own language-like the Elves in the Lord of the Rings books (and movies-but the credit goes to Tolkien!!) And all the effervescent stuff, hammerhead boar-like animals and the whole interweaved nervous-system plug the end of your haid into anything like a USB outlet was wicked cool. But, I prefer my Judeo-Christian roots and grace and love and salvation rather than the more Lion King "Circle of Life" kind of deal. I think we can learn from them-we don't often respect and steward nature as we should. If anyboy feel like being romantic just tell me "te veo..." (I see you).
I think I might have had more to say (can you believe that?), but this is it for now. I just watched a trailer and his name is Jake. Oops. Sorry.
Tico Tuesday, January 5th
Happy New Year!!
I don't think I have ever heard that phrase after January 1st...well, no
t until the following December when people start throwing it in there with Merry Christmas. But I'm still hearing Feliz Año Nuevo here in Costa Rica and I'm really ok with that. I rang in the New Year with the Vieras (the family I live with). We stayed up playing Catchphrase (that I got for Christmas) and then had a little toast at midnight and went outside to see the fireworks that were being set off literally ALL OVER THE PLACE!! It was so cool to look in every direction and see them going off! I posted a video on Youtube if you'd like to hear me yelp and squeal (and see the fireworks).
May you all have a joyous year full of God's peace and love!
Carrie
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