Tico Tuesday, August 30th

Friday I participated in 3 very different, but fun, special birthday celebrations. And had 3 different yummy cakes at each one. Chocolate at 2 out of 3 wasn't bad!! Especially considering chocolate isn't as popular down here. In the morning at work, we had our usual last-Friday-of-the-month party and celebrated my supervisor Pam's birthday (and it was on the actual day too!) and Margarita's birthday. Margarita is another missionary with the LAM. She has been here for close to 40 years and is an amazing woman! After work, I shared the devotional with some parents from the Bible Home (another story for another day-maybe on the blog this weekend) and went to a surprise 50th birthday dinner for don William, who I have adopted as my "tico dad." It was sweet and he was surprised. Then, at about 10 I got home and a few people came over to celebrate Hazel and Samuel's birthdays. (Hazel is the one with me in the picture) That was a rather brief party, but I was ok with it. I was exhausted!
Then, last night we had a special little birthday party at the Nido house at the Bible Home. I got to be there because it was translation night for the volunteers. We had each child say something to the birthday girl-that was really sweet. And then Papi Gerardo, the substitute father had us sing every version of Happy Birthday to her we could-even in English! I hadn't done that in a while! It actually felt really good, even though some of the kids were singing "Sapo verde" (it's a pronunciation joke, don't stress if you don't get it though). Then, he told us how she never talked for her first 4 months at the Bible Home. She is still a quiet girl, but now she even participates in dramas and speaks in public! Praise God for the life of this precious young woman!
May we all enjoy the life that God has given us!
Love,
Carrie

Tico Tuesday, August 23rd

Dear Friends and Family,

Last week, I mentioned that we had just celebrated Mother's Day here in Costa Rica. Then I proceeded to talk about my trip to the beach. This week, I want to tell you about the Mother's Day celebration we had at the Bible Home on Sunday. Balloons, flowers, nice tablecloths and centerpieces, a raffle for gifts, food, music, brief theatrical presentation by a few of the children, games and a brief reflection all made up this special celebration for mothers who have children at the Enrique Strachan School (the school we have onsite at the Bible Home), mothers of the children who are currently living at the Bible Home, the substitute mothers who live and work at the Bible Home, and some mothers who are friends of Roblealto. It was a fun afternoon. My participation included: helping set up, writing out the numbers for the raffle "tickets," participating in the icebreakers, going to one of the houses at the Bible Home to make sure the kids didn't do anything dreadful to themselves or each other while their substitute father went to sing for the mothers, acting out 3 aspects of a virtuous woman (for the devotional) and of course, helping with cleanup. The whole afternoon was great and very special, and the final touch was... a mariachi! The women loved it! One of the teachers of the Enrique Strachan School made sure to run around taking pictures of everyone with big sombrero on. I just hope nobody had lice, because they got me towards the end...

God bless you and may we all bless our mother's this week (and every week!)

With joy,

Carrie


More later-it's bedtime!!!

Tico Tuesday, August 16th

This weekend was a long weekend due to Mother's day here in Costa Rica. (Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!) I wanted to take advantage of it and go on a beach adventure. I invited my friend Diana. Originally, I want to go to a beach that is in Guanacaste (sort of far away), but she had a limited budget so we decided to go to a closer beach I'd never been to. Then I saw Ceci and invited her. Then I saw Ana and invited her. I went to the grocery store and bought us food, I also made a fantastic pizza so we could bring the leftovers. We were all set to leave at 5am and have a great day at the beach. Then, Ana woke me up at 2:47 in the morning. Change of plans, we were going in a microbus with some other friends and we were leaving at 3:40. Ok! We went to a different beach I'd never been before. It was great to be on the beach at 6am! We went to a really pretty nice one. What you see in the picture is what we had to hike over to get there though. The beach is part of a snazzy private resort here, but we entered the ahem, local way. Beaches in Costa Rica are public property though, so we were allowed to be there. Pretty sweet!
The moral of the story is: be flexible, because you never know what's going to happen while you're asleep. More of the day's adventure on the blog!
Love,
Carrie

The other moral of the story is, bring food when you go to a secluded beach. Or else you have to leave and everyone will be too lazy to go back. At least we had a few, truly blissful hours there. After spending a good hour or so at Subway, we headed to Jacó, a very famous beach here that is much better for surfing than swimming. I actually didn't get back in the water again because of that. And it was rocky. and shade was really hard to come by too. It was still a pleasant afternoon though. A number of us learned to surf (not me, not my cup of tea). I walked on the beach some, napped a little and got to read some.
My Bible still often opens to Psalm 94 - the passage that I passionately clung to last year. I re-read it there on the beach on Sunday and tears almost came to my eyes as I once more reflected on how much (in) my life has changed in the past year. Essentially EVERYTHING has changed - my workplace, my job and responsibilities, how my relationship is with my supervisor, how I get back and forth to work (I drive now instead of bike), who is at home when I come from work (Tía is back in the States and Abuelita passed away last September), where I sleep (Ana painted our room and we got bunk beds), PLUS emotionally and spiritually I am a totally different person. I'm not who I was. God has freed me and given me new life. He has taught me so many things and is helping me grow, mature and deal with conflict and life better. And Hallelujah! He's not finished with me yet!
Anyway-that's pretty much it for the beach story. I was really tired in the afternoon since I didn't sleep much the night before. We had a smooth trip home and it truly was a great day on the beach with friends. :-)

Tico Tuesday, August 9th

Last week was probably one of the best weeks I've had at Roblealto. I was with a group of volunteers working in one of our child care centers and it was just amazing. It is such a blessing to get to work with volunteers, staff and children of Roblealto! This group of volunteers was the mens and women's soccer teams of a Christian college in the States. They did crafts and all kids of semi-spontaneous games and activities. The children were so happy! The volunteers also had a testimony time each day and shared relevant truths and a number of Bible verses with the children. Everybody ended up being blessed like crazy.
Then on Friday, I went to another one of our child care centers to help with another activity. While I was waiting for that to start I hung out in the patio and soaked up the attention of the children who were having their outdoor play time. The 5-6 year olds were all telling me their names and then asked for paper to write them. They told me how to write their names in terms of sticks, mountains, circles and humps. It was the most adorable thing!! Didier needed some help with his capital "D". He wasn't doing too badly though. I didn't even figure out what his name really was until I looked it up in the system today. These children are so adorable! I could write you a novel, but will try to just leave some highlights on the blog.
May God use you to touch someone's life in a special way this week!
Love,
Carrie

Yeah-so the group from Trinity was fantastic. This was the most I had ever worked with a group of volunteers by myself and it was phenomenal. I loved it SO MUCH!!! They were creative, flexible, spontaneous. They did wonderful activities and just poured love into those kids and gave them lots of attention - I had 28 volunteers for 9 classes (about 150 children) who typically just have one instructor each. It was beautiful! One girl offered to buy a clock for one of the instructors because there is no clock in her classrooom. Once I saw a small group of them gathered together praying. These kids totally had the perfect attitude and were just great!
One guy who shared his testimony was fantastic-he shared how his parents had a conflicitve relationship and divorced - and how God gave him peace and joy. They also shared the Gospel in a really neat way-explaining salvation in terms of someone doing push-ups in place of the losers of a soccer juggling competition. So cool! The last day they also gave gifts to all the kids and it was crazy, but beautiful.
I'd love to rave more, but I must post and go to bed. When are you coming to Roblealto???

Tico Tuesday, August 2nd

Happy Tuesday!
Here in Costa Rica I'm enjoying having some extra days off – we get Mother's Day off a week from Monday, we had today off because it the the Day of Our Lady of the Angels, the patron saint of Costa Rica. And we had last Monday off as well because of the Annexation of Guanacaste, Costa Rica's northwestern province that decided it preferred belonging to Costa Rica instead of Nicaragua. We celebrated the day at our last-Friday-of-the-month breakfast/party/birthday celebration. Everyone from the office brought a different kind of typical food, some of us wore sort of “traditional” wear and we had lots of fun making up and reciting “bombas” - a traditional kind of 4 line poem about daily life. Many of them are about love and romance, but they can really be about anything. For one activity we had to write “bombas” for the birthday girl. Some people are really good at making them up! I memorized 4 to say during the party. Head to the blog if you'd like to see them and their translations – and make sure to look at the pictures I posted on facebook!

Enjoy the rest of this week!

Love,

Carrie

When I was on Isla Venado, doña Epi and pastor Eladio's grandchildren were all memorizing bombas to say at school the next day when they were going to celebrate the Annexation of Guanacaste. I had no idea how I was going to find bombas to say at the party on Friday, so I quick copied down a few so I could participate in the party.

El bejuco cuando nace

nace hojita por hojita

Así comienza el amor

Palabrita por palabrita

When the plant (generally like a Tarzan swing kind of plant) sprouts

It sprouts leaf by leaf

That is how love begins

word by word

Yo soy el que siempre he sido

y nunca dejaré de ser

Yo soy el pajarillo

que canta al amanecer

I am the one I have always been

and will never cease to be

I am the little bird

that sings at sunrise

Vos no podés negar

que yo tengo mis razones

Cuando uno quita la piedra

se acaban los tropezones

You can't deny

that I'm right

When one takes the stone away

the chance to stumble is no more

Ay mamita

qué zancudero

bajate el toldo

porque me muero

Holy cow

what a bunch of mosquitoes

Let down the cover

because I'm dying

So, there's a little piece of Costa Rican culture for you. (Translations mine) :-)