Tico Tuesday, April 24th

It's been a beautiful, cold week in New England! There have been highlights every day, but I really loved getting to attend to baptismal services at East Auburn Baptist Church this weekend. The people who baptized shared some phenomenal testimonies of how God worked in people and showed them His love and goodness. They were a great blessing and encouragement to everyone who got to hear them! As I shared for a few minutes in each service, I also took advantage of the opportunity to share with the congregation the work God has done in my life. I was able to take a little more time to do this in the youth service Saturday night since I had a whole half hour to talk. That was really fun. It feels a little funny to hang out with kids I used to babysit, but it's cool to engage with them and encourage them to seek the good things God has in store for them.
A fun note about the picture: the guy in the white robe and I were in the same 8th grade class. How awesome to see him proclaim his faith in Jesus!
May we all proclaim Jesus with our lives this week!
Love,
Carrie

Tico Tuesday, April 17th

Happy Tuesday!

Boy was it hard to pick a picture this week! Snow in Western Pennsylvania, hanging out with my friends, amazing make your-own-sundaes, the 9/11 memorial, me sticking my face into delicious lilacs and lots of pictures of me with people and other frozen goodies...you'll soon see many of the options on facebook. I had to go with this one though. Saturday, this beautiful girl (my mentor and friend Julie) and I hung out in NYC. We had a fantastic day full of fun sights and a lot of really good conversation. I never knew it was possible to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, but we did that and a whole lot of other things too!

I'm having a really good time getting to connect with prayer and financial supporters, friends and some relatives I haven't seen in a long time. And today, I even got to go to the library of the main campus of the seminary I'm getting my Master's with to get some tips on how to research from afar!

God's goodness and love are so awesome!

May we delight in God and his love this week!

Carrie

Tico Tuesday, April 10th

Hello!
Happy Tuesday from Western PA! It feels very odd to be back in the States and I miss Costa Rica a lot, but it really is good to be here. Except for the cold. It was flurrying off and on today and I had on all the warm clothes I had and was still freezing. My body has definitely gotten used to tropical climates! I had a lovely Resurrection Day and enjoyed a nice long run. I've had some down time and have recovered my voice that I lost at camp and finally gotten caught up on a number of little things. My social schedule is now picking up and this afternoon I spend the afternoon at a friend's house and got to built a helicopter out of K'nex with her son who is about my oldest nephew's age. It was insanely fun. So, all is well here. It's wonderful to visit my church and connect with my friends here.
God is so good to me!
Lots of other stories to share, but it's time to head to InterVarsity!
Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

Missing Tico Tuesday?

Yes my friends, a Tuesday came and went and I didn't post!! I was at camp on Tuesday and got home late and then was making homemade anti-lice shampoo (just to make sure my camper's lice wasn't going to get to me), doing laundry and packing packing packing! All my stuff is now in my cute little apartment in S José de la Montaña and I'm now safely in the States and will be here until July 1. But never fear, Tico Tuesdays will continue again on Tuesday. Now I'm going to get the March Chronicle out.
Blessings to you,
Carrie

Tico Tuesday, March 27th

It's Tuesday again!
This past Thursday, I had the opportunity to witness the process of the members of Roblealto's new House for Adolescents start making their Family Covenant. Every house at the Bible Home makes a Family Covenant each year for its members. At the House for Adolescents (AKA Casa Barva) we started by listing all the virtues essential to life there. Then, there was time to vote and democratically narrow it down to the top 7. Each time the music stopped, people had to put a sticker on a virtue. It was definitely cooler than just raising hands. After choosing the top 7, we took 4 minutes to list the ways to NOT show each virtue, and then another 4 to say how we COULD demonstrate each virtue positively. The child psychologist and house parents take over from there, but it was a lot of fun. At supper time, we also had a lot of fun telling stories: the house parents, the child psychologist and his wife, the assistant director and his wife were all telling stories of how they met and got engaged. One broke up with the girl the same day he proposed, another preached on Gideon to the girl before asking her out, etc. We laughed a lot!
In other news-CAMP STARTS ON FRIDAY!!! Please pray for all the staff and leaders, for all the final preparations to come together, for everyone to be healthy, and for God to work powerfully in the hearts and lives of all our dear campers.
Thank you!
I can't wait to tell you how it went!
Love,
Carrie

Tico Tuesday, March 20th

Happy Tuesday everyone!
As many of you saw on facebook yesterday, I'm celebrating 3 years of service as a missionary here in Costa Rica. I thank God for His faithfulness, goodness and for everything He's done in, through and around me. And thank you so much to all of you for your prayers, encouragement, support and friendship. There's no way I could do this without you! And what better way to celebrate than to go to one of my favorite places this past weekend, Isla Venado! Isla Venado is a very special place to me. It has been sort of like another home in that I know I'm always welcome there, I'm loved and there is a certain consistency to life there. Life doesn't change quite so drastically, at least not very often or quickly. And it's a total escape from the rest of life. No internet, I typically leave my phone with my backpack, and after lunch doña Epi sends me straight out to rest in a hammock in the shade. I really needed a rest this time around and could not have been happier to nap, be still and feel so relaxed I couldn't move. This trip one of my friends from work and her mom came along with me. I was thrilled to share a wonderful weekend with them!
May we all make time to stop and relax this week!
Love,
Carrie

Tico Tuesday, March 13th

We're going to the circus!!!
The children from the Bible Home and I are going to camp in 18 days and I CAN'T WAIT!!!! Many of them can't wait either. :-) This weekend was the pre-camp leader training/retreat. We had a blast making funny circus presentations, learning songs for camp, previewing some of the special activities we'll be doing at camp and more! This year's theme is El Circo de Oro (The Golden Circus), with lots of inspiration coming from the Butterfly circus. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it! We'll be working on the virtues/themes of friendship, trust, care and perseverance (and they all happen to start with "C" in Spanish). Friendship is tied to clowns, trust to the flying trapeze artists, care to tightrope walkers and perseverance to jugglers. I love how in the picture we're all wearing ridiculous circus-y things, sitting on playground balls and very studiously going over the virtues just mentioned. If you can't tell, I'm the one with a flamingo on my head. jajaja! Please join me in praying for the 7 pre-teen girls who will be in my cabin and my 2 awesome teenage co-leaders. We are SO EXCITED and want to make camp a special, life-changing experience for our girls. Please pray for God to prepare their hearts and to prepare us too!
The theme verse for camp is Luke 10:27, "And he answered, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.'"
Let this be our desire and goal each day!
With love and thanks,
Carrie