Lucas and Liz in Costa Rica

Saturday, November 9, 2013

The Blog Has Moved.

Hi! Just to let you know, I've moved the blog to LucasGentry.com, so all of my Costa Rica updates can all be in one place. Just click on the link below to see our newest update information!

http://www.LucasGentry.com

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

My Costa Rican Pizza Hut Birthday Angel / Mi Costarricense Angel del Pizza Hut y Cumpleaños

Today is my birthday. We've been in Costa Rica for about seven or so weeks, and we love it here, but today, for my birthday, I wanted something a bit familiar for our special lunch. I chose Pizza Hut. In actuality, I've been planning this special birthday lunch for about six weeks, when we found out that there is a Pizza Hut within walking distance of the seminary. It's not cheap to eat there, so we've been saving up for all this time to have this special treat.

After our (fantastic, outdoor) Spanish class, Liz and I walked out the back gate and down the road, beginning our adventure. It turns out that we were less than prepared for ordering our pizzas in Spanish. It took quite a bit of banter back and forth with the waiter and us to finally order what we wanted -- A large, thick crust pizza, with half cheese only and half Italian Sausage only. There is a possibility that I may have ordered the pizza with one "fear" (miedo) cheese only and one "fear" sausage only, instead of one half (medio) cheese and the other half sausage. After we finally ordered the correct type of pizza, using some Spanish and some hand motions, we had another round of issues trying to order a couple glasses of water. In the end, it took a nearby Costa Rican lady (Silvia) to explain that he was just asking if I also wanted water, and not just Liz. This lady may have only said two sentences to us, but they were the two key sentences that made us finally understand what the waiter was saying. I've named her "My Costa Rican Pizza Hut Birthday Angel." Her real name is Silvia, but I think my title was pretty good too.

It may have just been the struggle required to order, or the exercise it took to walk to Pizza Hut, or maybe Costa Rican Pizza Huts use fresher ingredients, or simply because we're not used to Pizza any more, but it seemed to me that this was the best pizza that I had ever eaten in my life. As we were leaving, a well-dressed man at a nearby table said Thank You (Gracias) to us. We said Thanks back and headed out the door. After about ten steps, I realized that the man was probably the General Manager or something. I felt that I really needed to pass on this Truth, so I went back inside and asked him if he was the boss (I didn't know the word for General Manager, so I just used "boss"). Another guy sitting at the table said that yes, the well-dressed guy is the boss, so I told him that this pizza was the best pizza I had ever eaten in my life. Considering that Pizza Hut isn't exactly a super fancy restaurant, he may have been a little bit surprised. I told him that this was way better than the Pizza Huts in the States. We said thanks again and headed out the door.

It might be a strange post mentioning so much about food, but I think that there is also a life-applicable truth to the whole thing. We've spent the majority of our trip waiting for today. We've planned it and hoped for it, and waited for it, and when the moment actually is here, it's more delicious due to the waiting. I think that much of our trip is like that waiting. As we go through this first couple months of training, we're doing some of the ministry, like teaching English classes and fixing videoconferencing equipment, but most of our work is training for that which is to come. All of this work now is so that we can do even more important work down the road. And all of the waiting and all of the hoping and all the slow trudging now is going to make all of the stuff in the future taste that much more delicious.

Thank you again for your hopes and your prayers and dreaming with us for the future. Thank you for the financial support and encouragement and birthday wishes. Thank you so much for joining with us as we prepare for awesomeness.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

I Love Sunday School / Me Encanta Escuela Dominical

There is a family of semi-retired missionaries who has taken us under their proverbial wing to make sure that we can get to church.

The first time that we went to the Nazarene church in Tibás, it was because David Webb was going to be the special speaker there that Sunday morning. David is the Evangelism Coordinator for Costa Rica, and he also lives here at the Seminary. About a week later, Liz met up with one of the members of the church there, who told us that her husband and she could bring us to their church if we ever wanted to go back. I told Liz to please tell her "Yes, please!"

When we went to that church the first time, I stayed in the Older-Adult-But-Younger-Than-The-Senior-Adults Sunday School class, because that's the class that David was in, and his family were the only people that we knew at the church. But I loved it like crazy. The people in the class have interesting discussions, and really know their Bible, but even more important than that, the teachers (they rotate who their teacher is) write the main points on a white board. So even if I don't understand a single word that people have said, I can still get a lot from the classes, because reading Spanish is sometimes easier than understanding it spoken out loud.

This family, who took us to church that week, has either brought us to church or found another family that could bring us every week since then. We've now been to that church for the last four or five Sundays and we really love it there. Each week, we get opportunities to talk to more and more people, and almost every time, someone that we don't know approaches us and talks to us. They're a very welcoming church, and very patient with our sometimes faulty pronunciation when we're reading out loud in Sunday School. The pastor and wife at that church are very nice, but the congregation has been awesome. We really feel like a part of things there. Today, they put our names on their attendance roster, so they knew we're there long term.

Today, I was thinking about how my prayer has recently been that I would really like a good Costa Rican guy friend. I know a lot of people, and talk to a lot of people, and there are lots of people who are very nice to us, but I was just praying for a close friend. And I was thinking about how God has given us more than that. He has given us an entire community to be a part of. A community on campus, a Costa Rican church family, and opportunities to interact with the community that surrounds the campus -- for instance, our chances to teach English to members of the public.

We're up to a total of TWO English students now. Again, we've been told that more are likely to join us on Monday, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen. Two has worked out for us this past week. I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening, when we'll get to see what happens in our next class. At the end of our last class, our first student told us that she always looks forward to Mondays and Thursdays, because she loves the class. That really made us feel good. And, she's bringing cookies tomorrow. :-)

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Teaching English and Visiting a Waterfall / Enseñando Inglés y Visitando una Catarata

This week, SENDAS, the Seminary where Liz and I are volunteering, is having very important visitors. They are something along the lines of a board of directors, and they make decisions about the future of the school. Yesterday was their big meeting, but Thursday was their tour day. Since the entire tour was obviously going to be in Spanish, Liz and I had the opportunity to travel with them on their tour as part of our Spanish class. We went to a large rain-forest-type nature preserve, where we were able to see several kinds of animals and some beautiful waterfalls. The park was amazing, and we really enjoyed getting to spend time with the board.

Right after we got back from this excursion, we changed clothes real quick and got ready for our second English class. We began teaching English on Tuesday, had our second class on Thursday, and starting next week, we'll be teaching English on Monday and Thursday evenings. This week, we had one student, but we were told that starting on Monday, we should have five. We're really enjoying our time teaching, as well as our time learning more Spanish.

Today, we rode the bus into town, bought some groceries, walked around the city center for a while, then rode our bus back. In reality, that's a bit more interesting than it sounds. :-) As far as I know, this was our first trip where the entire trip and route were planned by us and we weren't meeting anyone else on the other end of a bus ride. I know that things like that won't sound impressive in the least to most people, but it's a fun thing when it becomes more familiar.

Once again, for anyone who has been praying for us, sending us encouraging notes, praying for our support-raising, or giving sacrificially to make all this possible, Thank You Very Much. Liz got a report concerning our financial situation today, and I'm happy to say that people have already donated about 75% of our budget for the year, and another 10% has been pledged. We can't thank you all enough for your love and the support that you've been in this venture. We've only been here for about 6 weeks, and you all have given 9 months worth of support already! Thank you ever so much again, we really appreciate you!

If you'd like to join with us in prayer for a moment, we would really appreciate prayers for our English classes that are developing. As we mentioned before, we've only met one of our students, but we're scheduled to have 5 on Monday. Neither of us have taught English before (but we've both taken classes to teach us how), but our first couple classes have gone great. Please be in prayer for the classes as they begin to grow. Thank you again, so very much!

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Costa Rica National History Museum / Museo Nacional de Costa Rica

Every day this week, we had significant events. If you are our facebook friends, you may have seen our pictures from our trip to the National History Museum of Costa Rica. Even if you don't have facebook, you can check the pictures out here.

Here's one example:

Every week or two, our CALL Spanish classes take us outside the classroom and into the Costa Rican culture. This week, we went to the National History Museum in San José. We met up with Gaby, our teacher, and we took the bus into the city. Half a century ago, there used to be a military fort near the location of the current center of San José. The president at that time declared an end to the national army and converted the fort into the National History Museum. They now have displays focused on the history of the building, the history of Costa Rican democracy, and the history of the indigenous people who lived here long ago.

Earlier in the week, we had the opportunity to have one of our friends from the seminary over to our house. We watched the Chronicals of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with English audio (to give our friend English practice) and Spanish subtitles (to give Liz and I more Spanish practice).

Liz is also getting much more outside-of-class Spanish practice by attending a women's water aerobics class (in Spanish), and talking to several of the seminary office workers about financial topics. My Spanish practice has been through technology-related discussions with my supervisors, Andrés and Esdras. Yesterday, they had me take apart the seminary file server and clean out all the dust and junk that had gathered in it over the years. Hopefully, it was a good enough job to make it last for a while longer. In the mean time, I still am slowly working my way through testing videoconferencing equipment and other computer and technological equipment around the offices.

Last night, however, was a pretty wonderful meeting with the other missionaries working here. We were able to hear about some really amazing things going on with a bridge-building project in another part of Costa Rica, in an indigenous region. There is an indigenous people group in Costa Rica that lives near a very large river. They need to cross the river at all times of the year, but when the banks are high, people die each year trying to cross on their own. The Nazarene church is trying to put together teams to build a bridge for these people across this very dangerous river. They have coordinated engineers, various planners and designers, and several local groups as well. Recently, Steve (one of the Work and Witness coordinators that I mentioned) was trying to figure out how they could reach out to get some heavy equipment for this project and they found out that Costa Rica has a government group that has been trying to figure out how to help their indigenous people. Steve was able to talk to the right people and may be able to coordinate the Nazarene Church's efforts with this government group.

Also, in this same trip, he was trying to locate a place where they could purchase building materials for this project. Steve and another guy (I honestly don't know who the other guy was) were driving, trying to find the right materials when they realized that they had gotten hopelessly lost. They decided to pull over and ask for help. When the stopped, they looked up and discovered that they were directly in front of the property for the main supply house for Bridge Construction Materials. Apparently, this place is where the government would go to buy their construction supplies. Steve and his friend didn't even know that this place existed, but God led them directly to the exact place that could help them get the supplies that they are going to need for this giant project. Praise the Lord, it was an awesome story. I was hoping that he was going to write about it in their family's blog -- http://sickelstory.wordpress.com/ -- but they haven't yet, so I had to tell it to the best of my memory. Short version though, God has been doing amazing things.

Monday, October 14, 2013

What a Full Weekend! / ¡El Fin de Semana Fue tan Lleno!

Oh wow, this has been a very busy and wonderfully full weekend (and Monday)! On Saturday, we didn't have anything scheduled, so I was able to just sit down and write for about 8 hours straight (or more). I've had a book outline in my head (and on my computer) for a really long time, and I've been slowly working on turning the outline into an actual book. It's a book teaching how to do deeper Bible Studies for yourself, instead of just working through other peoples' work. Anyway, since we try to stay busy preparing for our work that we do here, you could imagine it's relatively slow to write all that. But since I had an empty day, I was able to finally finish the book! It's now on sale on Amazon (Bible Study Picks and Shovels - Tools for Digging into the Scriptures on Your Own). Anyway, that was a nice personal victory for me.

Sunday was diving back into Spanish as we went back to Tibás for church. One of the families at the church was amazing to us. They picked us up for church in the morning before Sunday School (I LOVE Sunday School there) and then took us to their house for a delicious meal after church. When I was in Sunday School, they went around and had everybody read four verses until we had read through Ruth. I happened to be sitting next to the first person who read, so I was on the list of people reading -- In Spanish! Out Loud! -- They were very patient with me.

After the church service was over, three or four people came up to us and we got to have Spanish conversations with them. A couple of the conversations were pretty long (maybe 5+ minutes, which is really long when you're still working on the language). The couple that picked us up this Sunday says that they think that there is another family that comes near the Seminary on their way to church, so we might be able to get a ride almost every Sunday! We're willing pay to take the city bus to get to church, but if they're willing, we'll definitely take them up on it!

Today, there was a lot of work to do. I think I walked all the way across campus probably more than a dozen times today, as well as walking to the grocery store 3/4 mile away and back to the Seminary. So obviously, our legs are pretty tired today.

Tomorrow, we should be teaching our first English as a Second Language class around 6-9pm. It's going to be pretty exciting and... um... I guess I don't know what else, because I've never done it before. But if you would please be praying for us, we would really appreciate it. Thank you all for your love and support!

Thursday, October 10, 2013

First Taste of Teaching English / Primera Vez Enseñando Inglés

How fun! We just got to have one of our friends from the Nazarene church in Tibás over to our house this evening. When we visited her church a week and a half ago, she told us that she knew some words in English, but she didn't have many opportunities to practice. Immediately, we invited her over to our house, so she could practice. She came over this evening, and Liz made wonderful cookies ("galletas", pronounced "Gah-jettas") and coffee, and we sat around and talked. It was fun! Liz and I generally said almost every single sentence in English and then in Spanish, to make sure that she could understand. She taught us some Spanish as well, so it was enjoyable for everyone.

Before we left the United States, Liz made a photo album with pictures of many of our friends and family members in it. That photo album has been invaluable as a source of conversation, and tonight was no different. Our new friend told us about her family (she's been married for like 47 years) and we used the photo album to tell about ours. We were able to discuss church and friends and family and bus routes. The whole experience was a good taste of what it might be like for us on Tuesday, when we start our English as a Second Language class here. I'm really looking forward to it, but I would also love some prayers for us as well. It's our first time trying out our TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificates that we trained for earlier this year.

I have also been getting to work on testing and repairing videoconferencing equipment for the Seminary. Earlier in the week, I did the final testing for four sets of equipment and the director of the seminary took them to Mexico. It is a fun feeling to know that we can be helping people in other countries as well as Costa Rica by our efforts.

For those of your who may have known my Grandpa Charles, you will know that he was the type of person who loved fixing things. He was always fixing something for someone at his church, or tinkering in his basement with something or other. My dad did the same thing at the place where he worked, building and fixing machines all over the place. Today, I was following in their footsteps because I got to fix some of the videoconferencing equipment using parts from other equipment. The bottom of the camera case from this one, the top of the case from this other one, and the base unit from a third. After all was said and done, there was one more set of videoconferencing equipment ready for a final test before sending it abroad. Fun times!

Yesterday, we were talking to two of our missions-minded friends over Skype. Their encouragement was so wonderful to hear, and it was great getting to talk to them. If you would be so kind, please pray for them (Andrew and Kelly) as they also prepare to set out for missions opportunities with Wycliffe as Bible Translators. Here is their Wycliffe page if you'd like more information:

http://www.wycliffe.org/Partnership.aspx?eis=280247

On the same note, I just wanted to thank all of you who have sent us encouraging notes or cards or letters. They mean so much to us, as we're so far away from most of our families. Thank you, thank you, thank you!