Lucas and Liz in Costa Rica: 2013

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!

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Work and Witness / ¡Testimonios Y Trabajo!

Wow, the last couple days have been a lot of work! In a good way, though. Yesterday, we were helping a Work and Witness team from Idaho tile a bathroom building. They had been working on the building for a couple days already, so at first, I felt a little bit superfluous -- everyone else already had their own jobs to do, and I joined them half way through the day, so I just sort of bounced around asking people if they needed help with what they were doing. But then, Steve, the Work and Witness Coordinator for the area sent me over to help Gustavo, a Costa Rican fellow who was up on a ladder, to put weather proofing stuff (I think) around the roof. I learned several new Spanish words and really got to help out, since he could give me instructions in Spanish. It was so fun!

This morning, the Work and Witness team, Liz, and I went over to a local church (the same church that we went to on our first Sunday here) and worked a lot to build them a driveway. If you remember, this church used to be a farmer's house, and he sold the property to the church. They have worked to convert the house into a church, to the extent that it is not easy to tell that it used to be a house -- at least from the front. They've done a great job! But because it is a bigger property than before, it takes everything that have to pay their bills. The Work and Witness team raised funds to pay for two cement trucks full of cement, plus the rolls of rebar to hold it together. When we got there, the men of the church had already done a lot of progress with digging. Some of us grabbed shovels and helped out by leveling the ground (and removing foliage), so that the ground would be even with the top of the forms that would be used to box in the cement.

It was pretty cool to watch these experienced people go to work. One of the guys of the church taught me how to tie the rebar together, so a few guys rolled out the rebar, Guido and I tied them together, and a few other guys put stones underneath areas where the dirt wasn't all the way up to the rebar. I honestly don't know what everybody else was doing at the time because I was just excited to have a way that I could be contributing. After they packed down the dirt (with a big power-dirt-smasher-machine) and got the rebar in place, the cement mixer came. Two or three guys on the ends of a big metal square pipe pushed the pipe along and leveled out the cement, while several of us had rakes and shovels to either remove excess cement or bring in more cement to fill in gaps. After all that, another couple guys went behind us with a float (looks like a giant dust mop -- long and flat -- without the mop strings) to smooth it out. After them, someone took a very long handled push broom and pushed it across, making lines in the concrete for traction (it's on a steep hill).

After we paved all the way up the hill, the ladies of the church made us a delicious meal of arroz con pollo (rice and chicken and various spices). Super tasty. Liz was able to find the lady that made it and Spanish her way through getting the recipe from her. Good job Liz! We loaded up the tools and took them back to the seminary, where the Work and Witness team (and us!) got to unwind a bit with some water volleyball. Overall, a very delightful and hard-working day!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Coffee Shop Classroom / La Clase en La Cafetería

This morning, we had a little bit different take on our CALL Spanish class. Instead of sitting in the classroom for 3 hours, we went on a ride with our teacher, Gaby. We met in the normal classroom, then got on a bus (if you'll notice the pattern, we go almost everywhere on the bus!) to a nearby town, Coronado. Yesterday, she had us do some research on Coronado (It's full name is Vásques de Coronado, it's got about 60 thousand people, and around 222 square kilometers, in case you wondered.) and today, we got to experience the city.

When we arrived, we ended up in the town square. Throughout Latin America, a pretty standard thing to have in the town square is a big city park, with the local Catholic church across the street. Coronado is no different. We got off the bus, right in between those two landmarks. We walked over to the park and reviewed some of the research that we had done, then started walking. We went across the street to the church and talked about what the various statues represented, then went inside. (Also, in case you wondered, when you see a guy with a sword and a book, that's Saint John. If you see a guy holding keys, that's Saint Peter. Though I'm not Catholic, I do enjoy the way that their statues are ways that they can tell stories of Christians who have gone before us. It would be a neat study to learn more of the Catholic icons just to learn the stories.)

Once we were out of the church, we started on a walk. We saw several ice cream shops and dairy-related shops, and Gaby said that there are traditional dairies around that you can see how they do it, from seeing them hand milk the cow, up to making products with the milk. We didn't go to any of the ice cream shops, but the idea was intriguing. We found the local Nazarene Church, in case we wanted to take the bus there some time. Interestingly enough, throughout Costa Rica, addresses are made up of landmarks instead of street numbers and signs. For instance, if you asked for the address of the Coronado Nazarene Church, they would tell you "Coronado, 25 meters west of the Red Cross." When we heard this, Liz and I thought that there was a big red cross somewhere in the town. Maybe a sculpture or something. When we found the church, we found that it was about 25 meters from... an ambulance. The address was talking about the Red Cross, like the people who help out in natural disasters and stuff. Sorta made me chuckle. Interestingly enough (I keep saying that, I'm sorry), the concept of using landmarks instead of addresses is reflected in their vocabulary. The Spanish word for address is "dirección". You don't ask for an address, you just ask for a direction.

She showed us around some more and told us where the best place to get a tasty meal, then we proceeded to a local coffee shop for the more academic part of our lesson. We went through some of our vocabulary we have been studying, and did a question and answer session using vocabulary words from the last couple days. I got a chocolate shake instead of coffee.

At one time while we were there, a young boy came up to us and asked Gaby for some money. She told him that if he could wait until we were ready to leave, then she would give him some after we pay for our meal. Gaby told us that in several places in Costa Rica, it's not uncommon for some adults to not want to work, so they send their kids out to ask people for money. The kids often don't get to go to school, because they have to be the ones to care for their family. My heart breaks for these kids, because he didn't look much older than one of my nephews. If he would have been in school, this kid would have been in early elementary school. Please be in prayer for these kids. It just sometimes seems like an impossible problem, because when we help the kids, it just would seem to motivate the parents to continue with the terrible practice. When we left the coffee shop, however, the kid had already left. I guess it's more profitable to keep moving, so he can ask more people.

For our work here, we're doing a lot of preparation for our English as a Second Language classes that we're going to be teaching in a couple weeks. I've been continuing to test out various videoconferencing equipment, so they can be sent to other locations throughout Central America and the Caribbean. Things are going well, but prayers are always appreciated!

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Family Around the World / Familia en Todo el Mundo

Today, we had one of those, "Family all around the world" moments. David and Shelley took us to "La Iglesia del Nazareno de Tibás" (Tibás Church of the Nazarene), because David was the special speaker this morning. The people there were wonderful to us. Even though our Spanish still has a lot to be desired, several of the members there spoke with us and welcomed us to their church. At least one told me, in a Spanish-English mix "This church can be home for you. You can tell that it is home for us." It was so endearing to be welcomed so completely into their congregation, even though we know that they know so little about us. They know our names and they know that we are family, and that's about it. And that's enough.

I would love to go there every Sunday, if there is a city bus that we can take. When the lady invited us to come back, I told her that I would love to, if I can figure out what bus I would need to get there. Shelley told me later that someone said that they were starting a few new bus routes in the next week or two, and she's pretty sure that at least one of them would be able to take us within about four or five blocks of there. If that turns out, it would be great! That's way better than the 4.5 km walk it would be (maybe a little over an hour's walk), through neighborhoods that we don't know, in a city we're still discovering our ways around.

This morning's Sunday morning service was so cool, though. We arrived before Sunday School, and the teacher really did a great job. He definitely did his homework, and it really showed. It was about 45 minutes of Bible Learning, taught out of Judges chapters 17 and 18. He used maps of Israel and showed us where several people groups were during the time of the people in Judges, and he explained how the locations of a couple tribes of Israel contributed to the background to the story. It was so very interesting. Most Bible teachers that I have heard have about 60-70% story and 30-40% Bible in their messages. Like, they use the stories to keep your attention, and then just throw a little Bible in to give you something to relate it to. This guy was like 90% just chewing on the Scriptures, giving us more and more background information. I seriously had the thought, "I'd go to seminary if it would help me teach a Sunday School class as good as this guy." I later found out that he hasn't gone to seminary at all, he just really does a great job. It was still inspiring and made me really thirst for the Scriptures, even though I only understood about 35% of what he said.

After this, David got up and spoke all about some of the amazing things that God is doing in various parts of Costa Rica, and all around the Mesoamerican Region. If any of you ever have the chance to hear these stories, or to hear him speak, I highly recommend it. (Again, the link to their Nazarene profile is http://app.nazarene.org/MissionaryProfiles/profile.jsp?profile=39794 if you ever have the opportunity to meet them in person. They are a wonderful family! While I'm at it, Stephen and Anne Sickel are another wonderful couple that are the Work and Witness Coordinators here. Their link is http://app.nazarene.org/MissionaryProfiles/profile.jsp?profile=148079. Good food comes from their oven.)

All being said, today was pretty wonderful. The people were great, and we had a day chalk-full of Spanish input to practice with. Thank you for the prayers and the encouragement. It means so much to us. Yesterday, I had asked prayer for Spiritual Encouragement, noting that typically it's hard to get a lot out of church services when you don't speak enough of the language, and God answered prayers completely today. Church was wonderful, the songs were fabulous, and we were blessed beyond hope by the people. Thank you again.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

The Hollow Tree / El Árbol Hueco

I've probably been more tired than I am right now, but I don't remember it. Today, we went into the mountains with a youth group at a local church. This might sound like a walk in the park, but it wasn't. Imagine a three hour hike, up hill at about a 30 degree angle most of the way, going at a pretty steady pace. There was a mud road for most of the way up, but then it was narrow mountain mud path for the next stretch. But then, we stopped for lunch at one of the most amazing things I've ever seen!

This picture doesn't do this tree justice. If you see the little blue spot up there, that's my wife. This tree is huge beyond huge. She's probably about 30 feet up in the air in this picture. The epic part about it is, however, that it is hollow. But very stable. A long time ago, this was two trees. The one tree, the hollow one, died, and the other tree grew around it, forming a very hard and stable shell around a hollow tree. Roots and branches inside the tree make it so people can crawl up from the inside and come out there where Liz is.

Sorry that this picture has a couple people's behinds in it, but I wanted to show you the scale of this thing. This is the inside of the huge hollow tree. It is Epic.

After almost everyone climbed in the tree, we had lunch and Liz and I got to share our testimonies, in Spanish, with the youth group. We sang a few songs up there, rested up a bit, (because at this point, we were all already very tired), and went back down the mountain.

Going down the mountain was much easier than going up, obviously, but just as we started on our downward path, it started to rain. Pretty hard. Then very hard. Then just pretty hard. And the path is made of mud, so it was pretty slippery. It was around a two hour trek down the mountain, and I'm happy to report, no one was hurt. Maybe a little embarrassed to be riding the city bus covered in mud and really stinky, but not hurt.

------------ END OF PART I -------------

When we finally got back to the apartment, I had a wonderful little email from a new prayer supporter, Laura. She asked for some specific prayer needs that she could take to her church, so I thought I would include my response in the blog, so other people would be able to get the information as well.

Aw, thank you so very much for continuing to pray for us. It means the world to us to know that there are people back in the States keeping us in prayer. I've been keeping a blog giving lots of details at http://lucasyliz.blogspot.com/ if you wanted to check that out.

I would say that our first prayer need would be Spiritual. We've been in this country for about 10 days now, and we have been attending church, but since everything is in Spanish, and we're still working on learning the language, it means that we get most of our spiritual "meat" from our personal devotions, and very little of it from church. God has been answering already in this way, as at least I personally have been really getting a lot out of my recent studies in Job.

The 2nd prayer need is language-related. We've been taking Spanish classes and we continue to do so, but we've still got a long way to go to fluency. We've hit a good milestone today, though. We just got back from a hiking trip with a local youth group. There were no English speakers in the group, (the youth leader knew some English, but she's been given a directive to speak only Spanish with us except for emergencies) and we were able make the trip to meet them -- this takes taking the city bus into San José, meeting the youth leader there, taking two more city bus trips to meet up with the youth, then we went on a six hour hike into the mountains, where we were able to give our testimonies in Spanish and tell how God has changed our lives. Afterwords, leaving the group and finding another city bus to get us back where we're staying. The whole trip we only used Spanish. So it's a great milestone, but our Spanish is still only good enough to speak to people with some patience. So prayer in that department would be awesome.

And the 3rd prayer request is for ministry. We're going to be starting an English and a second language class in about 2 weeks, and we've got a lot of preparing to do. So prayer for the preparation, prayer for the classes we'll be teaching, and prayer for the other people in the seminary where we are volunteering. The more Spanish we learn, the more ministry we'll get to be a part of.

So! As you can tell, I'll thrilled to be asked this, but if you wanted a summary version to give to your church, here it is:

1) Spiritual Encouragement

2) Spanish Language development

3) Ministry Opportunities as our Spanish progresses.

Thank you so much again for your support!

Friday, September 27, 2013

I Love Spanish! / Me Encanta Español!

So today, I decided that I love Spanish. Not because of some artful reason, but because it's really starting to become something that I can use to communicate with people. I remember a while ago when Spanish was just this secret code that a swath of other people knew that I didn't know, but the more we practice and the more we learn, the more Spanish becomes just real speaking. Back then, it was like trying to decipher a secret script with a decoder ring, but now, it's more like someone just gives you a list of words that you already know and says that you can only use these 500 words or something and you have to find a way to get your message across only using those words. And the only way that you can use more words is if you get special permission from people that you talk to. They will give you more words that you can add to your list. The more words in your collection, the less-limited your speaking is.

But the thing is, Spanish isn't foreign any more. I just haven't met all the words yet. I speak Spanish. I'm not amazing, but I can generally get my point across using the words in my collection. When we go to Spanish class, my collection gets bigger, when I talk to people in the office, my collection gets bigger. Every day, my collection gets bigger, and now I can see a day in the future when my collection will be big enough that they'll say that I'm done with classes, but I'll still be growing my collection.

I think that today hit a turning point because I was able to help people today by using my Spanish. I started organizing the video conference equipment room, and a few times, I had to go out into the lobby and ask (the secretary? I don't know) the lady at the front desk for a couple things. Each time, the words were either in my collection, or I was able to point to something to get my words across. She taught me the word for rubber band in Spanish. One more word to put in my collection. (Rubber bands in Costa Rica is "ligas", in case you wanted to know. In other countries, the word is "hule", which is just the generic word for rubber.)

But in the middle of organizing things, someone asked me for help with their computer. They were trying to make their new (Widows 8) computer play a DVD. For those of you who haven't used Windows 8, it was built to be easy to use, but it's pretty confusing to most of the people I've talked to, myself included. Anyway, by using my Spanish, I was able to understand the problem and help them to figure out how to fix it. We were even able to troubleshoot some issues with a projector. For the first time in this whole trip, I wasn't the dependent one. I wasn't someone that people had to work around because of my deficiency in language. Instead, I got to be someone who was helping. And that made a world of difference to me.

Tomorrow, we'll be sharing our testimonies in Spanish with the youth group of a local Nazarene church. I think I really needed the confidence boost from today to be able to do that tomorrow. My level of Spanish isn't much different from yesterday, but my level of confidence is higher, and that means a lot. Thanks, God, for that. I really appreciate it.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Preparation for Work / Preparación para Trabajar

Today, we finally got details for some of the projects that we're going to be doing! One of the first things that we've been told about is our ESL classes that we'll be teaching. A local sales company is sending several of their employees to SENDAS to learn the basics of English. We'll be putting together an eight week course covering a pre-arranged set of English language topics. I've seen the list and it's very manageable. As you may have already been aware, before we started this trip to Costa Rica, Liz and I took courses for TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). Liz also has quite a bit of student teaching experience from college, so we're not starting out empty-handed. But all that being said, this will be our first time teaching an English class completely on our own, so it's pretty intense. Shelley has training in teaching English, so she's going to help us by going over the lesson plans that we put together with us.

After hearing about our ESL classes that we'll be leading, we found out about some of the technical things that we'll be helping out with as well. SEDAS is a central hub for classes throughout Central America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America, and several of the countries have their classes through videoconferencing. They'll have a machine on one end in, for instance, Puerto Rico, and SENDAS will connect them up to a professor in Columbia or elsewhere in the Americas. While there are teachers that work directly at the seminary, the majority of teachers work from other locations. Videoconferencing lets the seminary connect students to high quality teachers from all over the place. And one of my responsibilities that begins tomorrow is helping to test and organize the videoconferencing equipment.

Andres, my supervisor, took us over to the room where we will be teaching English. After the instructions with the videoconferencing equipment, however, that room was locked. So, I got the fun opportunity to go find the guard and asked her to please unlock the room for me so I could check some things out in there. We had a conversation on the way to the classroom, so it was good Spanish practice. I've recently made it my goal to try to have at least four substantive conversations with native Spanish speakers, in Spanish, every day. That guard was number three for today.

Lots more to discuss, but I waited until too late to start writing this, so I'll finish another time.

Fun Spanish Word of the Day, "Aula" (pronounced, owl-uh) It means "classroom" We'll be teaching English in Aula Seis. (Classroom number six)

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Going to the Store! The Adventure Continues! / Caminando a la Tienda! ¡La Adventura Continua!

To complete our week of firsts (I know it's not Friday or Saturday, but we've been here for one week), Liz and I walked to Palí, the Aldi's-like store about a kilometer from campus. This is essentially the first time that either of us have gone away from campus without having one of our life-saving Spanish Speakers with us. It wasn't too crazy, but it was definitely exhilarating. I think my adrenaline must have been pumping, because Liz kept having to tell me that I was walking way too fast.

I know that in six months, or even our three month point, where we go back to the States for a few weeks, we'll look back at this adventurita (little adventure. I may have made up that word) and we'll think, "Wow, that was a breeze." But when it's the first time walking out of campus alone (well, other than our respective spouses), it feels like something big. Liz was actually the more adventurous of us. She wanted to go down a road we were told had a little fruit stand in it, but I wanted to do it the boring way for the first trip, so we just headed back the way we came.

When we had gotten almost all the way back to the seminary grounds, we saw the gate begin to open, so we sped up a little bit. When we got there, a car pulled out and the people inside got out. It was Patrick and Kim, two other volunteers are also going to be staying here for a year. They are working with Work and Witness teams that come to the area. We only got to meet them for a moment, because another car also wanted to get out. Later this week, however, I'm hoping we'll get to meet them and their family more.

Liz had a first of her own today. Before we left, we were supposed to let someone in the office know that we were leaving. I was waiting in our room, because we were expecting someone, so Liz walked across campus and told the lady that we were going. The important part of the story, however, is that it was someone who didn't speak any English at all. Liz said that both of them had to repeat themselves a few times to get their messages across, but with a lot of patience, Liz accomplished her task valiantly! Good job, Liz-o!

Liz's culinary skills are also being stretched as we try to make some Costa Rican foods. We attempted guineos again, but this time, we prepared them the way Gaby told us to, so they weren't gross. Today, we bought a mango and papaya, so we're going to try them out probably tomorrow. A fun food, that wasn't really Costa Rican, that we had for dessert today was homemade tortillas with a little butter, cinnamon, and sugar on them. Not quite elephant ears, but super tasty!

Tomorrow, we've got our meeting with one of my supervisors, as he shows us the audiovisual equipment that I'll likely be helping out with. It's going to be right after our Spanish lesson, so it's going to be a big morning! I've been told that he speaks English too, but I'm pretty sure that everyone on this campus has been told by Shelley to only talk to us in Spanish, to get as much practice as we can as soon as we can.

Fun Spanish of the Day, "No Gracias, tenemos bolsas." (No thanks, we have bags.) As you might guess, this was one that we used at Palí, when buying out groceries.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

First Time Riding the Bus / La Primera Vez Montando El Autobús

Today, we rode the bus for the first time since we've arrived in the country. It was quite an experience, but honestly less stressful than I had expected. Shelley rode with us from Sendas to the bus station, then Helen met us there and took us on a walking tour of San José. She was full of information, and it was fun to have her get to show us some of her favorite places around the city. Liz and I are big nerds, so getting to see some places of historical and cultural significance was wonderful!

Our guide works with the youth group at her church and she asked us if we might want to share our testimony with them on Saturday. We said that we'd love to, as long as they didn't care how good our Spanish was. Their group is going to go on a hike into the mountains this weekend, and Liz and I have been invited to go with them! I expect to be very tired at the end of that day, even more than we were today.

Today, after the hour or two of walking, we got home and were completely exhausted. I think only part of it was actually from the walking. The other part of it was all of the Spanish. I felt more exhausted from two hours of constantly working to understand what was going on around me than I used to feel from a whole 8 hour shift at work. It's similar when we have our Spanish class. We love the class, but by the end of it, I'm almost ready for a nap, just because having your brain work that hard for that long is tiring. The expectation, however, is that after a couple weeks, it will become more natural, and it won't be so much work just to understand what's going on. Shelley gave us some tips on practicing our Spanish, so hopefully, we'll get this stuff down ASAP!

For those of you who have been praying for us or those who have given financially to send us to Costa Rica, I just want to make sure that you know that although most of the things that I've written about haven't been directly ministry-related, they are preparations for ministry none-the-less. Our first major obstacle is getting our "sea legs" here in San José, and then we'll be branching out more in the volunteering opportunities. In the middle of October, we're going to be starting some English classes for some local businessmen. On this upcoming Thursday, Andres is going to introduce us to some of the audio-visual equipment that I might be becoming good friends with.

Sometimes, I'm excited, other times I've been overwhelmed. Yesterday, we had a bunch of information about money and finances that we had to take in and I felt way over-my-head. Other times, I get frustrated at myself for not progressing any faster than I have with my Spanish. But through it all, God is faithful. He's connected us up with some great people, and has brought us this far, with promises to take us the rest of the way. There is some craziness, some excitedness, some anxiousness, and a little bit of panic, but through it all, God is consistent, and He's continually there for us, no matter what situation we're in.

Spanish phrase of the day, "Dios es fiel." (God is faithful)

Monday, September 23, 2013

Adventures in Breakfast / Las Adventuras de Desayuno

Well, we've made it through the weekend, and we're still alive and kicking! This morning started with our CALL (Spanish) class, which was as wonderful as ever.

Oh wait, I guess it started at breakfast, which was an adventure in and of itself.

A couple days ago, we went to Walmart and bought some supplies. At the store, as I mentioned previously, we saw several fruits that we weren't familiar with. One of the fruits that Gaby had mentioned was guineos -- they look like tiny green bananas -- so we bought a bundle of them when we were shopping. Gaby had mentioned that the typical way to prepare them is to add them to beans. We tried to find information about them on the internet, but all we could find is that they are just tiny green bananas, and that they are a special item in some Puerto Rican dishes. Since the internet just said that they were tiny bananas, I thought that maybe they might taste kind of like tiny bananas. It turns out that I was completely wrong.

The Spanish phrase of the day is, "¡Qué Asco!", which means, "How Disgusting!" This is the very phrase that I blurted out after taking a bite of the raw guineo. The only problem is that guineos have a stickiness to them that makes it so your hands get all sticky if you try to peel them, unless you peel them under running water. I was unaware of this until the CALL class, so when I peeled them (using a butter knife, because I didn't know any better), my hands got sticky and I may have made a little bit of a mess. I took a decent-sized bite of the fruit and soon realized the error of my ways. When I tried to spit it out into the trash can, only part of it came out because the same stickiness that was on my hands was covering the inside of my mouth. I ran to the sink and did my best to wash out the reprehensible taste, then proceeded to brush my teeth.

After breakfast, we had our CALL Spanish class, and we informed Gaby of our not-so-delicious start of the day. She burst out laughing at us and told us that, as we had previously discovered, guineos don't have any sweetness of bananas. She says that the proper way to eat them is to peel them while running water over them, in order to make the sticky juices not get on your hands, and then put them into your beans and rice when you cook them. My guess is that the guineos take on some of the flavor of the surrounding foods and become a pretty decent thing to eat. I suppose we'll attempt that one next time.

The best (well, depending on your perspective) part of the whole situation is that as Gaby burst out laughing from our adventure, one of the other people from the campus was walking by and stopped at the door. Gaby told her about the whole deal and everyone got a wonderful laugh at our expense.

Tomorrow starts an even bigger adventure as we start to familiarize ourselves with the city. We'll be riding the bus into town and meeting up with Helen, our wonderful and helpful friend who I have mentioned in a couple earlier posts. She will be taking us on one of the city buses, to show us around and help us understand how to use the bus system, since that will be a primary form of transportation during our stay in this beautiful country.

More pictures! / ¡Más fotos!

View from our back window on a relatively clear morning.

Another view from the same window. It's a lot easier to see the mountains from this vantage point.

This picture was taken from our front window. You can see part of the campus, but in the distance, more mountains. The San José area is surrounded by mountains on three sides.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Missionary Sunday / Domingo de los Misioneros

This morning, we went to a local Nazarene church for Sunday morning worship service. It was missionary Sunday, and it was exciting! They had two special speakers, and the music was fun. The church used to be a house and I was told that I was sitting in the area that used to be the kitchen. They have some land behind the church that they have great plans for -- as soon as they are able to, they will be working together to build a larger church building behind the current building, and I believe later this year, a Work and Witness team will be helping them construct the driveway back to that area.

Most houses are built directly adjacent to the house next to them, so their previous location (which had also been formerly a house) was going to be difficult to add on to. A local farmer had some land that he sold to them, and he bought their previous property from them as a kind of down payment. This generous offer has made it so they now have a location near two schools, in a good area to reach the community. The people are so welcoming there, I can't wait to see what's going to happen next!

The service was (obviously) all in Spanish, but we did our best to find stray words here and there that we recognized. For me, I recognized most of the words, but my brain wasn't fast enough to put them together into understandable sentences before the next phrase ran by. I wrote down several words that I didn't recognize and will be looking them up pretty soon. I did catch that we were reading in Luke 5, the Bible story about Jesus telling the fishermen to throw the nets off the other side of the boat, when they had been fishing all night and hadn't caught anything. (It turns out that the Spanish word for "nets" is "redes") The speaker, Helen, was the same girl that took us to Palí, the grocery store down the road, a couple days ago! She mentioned that when these fishermen were told to do it, they didn't tell Jesus that they were the ones that knew what was best, they just did it. She said if a parent tells a child to get away from something, then the child needs to know that they can trust the parent with their commands. They shouldn't just ask "Well, why?" instead, they need to just do it. In the same way, when God leads us to "cast our nets" and witness to those around us, we need to just do it. Not sit around making up excuses.

In one paragraph, I covered pretty much everything that I understood in the whole service. There was a lot more, but that's all I could understand. Oh, and Helen saying that she feels called to missions. Our Spanish is getting better, but it's a slow road, I suppose. When we got home, I got completely exhausted all of the sudden. I think it's just the fact that we've been saturated in Spanish for the past couple hours. Or maybe it's because we still wake up around 6am every day (which would have been 8am in Indiana)

A little bit ago, the whole town sounded like it erupted in cars honking. I think that means that there was a fútbol match that just ended.

This evening, the Work and Witness coordinator of the region (I think that's her title) had us over for some delicious coffee and.... um... I don't remember what they're called, but it was like someone made a giant flat biscuit and then cut it into slices. Really tasty, though. Liz just said it's Biscotti. It was fun to spend some time getting to hear some stories about things that are happening with churches in the country, as well as getting more information about other things we may be a part of in the future.

Fun Spanish of the Day -- In Spanish speaking areas, Work and Witness is called "Testimonio y Trabajo" (Testimonies and Work)

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Lazy Saturday / Sábado Perezoso

Today has been much less busy than the last couple -- so much so that when I was given a free afternoon, I started to get stir crazy. We went to Walmart this morning and found everything just great. We encountered a number of fruits that neither of us had ever seen before. One, called a guineo, is like a tiny banana that is really high in iron. Another, called a "Mamon Chino" looks like a cross between a strawberry and a sea urchin. I haven't bought one yet, but I'm told that the urchin part peels off and there's something resembling a large white grape inside.

If you click here, it is a Google Images search for the fruit.

When we got back home, I asked Shelley what we needed to be doing next. She said that the day was ours to do with what we wanted, so I went back to the room and put in all of the Spanish flashcards that I've made over the last couple days into my flashcard program on my computer. Then I went through and reviewed several stacks of Spanish flashcards that I had put in earlier. While doing that, Liz did an amazing job of putting away the groceries and tearing apart a whole chicken to make several meals worth of amazingness.

After lunch (rice with some veggies), I saw a fútbol (soccer) game going on across the campus, so I grabbed the umbrella (it rains almost every day from May through December) and went to watch the people playing in the field. I always bring my little stack of half-index-cards with me, so I wrote down a few of the things that I heard from the soccer game. When the game seemed like it was winding down, I wandered off to see if anyone was in the offices during the weekend. When I didn't see anyone there, I kept wandering, seeing if the library was open or if I could find someone that I knew. When I got to the front entrance, I saw Franklin in the guard shack, so I waved and went over to him. He pointed at the drizzly weather and said, "Pura Vida!" which is a catch phrase for everyone in Costa Rica. It's something along the lines of, "Hey, such is life!"

After we exchanged a few pleasantries (all I have in my repertoire is just a few pleasantries), I told him that I had been watching the fútbol game. He nodded (I'm pretty sure that he saw part of it before his shift at the guard house) and I pulled out my stack of flash cards. I said that I had a new word and said, "They say [the word that I had found] when they... uh... [at this point, I made a Time Out signal with my hands, because I didn't have the right words]" He told me what the word should have been and helped me spell it for my card. I left the guard shack and headed back for my apartment right as the sky decided to change from drizzle to downpour. But I had a Spanish conversation and got a couple new words for my collection, so I went home beaming under my umbrella.

Friday, September 20, 2013

The Second Day / El Segundo Día

Wow, we've only been here for just over a day, but we can already feel our brains changing. As I wrote up my notes for this post, I had to take a moment to find the English words, because we've had so much Spanish today that Spanish is starting to come quicker than English (as long as I know the word in Spanish).

Today has been another day of "getting to know the place". We woke up early, so we went on a walk before meeting up with our primary contact here. We wandered around the campus and eventually stopped for Liz to take some pictures of some of the local flora (I'm sure she'll post some pictures sometime). When we were stopped, a man (who we later discovered was one of the groundskeepers) walked by and we said "Hola" and waved, so he walked over to us. I told him that the flowers were so beautiful, and that we didn't have any of these kinds near where we are from, then he asked us if we wanted to go see more. So, obviously, we said yes, and he took us around and showed us some really interesting areas with lots more exotic trees, flowers, and fruits. It was wonderful to have our own horticultural guide! After that, Shelley came back and took us on a tour of the rest of the facilities. We are so blessed to have Shelley and her family to help us around here. They have been amazing! And we're discovering more and more amazing people all the time!

After our introductory tour, we had our first Spanish class, from around 0900-1140ish. It was so wonderful to get to see Gaby in person for the first time -- She is our Spanish teacher; for the past few months, she has been working with our Spanish over Skype, so today was our first in-person meeting! We met some office personnel and showed her our apartment too, ¡Qué Divertida! (What fun!)

After class, we wet back to our apartment for just a little bit, then another wonderful staff member came over to our place. (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to put other peoples' names on here, so I'm leaving it vague for now) She showed us how to get to Palí, a store much like Aldi's in the States. She walked with us there and to the Panadería (Bakery), which was nearby. One of Costa Rica's famous rain storms struck right around the time we were walking back, so Shelley saved the day and came and picked us up in her car/truck/whatever-it-is.

We had a fun meeting today, where we were introduced to the staff of SENDAS. Shelley told them a little about us, then we were supposed to tell a little bit about ourselves. I rambled around a little bit, trying to explain why we were there, then Liz took over. I had sort of talked a lot, so she was going to say, "Lucas is a hard act to follow" or as close to it as she could in Spanish. With the words we know, the closest she was going to get was "Lucas is a difficult person to follow." But after "Lucas is a difficult person," she stopped, forgetting the words for "to follow". The whole room laughed and then, with Shelley's help, got it all sorted out. It was fun, and we are really going to be working alongside a bunch of really neat people, who really seem to love each other.

After this meeting, we found out that there's a very good chance that we will be beginning an English as a Second Language class for a local business, in a few weeks. Things are already starting to roll! Thank you all for your prayers!

Just a few pictures!

My beautiful wife Liz had her desk all set up within the first 15 minutes of us having an apartment of our own. All I had accomplished in that time was accidentally knocking down some curtain rods.

Near dusk, looking out over the city. There are mountains in the distance, but it's hard to see unless there isn't much cloud cover.

This was taken the same time as the other. Still a lot of clouds, but the mountains are slightly visible. When the clouds aren't there, the view from our apartment takes your breath away.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

We've Made It!

Short version: We've made it! We're in Costa Rica!

Long Version: [see below]

This morning started with a big rain storm, as we made it to the Indianapolis airport. Our parents hung out with us for a little bit longer, then we went through security and into our next three months of life. From Indianapolis airport, we took a flight to Houston, TX, then from Houston to San José, Costa Rica. The first flight was a little rough, since they had to navigate around all the storms, but we made it! We had just enough time to grab our luggage and heft it over to the other side of the airport. When we got to the second terminal, I put my bags down just long enough to take a breath, and the ladies at the desk said that they had already boarded everyone else who had been waiting. So I picked the bags back up and kept moving. 3 months worth of supplies can get pretty heavy, but we're all unpacked now. On that second flight, I got to talk to a Costa Rican guy who owns a small hotel on the Eastern side of the country. It was pretty fun, once we got on that 2nd plane.

When we arrived, we zipped through customs, with the only hiccup was the look on the lady's face when we told her that we were planning on staying for 90 days. After that, everyone went like clockwork. Just outside the airport, we met up with Shelley Webb and her daughter Kayley (Shelley has been the person we've been talking with to coordinate this whole trip. Their Nazarene Missions profile is at http://app.nazarene.org/MissionaryProfiles/profile.jsp?profile=39794, if you'd like to know more about them). Liz hadn't eaten much today, due to the short amount of time between flights, so they took us to Burger King* for a couple cheeseburgers and fries.

After that, they brought us to the Seminary campus, where we are now. The very first thing I did, before I was there five minutes, was accidentally knock the curtain rods off the window, twice, as I tried to open the windows. Liz did an amazing job getting the apartment set up, while I got myself cleaned up from all of the luggage-hauling, then Shelley, Kayley, another missionary and her son took us to grab some supper and to the grocery store to get some food for breakfast. They have all been so helpful. They are wonderful people to be working alongside.

Well, tomorrow, we start up our first class, and get to see Gaby, who has been our Spanish teacher over Skype for the last several months. We're really looking forward to meeting her in person, after having spent all this time talking only over the internet! Heading to bed now, and resting up for a wonderful day tomorrow!

* -- Burger King Spanish Lesson -- "Comer para llevar" (pronounced "co-mare pa-rah yeh-var") means that the food is for Carry Out.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Only 5 Days Before We Take Off !

So here I am, laying on the floor of a room that is completely empty other than this laptop. Yesterday morning, we practice-packed everything that we are planning on taking with us on our trip. Today, I'm trying to schedule someone to take away our bed. My goal is to have it completely taken apart later today, and waiting in the living room for someone to take it. We've packed up the last of our dishes, and going with paper plates and plastic spoons for the last couple days. It's sure getting close to departure day!

I have to admit, I think that it's finally starting to feel more real to me over the last week. I've said my goodbyes to all my coworkers, we've gone to our last Wednesday-evening service at our church, and we've arranged for the cancellation of our utilities already. I talked to my dad the other day and told him, "Well, it's really starting to feel real, huh?" And he said, "It's felt real for years. I just didn't know the time or where you would be going." When Liz and I first mentioned to my parents that we were considering going into missions, he told me that he had known it since I was young. He said that whenever a missionary would come to our church and tell us what God had been doing around the world, I would be so excited to hear them tell their stories. I would always be one of the ones who would always stay behind and talk to them after the service.

Over this past week, I got to see some of those people at a couple of the churches in Eastern Indiana. One of the churches had ice cream after their missionary night, and it was so neat to see the mission-minded people who would make the effort to come find us and talk to us for a while, or the people who made sure to fill out the little tickets that we brought, checking the boxes saying that they would give financially, pray for us, or encourage us in our travels. The other church gave us an opportunity to speak in two different services, across town from each other, so that was exciting too! In total, including all of the people we've talked to in previous weeks as well, I think we've got around 375 people (give or take, again, Liz knows exact figures) who are on our monthly updates list, and about 70 of them that have committed to encouraging us throughout the journey. Those people are (and are going to be) invaluable to us. With all the craziness that comes from living in a culture that is so different than what you are used to, we thank God for those people who are partnering with us and the people that are giving of their time and their resources to help us. I've said it before, but it's so humbling to know that so many of these people are giving sacrificially, so that we can do this. It's amazing.

My wife is in the other room, just humming away some happy tune, while she makes one last loaf of bread before we go. I sure am glad that I've got such an encouraging wife. God really has shown that He has had all of this planned out, even from before we met. He's really been making us for such as time as this, you know? One neat concept that Liz and I have been working with a lot lately has been the concept of "Equipo de Lucas y Liz" (Team Luke and Liz). When it comes down to it, we never could have made it this far by ourselves. But both of us inspire and encourage the other one of us, and build each other up in a way that builds up confidence to step out of our comfort zones. With each others' help, we grow Spiritually as well as socially, mentally, etc. One of my favorite Bible verses is Hebrews 3:13, where it says that we need to "...encourage one another daily, as long as it is called 'Today,' so that none of [us] may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness." I think that this sums up a lot of the Christian walk. The Pastor of the church I attended during college used to always say, "We're all in this together," and a couple weeks ago, I heard my current Pastor use that phrase. It's so true. If I can encourage you, and you can encourage us, then we'll both be better off than if we just try to keep our heads down and doing this stuff alone. Thanks again for encouraging us!

(By the way, for those of you who don't know it, on the LucasGentry.com website, there is a page specifically to make it easy to send encouraging messages to Liz and me! Just fill in your name and type a message in the box!)

Friday, September 6, 2013

T minus 2 weeks

Gloria a Dios (Glory to God), this is going to be EPIC. And probably a little bit scary.

Well, it's coming up so quickly. We're at T minus 2 weeks before this trip, and I am stoked.

For those of you who aren't aware, my wife Liz and I are going to be on a journey to Costa Rica, for around a year. We're going to be volunteering at SENDAS, a Nazarene Seminary down there, where I'm going to be tinkering with computers (my specialty for 3/4 of my entire life), Liz will be helping with administration stuff, maybe library work, maybe office work, and we're both going to be helping with English classes. Past that, it's whatever they ask us to do, we're going to take our best shot at it and see what happens. I honestly can't wait to see what God's got in store for us.

But most of you already know up to that point, since we tell that summary to every single person that we come into contact with who seems like they might care what-so-ever. But here's something more, for you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for all the support. Thank you so much for all the prayers and the hugs and the "We're going to miss you guys." Thank you for the encouragement and telling us that you love us. And honestly, thank you for believing in us so much that you've given financially and sacrificially. There are people that I know don't have the extra money who have generously given because they care about us and because they believe that God's got some amazing plans in store for us. Thank you for those sacrifices. They mean the world to us and more. It's so humbling to know that people care this much and have this much faith that they're sending us across the world to help out people who we don't know, at a school we'd never heard of, so that God (Who we DO know!) and His Kingdom would be glorified. It's mind and soul boggling, and it's amazing.

You know what's scary? Today is my last day of work. After work, I step away from a job that has been my financial income for more than 5 years, into God's hands and into His mercies. When I met my wife, I was working at this job. She's never known me to work anywhere else. When we met, I was working night shift, always tired and never able to catch up on sleep. I think I started working day shift about 2 weeks before we got married. I've transitioned to days and taken on more and more responsibilities, and the place (and the people) have really grown on me. I really like the people that I work with, and now I'll see them maybe one more time in the next year. How wild is that? Then I think I might have one more paycheck and we're off into the wild, blue, yonder running on savings, donations from friends and family, and the Hope that God's got this all figured out.

I'm really going to miss a lot of people. My parents, my family, my friends, my church family. Please pray for my Mom and Dad, I think it's going to be hardest for them. But we've got Skype and we've got web cams, so we'll be able to talk to each other over the Internet, while we're gone. I'll have to bring my computer around campus to let my parents meet everyone, and let everyone meet these amazing folks who raised me to be this wonderful person who I turned out to be :-) I'm not really that conceited, I'm just pretty sure that my Mom probably just teared up a couple sentences ago, so I thought that the comment about be turning out so great would bring a smile to her face. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be awesome. It's going to be EPIC.

You know what else really humbling about this whole thing? The big numbers. We've been given a support-raising goal of like $20,000. That's a lot of money! Liz can tell you exact numbers -- she's the more organized one of us, but it's a big number none-the-less. A couple weeks ago, we hit the 50% mark, which means we get to buy the plane tickets and set a date. So we have and we have. As mentioned before, that departure date is about 2 weeks away on September 19th. We've got so much to do before that time. Liz has a big calendar with all of the people we need to meet with at least one more time and the churches that we're going to be speaking at and the goal dates for packing various parts of the house up. But after all that, we STILL have almost 50% of our support-raising that we're hoping and praying for. That's wild. And crazy. After typing that, I just sat here, staring at the computer screen, looking at the big numbers, wide-eyed and maybe a bit nervous.

But you know something else that popped into my head, while I was sitting here gushing about how much more that needs done before we can be properly prepared for this stuff? Last year or maybe the semester before that, a couple awesome guys (who I haven't yet asked for permission to mention their name) and I did a Bible Study on the book of Jeremiah. Have you guys heard Jeremiah 29:11? It's something pretty close to "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (NIV) I've heard people say (and I've said it too!) that this verse, while encouraging, isn't written to me. It was written to a group of people probably more than 3000 years ago. This is not a message written to me. And honestly, all of that is true, but here's the thing. Everyone that Jeremiah knew, and everyone that they knew, and everyone that THEY knew, and all of their families got taken prisoner for a really long time. Like, slavery, with no hope and no country, and no way to see the silver lining to all of their clouds. That was the situation that they were in and Jeremiah 29:11, with all of the stuff about God's having plans for them, is what God had to say to them. Even if it looked horrible to them at the time, He's got it figured all out ahead of time. For me, it doesn't even look bad! It looks awesome! I have no idea how God is going to provide the rest of our support. But I know that He knows. I know that Jeremiah 29:11 wasn't written to me, but I know that if He had it all figured out for those guys, who thought everything was all hopeless, then He's also got it all figured out for us. It is going to be aMAZEing. I can't wait.