Lucas and Liz in Costa Rica: November 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. :-)