The Pace of life is picking up...

Hello Friends,

At 1:00 AM on Wednesday morning I was rudely woken up to someone shaking my bed. As would be expected after being woken up just three hours after falling asleep, I was rather perturbed. After the intial annoyance subsided I realized that no one else was in the room and not just my bed was shaking, my desk was shaking, as well as my night stand, in fact the entire house was shaking. I soon realized, after my grogginess wore away, that what I was feeling was an earthquake. I had never experienced an earthquake before and didn't know what to do. Should I get up, run panicking through the house waking everyone up? Should I wake Ana up and see what to do? Should I just stay in bed, it's not that bad after all? As these questions ran through my mind I heard the door of Christian and Ana's room open and the padding of feet in the hallway. When the footsteps were not panicking and the made their way around the house and evenutally returned to their room, I breathed again and knew that it was fine to stay in bed. So I did and enjoyed the rocking sensation.

Later in the morning, when my alarm clock rudely woke me up, I remembered the exciting events of the night, but I could not figure out if I had been dreaming, if it really happened or if I was just plain crazy. I spent the first couple hours wondering unable to ask Juanita because of my limited vocabulary. Finally I went to help Orlando and Ericka organize the Global Teams office and I was able to ask Ericka. I learned that no I was not crazy or dreaming, it really did happen. So there it is, living through an earthquake now joins my list of adventures and "firsts." I did some research on the earthquake: it occured on the border of Panama and Costa Rica. It was a 6.2 earthquake, however, no damage or landslides were caused, Praise God!!!!!!

I am working on getting a volunteering job working with children during the week. Right now I'm really only busy on Saturdays and Sundays, and I would like something to do for a few hours a day. There are a couple of opportunities that I'm looking into. I'm praying that God will guide me where he wants me. I'm excited about being able to do this and I'm hoping that this will be a way to meet some peers, which would be really great!

On November 30 I will be moving in with my next family. They don't speak English, so it will be an adventure (I'm not too worried about it, I have a dictionary, that should be sufficient... right...?) The family is very nice and very funny (from what I can tell at Church). They live in San Jose, so I will be able to get places a little bit easier. They have three children as well: Steven (18), Stephanie (16- I will be sharing a room with her), and Freddy (11 or 12). Life will change drastically, but I'm okay with that. I'm sad to leave this house because this family is so amazing and has been so welcoming, but I think that the change will be positive.

I'm not totally sure, but, I think my internet access is going to greatly diminish starting November 30. I'm fairly certain my next house does not have internet, which means that i'll have to use internet cafes.

Next week I will be touring the city with Fernando. He is a 20 year old at the church who knows the city/busses/streets/etc. really well. He has offered to show me around, how to get places, seeing the important things etc. This should be great. He speaks basic English, I speak basic Spanish so Orlando wants us to help eachother.

Friday I had a blast going to the Theatre with Ana. The show was with two very famous men (both of whom I met after). It was in Spanish but I was able to follow it because of facial expressions, the physical humour, and Ana's little translations here and there. The play was advice for men about how to deal with women. One scene had them acting out questions that women normally ask and I found it very funny that the "dangerous" questions are worldwide (for example: Honey, do you think I'm fat? or Honey, what are you thinking about?)

My adventures have also continued with clothing. Beyond learning how to wash and dry my clothes I need to learn how to keep holes out of them. In the month that I have been here I have managed to rip holes in two pairs of pants (2/3 of what I brought). Luckily we were able to make it to a store and I now have new jeans (well new to me, it was a second hand store) hopefully I can keep holes out of this pair!

All in all the next few weeks will be rather busy: preparing to move, moving, starting to volunteer! But, even as the pace of life picks up I'm glad to see that God is working in all of this and that there is still going to be plenty of time to rest. I am hoping that I will continue to get full nights of sleep and that I will no longer be so rudely awoken.

I hope that you are doing well and that no one is shaking your bed at night! :-D Much love to you!

So it's been a month!

Four weeks ago today I set foot in this country for the first time. It's so bizarre that it has been that long. I don't have any fabulous anecdotes for this email, but I do want to express my gratitude for many things.

I am thankful for your prayers, love, and support. There is no way that I could be here now without those and I can't tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you and the role you play in my life.

I am thankful for health and safety. I have only been sick once (a slight cold I caught from the lovely chicitas i live with). I have also had several near accidents while driving and I'm thankful that they have all been NEAR accidents and not accidents.

I am thankful for The Sarah Mac Band, Dog Named David, She&Him, Jason Mraz, Hillsong, Marion McPartland, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and other fabulous artists who have allowed me to listen to something familiar when I have time by myself.

I am thankful for time to rest. I have had lots of time in the past few weeks to just be. It's a wonderful thing that I don't allow myself to do very often. In the US things tend to get pretty hectic running around (are you agreeing with me right now?). Breathing and just being are two fantastic things!

I am thankful for the responses I have gotten to my emails. The little updates from you help me to feel like I'm still connected to what's going on, even if it is only a glimpse here or there.

I am thankful for good books to read.

I am thankful for St. Peter's (my Church back home). I am thankful that they pray for me each week. I am thankful that Sermons are posted every week; it's nice to hear sermons in English. I am currently trying to live in freedom and not fear (Fr. John Wallace -- www.saint-peters.net).

I am thankful for Global Teams -- for giving me the opportunity to be here. I am thankful for Orlando for finding me something to do and for making me feel at home.

I am thankful for Ana, Christian, Tamara, Camila, Fabiola, and Juanita. For letting me be apart of their family for a month and Ana faithfully teaching me Spanish daily.

I am so thankful for the ways that God has stretched me in this last month. In the words of my mother: I "feel like [I'm] in a green house - with lots of growing going on."

There are so many other things that I am thankful for. I know that the rest of the evening will be spent thinking "oh, I should have said _____." or "shoot, I forgot to thank so and so." But there is no reason to dwell on that, especially since it's time for "cafe y pan" (coffee and bread). Oh! I'm thankful for really, really, really, really, good coffee! :-D

I hope that you are doing well! I also hope that you are enjoying the decreasing temperatures as I enjoy the increasing temperatures!

Teaching and Offending

A lot has happened in the past four days since my last update. From getting asked out by one of Ana's co-workers to offending people to sleeping through my alarm this morning it's been busy here. So I will go day by day.

Friday: I went to work with Ana. It was a really long boring day. I forgot my book. I worked on lesson plans/ studied my Spanish for 7 hours. During the last 30 minutes everyone had gone home except Ana, Llehudy (pronounced kind of like "Jody" -- Ana's brother-in-law), Alonso (one of Ana's co-workers), and me. Llehudy was out of the room and Alonso turned to me and said something very quickly in Spanish. The only word I caught was "Fiesta." Ana started laughing and shaking her head telling me to say "no." So I said "Something about a party?" Through the laughter and confusion of tenses I realized that he was asking me to go to a party with him. I declined and he quickly dropped the subject. During the rest of the time they talked very rapidly in Spanish and I went back to being bored. It was all very funny.

After those exciting 7 hours, Ana and I went to worship practice. It was really fun, they actually had me singing into the microphone (in Spanish...). They were going around having everyone try to lead one of the songs and I figured they would just skip over me because my Spanish pronunciation is not fabulous. But no, I had to sing it. I think it went pretty well. I stumbled over a few words but for the most part I was able to sing it. I will be helping to lead worship for the next 3 weeks. I'm really excited about it! :-D

Saturday:
Saturday was a busy day full of all kinds of mixed and confusing emotions. I taught my first classes. They went really well. I have 5 students in the younger class and 3 in the older class. The younger students were very engaged the whole time and really enjoyed the class. My lesson plan fit their age well and I was not struggling for material or running out of time. I think they had fun, and they enjoyed my stickers. The older kids were a different story. It took them awhile to warm up to the idea of the class but once i was able to act silly they were willing to be silly as well. They knew some English, but no conversational. They knew numbers and colors mostly. They learn very quickly. The lesson plan I had was finished in 20 minutes. Luckily I was able to improvise and add to my lessons and go on into future weeks. Now I know that I need to make 2 separate plans. A few observations: The older kids have a harder time pronouncing words and their words have very thick accents. The younger kids however have very little accent. I think this is because the younger kids are coming in with no English at all and the older kids have a little that they have learned at school or from their parents. My kids here are very well behaved. I was amazed that they were willing to sit there engaged for an hour, well "sit" is the wrong verb. I'm using Total Physical Response for teaching verbs so at times they were to "Stand Up" "Sit down" "Raise your hand' "Put your hand down" etc.

After teaching I went to lunch with Ericka, Orlando, Ligia, and Ericka's family. While there I had my first cultural insensitivity moment. Alberto (Ericka's husband who is fluent in English) and I were talking about life here. I mentioned something about a difference in "America" and he said "You mean the United States." I ended up saying it 3 times on Saturday. I felt so horrible. Ericka and I had a long conversation about it, after I said "America" to her twice. Each time I felt awful about it. It's an example in my mind of how selfish the United States is. Don't get me wrong, I feel very blessed to have been born in the United States. The opportunities there are amazing, and I'm learning to appreciate them more, especially education (more on that in a minute.) However, the word "America" applies to many more countries then just the US. I spent all day Saturday trying to figure out another word for my nationality, but we are Americans. That word seems silly to me because Ericka is an American to, Orlando is an American too, Fabiola is an American too. They are all Central Americans, but Americans nonetheless. I guess there is no point in getting angry about it. I can't change that I'm called an American, but I can be more careful and change from referring to "America" to referring to "The States."

I went to another birthday party, nothing very eventful happened. I sat with Ericka and Alberto and it was really nice to have long conversations in non-broken English! I went back to the house with them because Ana and Christian were going to visit a friend. To tell this story I need to describe the roads here to you.

On the way back to Alajuela from San Jose we travel on 3 different kinds of roads. The first is a highway. It's 3 lanes and pretty straight where everyone drives very fast and cuts each other off, very nearly getting into accidents. Second, two lane roads full of pot holes and curves. These are just as scary because people pass each other and drive into each other's lanes to miss pot holes. Third, there are one and a half lane roads. These roads are just wide enough for two cars to pass each other if each car drives on the very edge of the road (these are also very curvy and are driven on very fast with many pedestrians and bicycles).

We were driving on the 3rd type of road about 30 feet from the driveway when a car approached us from the other direction. The other car decided to stay in the middle of the road, thus running us off the road. I didn't see what was happening because I was playing the Bubblegum hand game with Christina (Ericka's daughter who speaks some English -- I taught her the Bubblegum Game from my Elementary school days). Suddenly, the car crunched very loudly and bumped abruptly and stopped, tilting slightly to the right. Orlando came with his truck and they tried to pull it out of the ditch, but the rope broke. Orlando drove Ligia, Ericka, Christina, Samuel (Ericka's 3 year old) and me to the house. Eventually they got the car out, because it wasn't there on Sunday morning. It certainly was an exciting turn of events.

Sunday:

I received my first snail-mail! :) That was exciting. Worship was awesome. I went to 2 different services on Sunday and really enjoyed the musical worship during both of them. God has done some really cool work in my heart this weekend, in spite of the enemy trying to discourage me. God is good and I'm glad that we live in the knowledge that the end will be His victory over all.

2 foods I have discovered I do not like here: a certain type of cheese and mayonnaise covered tomatoes. My favorite snack: Saltine crackers with butter and cream cheese and galletas dulce (sweet crackers-- cookies basically).

I hope and pray that you have an amazing day full of yummy food, time to rest, and a reminder of how much God loves you! :)

Laughs and Prayers

I had my first "OH MY GOSH I WISH I KNEW THE LANGUAGE, AHHHH" moment on Saturday. After we had registration for the class (I have 4 students that I know of, more may have signed up on Sunday) I went to a birthday party for a little girl named Juliana. She goes to the church and turned 7 years old. The birthday party took place at a theme park (slightly smaller then Wild Adventures, but a similar idea) and the first part was in a large room with a clown in charge of the festivities.

For the first half of the party I just observed. I had no idea what the clown was saying, except for a few words (applause, keys, shoes, kids), but I still enjoyed laughing at the kids running around and laughing with Ana that I recognized a few words. At one point I noticed that several women (a few of them women I know from the church) were in the middle of the room about to participate in a game. Suddenly I found myself being dragged into the middle by Tamara (my 9 year old "little sister"). So there I was, with about 50 people watching me, about to play a game and I had NO idea what I was supposed to do. Then I realized that I would have to go first, doing whatever it was that we were doing. I made eye contact with Rebekah (Ana's sister-in-law) and mouthed "no entiendo!! (I don't understand!!)" She quickly came to my rescue and pantomimed dancing and made a circle motion. I soon figured out that we were about to play musical hula hoops (similar to musical chairs except that you jump into a hula hoop instead of sitting in a chair.)

I looked at my table and I saw Ana, Christian, Orlando, Ligia, and about 5 other friends of mine just pointing and laughing at me. It was great fun. I was able to laugh at myself too, my only other option was freaking out and I prefer to laugh. For those of you who want to know: I came in 4th out of 6, fairly pitiful I know but I put up a good fight!

After that we went to the park. It was a lot of fun. I didn't have a wristband or tickets, so I didn't think that I would be able to ride any of the rides. Chino and Rebekah (Orlando's oldest son and his wife) and a few others were going to walk around and ride a few rides. Christian gave me 3 tickets and Rebekah grabbed my hand and we went off (I had no idea what was going on, I was just given tickets and the pulled away, no one told me what we were doing). We ended up going to the roller coaster. It was fun. Then we walked around some more and they were able to talk the workers into letting me ride another ride without tickets, that was amusing. It ended up being a really fun night. I didn't know what was being said, but some how everyone made me feel very included. The love that these people have for each other is quite extraordinary, they really, genuinely care about one another. It's awesome!

Nothing very exciting has happened this week. I miss my church a lot. It's hard sitting in church for an hour long sermon and having no clue what's going on. Christian did his best to translate but Orlando preaches so quickly he could only translate about half of it (which created some interesting theological points haha). The worshis is very cool. I can follow pretty easily because the words are projected and it tends to be pretty easy to translate. I love that we sing for 45 minutes!

On Wednesday I had a neat experience. There is a prophet in the Church who only knows a few words in English (hello, how are you? fine thanks... that's about it). While he was praying over people he came to me. At first he said a few things in Spanish that I didn't understand, but then he started speaking to me in perfect English. He told me that I needed to realize that God hadn't really brought me to Costa Rica to teach English. Yes, that's what I would be doing but there were other opportunities for people to learn English. God had really brought me here to learn about the Holy Spirit. To really feel the Holy Spirit in my heart and not just think it in my head. At the time I didn't know that he spoke very little English. Christian told me that later. I thought it was very cool.

When I told my dad about this he asked me if it connected with my heart. This is what I told him: "I know that I believe in the Holy Spirit in my heart, or else I don't think I'd be here, but I know that there is always more to learn and honestly out of the 3 parts of the trinity I think that the Holy Spirit is probably the least focused on." It will be interesting and cool to watch this prophecy manifest itself!

I did my second load of laundry this week. It did not go as well as the first week because I tried to do it when no one else was home and did not realize that you had to punch the top of the washer to get it to start (a key detail I missed in the directions). Now I know and next time will be better.

A few neat things in the future:

1. My visa issues have been worked out and I will be going to Nicaragua in January. When I was in Kenya I met a man named Max. He was this very funny man from Orlando's church who was a missionary in Pakistan. I didn't realize that he was back in Costa Rica and it was a very pleasant surprise to re-meet him at Church on Sunday. He has a supporter who lives in Nicaragua and so I will be traveling with Max, Deborah (his wife), and their new baby girl (she's only 8 days old now!) to visit his supporters. This will get me out of the country for the needed amount of days to renew my visa.

2. Fernando a man from the church has been kind enough to agree to teach me the bus roots and San Jose. He is going to make sure I know how to get around and also be someone else I can practice my Spanish with, he speaks English.

3. I start teaching on Saturday. I'm not sure how many kids I have currently but I know it's less then 10 total. This is good because I'll be able to teach them more English and they will have a more 1 on 1 setting.

Books I've read/ finished reading/ am currently reading here:

1. I finally left the shire in "The Fellowship of the Ring" and finished that one. *Spoiler Alert* I am now at Isengard talking to Treebeard and the Hobbits finally reconnected with Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn (YAY) in "The Two Towers." I'm hoping to finish the series by the end of the month.

2. I started and finished the book "Captivating." A very well written book about what it means to be a women of God. It's pretty fantastic and I would recommend it for women (and men too if they want any insight into women and how we tick).

3. I'm currently reading "The Book of God." The man who wrote it has taken the Bible and written it as a novel. It's very interesting and so far pretty accurate. It by no means replaces the Bible, but it's interesting to see this man's interpretation of the emotions of the Old Testament. Jericho just fell.

4. I finished "The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis. And I highly highly highly recommend it!

I'd be interested in hearing what good books you've read lately, I think there are a few bookstores that have English books as well (which is good since I will be needing more soon). It's been neat to have so much time to read! Or, I would be interested in hearing your opinions of the above books!

Prayer Requests:

1. I'm pretty exhausted emotionally even though I'm well rested physically. I think this has been more trying then I've let myself believe thus far. My mom helped me realize that.

2. I'm a little bit nervous about teaching. I've never done anything like this before!

3. Please pray that I would pick up Spanish! I'm picking it up pretty quickly I think, but I still get embarrassed when I try to use it.

4. My extended family is going through quite a bit right now and could use all the prayer support we can get.

A few things I'm remembering:

1. I'm remembering to take my vitamins. (You can be so proud)

2. I'm remembering to drink lots of water. (Not from the tap, although it's actually relatively safe here)

3. I'm remembering not to flush toilet paper down the toilet, it goes in the trash can.

4. I'm remembering that "preguntar" means "to ask" not "pregnant". and that "embarazada" means "pregnant" not "embarrassed."

5. I'm remembering to tell the kids "cuidado" anytime they look like they are doing something dangerous (they don't understand it when I say "careful")

6. Most importantly (and the cheesiest) I'm remembering you! :) Everyone back home is in my thoughts and prayers. I miss you all and I love you all very much!

And with this I leave you to go take my dry clothes from off the line:

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore." Amen.

2 Corinthians 13:14