The First Semester is Half Over!
By Scott & Sherry | February 24, 2008
It’s hard to believe that we’ve completed 7 weeks of language school. Friday each student received their mid-term evaluations. Praise the Lord, Scott and I received very positive feedback from each of our teachers. We still have so much to learn, so please pray that we will have patience because we want to be fluent NOW!
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Prayer Walking
By Scott & Sherry | February 17, 2008
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One of the awesome privileges I’ve had so far in Costa Rica is the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and pray. Every two weeks, Jan and I walk a different route around where we live and pray for business owners, daycare centers, people in the parks, government buildings and schools. We pray specifically for new laws to not interfere with the spread of the Gospel. This exercise has really opened my eyes to see what the impact of prayer can do for a community. I can’t wait to see how God will move in the areas we’ve been saturating in prayer. Are you wanting to see your community won for Christ? Try prayer walking with some of your neighbors!
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Ladies Retreat
By Scott & Sherry | February 10, 2008
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This past weekend, I was privileged to attend a ladies retreat right here in San José. This was not your ordinary ladies retreat. This was one whose focus was ministering to missionary women. A team of 16 ladies representing two churches, one in Oklahoma and the other in Arkansas, lavished us with gifts from the states (i.e. chocolate, baking pecans, lotion, etc.), but most of all, they lavished us with their love and prayers. Each of the guest speakers had wonderful testimonies of God’s grace, some even testimonies of salvation in their mid-to-late thirties. The keynote speaker, Marsha Ford, was a former IMB missionary herself. Scott and I attended orientation in Richmond, VA with her son and daughter-in-law who are serving in a country very closed to the Gospel. It really is a small world after all.
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Going to the Market
By Scott & Sherry | February 3, 2008
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One of the perks of living in Central America is the existence of the farmer’s market. Yes, I know, they have these in the states as well, but here, it is a way of life. It is a very common sight to see people walking a mile or two, pulling their carts behind them, to purchase their weekly supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Yes, they do have grocery stores here, but it is much more expensive to buy produce there and it is not as fresh.
Fortunately for us, we ride with another missionary who has a van. Every other Sunday morning, Mark picks us up at 6:45 a.m. so we can arrive at the market by 7 a.m. We spend about an hour gathering the produce that will last us for two weeks and then we go home and get ready for church. It’s a small sacrifice to get up early on one of the two days we could actually “sleep in”, but for us, it is worth it (okay, Scott probably doesn’t share that sentiment!).
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Housesitting
By Scott & Sherry | January 27, 2008
This week we said goodbye to our Tico host family and moved into a house that we will be caring for the next four weeks while its owners are on vacation. This means several things: 1. We’ll have a little less rice and beans. 2. We’ll be closer to the school and, 3. We’ll be doing all of the shopping and cooking!
To give you a taste of what this means, we spent 3 ½ hours in the grocery store trying to find all of the items we would need to eat for the month. That was 3 ½ hours with my grocery list already made! Since we don’t have a car to drive to the store to get whatever we need, it becomes necessary to plan for several weeks worth of meals so long bus rides with lots of groceries are held to a minimum. Stayed tuned to read about our trip to the market on Sunday mornings!
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Classes
By Scott & Sherry | January 20, 2008
This week begins our third week of classes and things are starting to pick up. In the beginning, the teachers have gone easy on us, but now, the material is getting more complicated and we are spending three to six hours per day doing homework and studying. Don’t get me wrong, we have a good time in class, most times because one of us has said something REALLY wrong (grammatically) and it happens to be very funny. We also have teachers who have great personalities and like to have a good time. Below is a video that one of our classmates took that gives a little snippet of what class is like.
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Scott Preaches
By Scott & Sherry | January 13, 2008
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A few weeks ago, our pastor, Jonathan asked Scott to preach on the second Sunday of January. So, with the intensity that is Scott, he put much study and practice into the task of preparing for this message. Scott read the text of his message (2 Timothy 1:1-9) and gave the introduction, all in Spanish! Everyone raved about how good his Spanish was. To interpret the rest of the message was Carlos, Pastor Jonathan’s son, who has a real charisma for interpreting, as you may be able to see from the photo. From start to finish, the message lasted 46 minutes and church ended just after noon, which made everyone happy. Things really aren’t that different here, are they?
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Orientation & First Day of Classes
By Scott & Sherry | January 6, 2008
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With the time for relaxation behind us, we now look forward to what lies ahead at language school. Our experience began with 4 days of orientation, most of which we knew or had already experienced because of our time spent in barefoot (October thru December). One day was spent being tested to find out where we should be placed as far as our level of Spanish. We took a written grammar test and a verbal one-on-one test with a teacher. Scott and I placed at the same level, which was not a surprise to us. We have different teachers for conversation and phonetics, but are in the same grammar classes (2 hours long). Classes start at 7:30 a.m. and finish up at 1 p.m. with a couple of breaks in between. This trimester there are 144 students, 62 of them new. The photo above shows all of the “freshmen”. Stay tuned for a future post that will show some video footage of our classroom experience. ¡Adiós!
Please take 10 seconds to pray for us to be intentional in practicing what we’ve learned with Spanish speakers.
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Trip to Nicaragua
By Scott & Sherry | December 31, 2007
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After a 4 hour bus ride back to San José, we spent the night and woke up really early the next morning to catch a bus to Granada, Nicaragua. Granada is famous for its original colonial architecture and is located about an hour south of the capitol of Nicaragua, Managua. This city is home to several volcanoes, two of which we visited. The first was called Masaya. It is an active volcano and as you can see from some of the pictures, the sulfur rising from it was pretty thick! So thick that is was burning our throats!
Our second volcano tour was to Mombacho, an inactive volcano. There we took a canopy tour through the forest. For those of you who don’t know what a canopy tour is, take a look at our video…we had a blast!
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Our Trip to Quepos & Manuel Antonio Park
By Scott & Sherry | December 25, 2007
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Now that we have a break from our language training classes until January 3rd, we decided to take some time to travel to see some of the more beautiful parts of Costa Rica. Our travels took us to the west coast, or the Pacific, where there is abundant wildlife and beautiful beaches. We spent two days snorkeling and one day, Christmas Day, in the jungle.
Our first day, we took a catamaran tour which allowed us to see dolphins in their natural habitat jumping out of the water to catch their dinner. It was very exciting and we were able to capture video of it. Also, in the jungle we saw seven monkeys converging on the beach to try to steal the visitor’s personal items! They too were “catching” their dinner! Take a look at this little guy who managed to help himself to a tourist’s snack!
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