Tuesday Bible Studies

kids playing

Karla and Davíd

Andrea and her kids

Suzanne holding David


I (Heather) have had a wonderful opportunity to get involved in a Bible Study on Tuesday afternoons. It originally started as an outreach to young pregnant ladies--but has evolved to include moms with small kids. We've had a small but committed group of ladies the last few weeks and it has been a blessing and an encouragement to study the book of Luke together. Many of the ladies come from very religious, mostly Catholic backgrounds--but they have never really had the opportunity to study the Bible. A small group of students from the Language Institute take turns leading the study and watching the kids which has been great Spanish practice. But we are all thankful that the word of God and the Holy Spirit can have an impact despite our less-than-perfect spanish.

Culture Day

So, I'm a little behind on my blogging. These pictures were taken on October 12--Columbus Day. This is a celebrated holiday here in Costa Rica--remembering when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered the Americas in 1492. (Anybody remember the little rhyme?=) Anyways, at the school Columbus Day has transformed into a World Cultures Day and each class in both the Language Institute and in Sojourn Academy was assigned to a country. We had to put on a display for each country--sharing information about the country, sharing food from the country and dressing in the colors or national wear of the country.
Can you tell what each of our countries was?
Mine was Costa Rica and my grammar teacher had this great dress for me to borrow for the day. What fun! She even taught me a few dance moves.
Sydney's class had Malawi--so we were able to use our chitenje and help provide information for her class. But no nsima.
Lastly, Sam's class had USA. Thus the red, white and blue clothing.
It was a fun celebration of all of the cultures and people of the world--and a reminder of the great diversity of people God has made--all for whom Christ came and died.

Iglesia (Church)

Displaying the traditional dress--aren't they pretty!

We have been blessed to find a small church that meets just around the corner from our house. Friends of ours from school are involved there and invited us to join them. It is a small congregation--about 50 people or so. Although all of the service is in spanish--the praise songs are often translated from the english, so even if we don't understand all the works--we at least know the general message.

Last week, in honor of Independence Day, everyone dressed in traditional Costa Rican dress--or Costa Rican colors (red, white, blue). A few people even performed a traditional dance.

Sydney and Kendyll ( a friend from school)

La Paz park

Last Tuesday was a national holiday in Costa Rica, celebrating its independence. We took advantage of the beautiful and hot day, by walking to a nearby park with a big hill in the center. As you can see, there is a different kind of sledding done at this park.

Sorry, this first video, you may get a bit sea sick--since I forget that a video camera can't take a vertical picture like the camera can.

The kids were both a bit tired and you may see the beginning of some outbursts at the end of the videos. But they both pulled it together and we enjoyed the day--flying kites, sliding and picnicking--with another family from school. Hope you enjoy my first attempts at uploading video. I'm so not tech-ie.

Mike and Heather's First Week of School

Mike and I have officially finished our first week of school and it's been a whirlwind. At times we think we are making such great progress and other days we are ready to pack our bags and go home because we don't understand anything. Please pray for endurance, patience with our language learning, each other and the kids, and for continued good health.

Mike and I are in different classes. We each have a class of 4 students--yes, four!! It's a great teacher-student ratio. We spend 1 hour in language class, 2 hours in grammar class, and 1 hour in phonetics class each day. We are hopefully going to get into a routine with our schedule and the kids schedule, sometime soon--but we are still struggling to figure out when all of us should be doing our homework. Thanks for the prayers.

First day of school

It was the kids first day of school on Monday, the 31st. Fortunately, they were already familiar with the school as they attended camp there this summer. They did awesome considering it was their 3rd school, in 3 years, in 3 different countries!

Sam is in 1st grade. He has 16 kids in his class and a seemingly wonderful, experienced teacher.

Sydney is in 2nd grade now. Her class is the largest in the school with 24 kids. She has two teachers--one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Their core classes--reading, writing, math--are taught in English. They have a spanish class every day. And their music class and PE are also taught in Spanish. They are both starting to pick up a little spanish and repeat things they've heard even if they don't understand what they are saying. But it is a challenge for them--it seems their first question when we are going to do anything new, or meet someone new is..."Do they speak spanish or english?"

Heather and Mike had their first day of school today. But sorry--no pictures with our backpacks for you =)

Walk to school

Here are some pictures of our neighborhood and our walk to school. The walls, gates and bars on the windows are already familiar to us after living in Malawi. And just like Malawi--the tropical trees and plants are beautiful! Here in San José, we have the added beauty of the mountains surrounding the city.

As I mentioned in the last blog--we have to be on the watch for "gringo-catchers". For some reason the tops to manholes and the grates on storm drains are hot-commodities and if you are not careful when you are walking, you could disappear down one of the holes. This is no laughing matter as a previous student apparently fell in one and broke both his legs.