Week 10 Update

Dan here:

You may have noticed these past two weeks that our updates have not been coming out on our normal Sunday night schedule. We apologize for this and hope to be back on schedule this coming weekend. Life, as it does, got away from us for a bit.

This past week has been much fun and we are constantly amazed and thankful for the blessings in our lives. We are privileged to serve in a fantastic ministry with amazing staff members and friends. We are blessed with an amazingly beautiful world filled with fun people with whom we get to enjoy life.

This past week we had the opportunity to spend time with our dear friends Veronica and Carolina (fierce competitors in game night - alas, never the victors). Carolina and Veronica are patiently teaching us Spanish in between their losing game sessions...

Carolina and Veronica - Game night

We also enjoyed an evening with our long time friends Robert & Maria. There is never a dull moment when these two are around.

More of our favorite people in Costa Rica are the Campos family who came over to our house one evening for dinner and games. We met the Campos family when leading an English class here several years ago and instantly fell in love with them.

We continue to serve in our various roles throughout the ministry as well. But this weekend was our once a month weekend of travel and rest. We timed this weekend well in that we were trying to pick a weekend in the rainy season near a new moon so that we could visit the northwestern peninsula of Costa Rica called the Nicoya peninsula. On this peninsula there is a protected turtle nesting beach called Playa Ostional where millions of turtles come to lay their eggs. We were fortunate enough to see one of these “Arribadas” which has been a life-long dream of Karen’s (not going to lie - I was enjoying finally getting to use my 4 wheel drive as much as seeing the turtles). The area where we stayed was quite remote and the roads were barely passable with a good 4-wheel drive vehicle (we had to cross a few streams and a few ponds in the road). But seeing the turtles struggle onto the beach, lay their eggs and struggle back to the ocean was amazing and made the trip worth it. Over 20,000 turtles nested that evening (the before and after views of the beach were amazing. All those turtle tracks turned the beach from smooth sand to a trampled mess). We also found a beautiful B&B near the beach to rest and relax for the rest of the long weekend.

Our evening with the turtles

Here is a google story of the turtles: https://goo.gl/photos/X2umRWY8jxebzEkY8

And here is a Facebook album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153699918392287&type=1&l=a4c5c32fcd

Our view from the B&B - look close - there are monkeys in the trees!

Karen found her happy place

The beach near the B&B

It was almost completely deserted - just the way we like it!

This really is an amazing world in which we live.

Interesting tidbit - even though we live in a tropical country with an extremely abundant rainy season (normally) we are now under water restrictions here in the San Jose valley.  Yep, every once in a while, for no apparent reason, they shut off the water at our house for 4-6 hours.   Actually, we are lucky.  Our friends that live up the mountain (Robert & Maria) lose water several times a week for 12 hours a day.  We try to avoid them on those days as we imagine they will be fairly grumpy...

Prayer focus:
Karen and I start teaching English class this week. Please pray for wisdom as we lead these folks in learning and special blessing as we develop new relationships and new discipleship opportunities.