Macaroni & Cheese

We feel that we have done pretty well with adjusting to the food here in Costa Rica. The local fare is quite good and we have learned to prepare several Tico dishes – In fact, they have become a regular in our weekly menu. We do still eat a lot of the same foods that we ate in the states with some variations. While many US food products are available here, they usually come at a cost. For example, Ticos aren’t big on sweets. Therefore, if we want chocolate chip cookies, we pay $4.00 per bag and enjoy them greatly! One of the major changes that we have had to make is in the quantity of cheese that we consume. Ginnie in particular, is a self-described “Rat”. There aren’t too many cheeses that she won’t eat. The problem is that Ticos don’t eat much cheese either, and therefore it is expensive. They do have a cheese here that is produced locally, which is quite good and we eat it regularly. The problem with it is that it doesn’t melt. For the most part, we have been satisfied with local products. They differ slightly, but are much more economical and suffice just fine. It’s a great way to save money and also learn about the local culture.
The problem comes with the fact that we love Macaroni & Cheese. In the states, it was a regular on the menu. Here it hasn’t been. Although we can find most products from the states in one store or another, we have not yet found Velveeta. We did make it once with cheddar, and it was delicious – But it just wasn’t the same. On top of that, we nearly had to take out a loan to buy the cheese.
This week things changed! Last Friday we received a box in the mail. It was from my parents and sister in Michigan. They had it packed with all kinds of goodies, but the best surprise was enough Velveeta brand processed cheese food to make 4 batches of Mac & Cheese!
So today, we indulged after school on batch number one. The good news is that there is enough left for us to eat leftovers tomorrow! The box also contained chocolate chips and butterscotch chips, so I guess that our calendar has just filled up for the weekend.

Hellos and Goodbyes

This week has been one of goodbyes and hellos. We greeted the new students who have arrived to begin school, and have said goodbye to those who are leaving. Very similar to our time in the Navy, our time preparing for the mission field has been one of nearly-constant hellos and goodbyes. Last evening, we said goodbye to our friends Billy and Laurie Drum. We met them last summer when we were in Colorado for school. They preceded us here in Costa Rica by one trimester and sponsored us when we arrived. They found us a great place to live, made sure that we were picked up at the airport, and even left food in our cupboards! They dragged us around town and showed us where things are and helped to get us settled in. They have been good friends and we will miss them greatly.

The best part though is that we will have the opportunity to see them again – and soon! They are going to spend a month in the states before heading off to Peru. They will be working with The Mission Society in Huancayo Peru. We thank the Lord for bringing Billy, Laurie, Ryan, Miles and Sarah into our lives and we ask you to pray with us for them as they take this next step in their journey.

Back to the Books

We had one day off after returning from Peru before we were back to language school. This trimester seems to be starting a little quicker than the last one. In January we were eased into the environment. Now it is coming through the firehose! The structure is a bit different this time as well. Last trimester, we had one hour of phonetics, one hour of language (conversation) and two hours of grammar. We are done with the phonetics now, and have two hours of language and two hours of grammar each day. Our language classes are separate again, but the two classes join together for grammar. We really enjoy the fact that we are at the same level (most couples aren’t). This allows us to study together and help each other along. Our teachers are great again (I don’t think that this school has any bad teachers) and we hope will take us to the next level.

We have been complaining that our language isn’t coming along as quickly as we would like, but we were encouraged while in Peru that we were able to communicate with Spanish speakers without too much difficulty. Something must be sticking!

Peru Trip

We are back to Costa Rica from a whirl-wind trip to Peru. Forgive me for being verbose in this blog entry, but there is lots to write about. Our schedule didn’t allow for us to spend as much time there as we would have liked, but we were able to see some of what Susan Holowecky has been doing there and meet some of the folks that she is working with. Since arriving in Peru 8 years ago, Susan has been working with the Chayahuita people in the Yurimaguas area. The Chayahuita live in the numerous villages that line several rivers in the surrounding area. Susan has several ministries that she is involved with there, but there are two that she spends the majority of her efforts on – The Hogar and the Finca.

The Hogar (or “Home” in Castellano or Spanish) is a facility in Yurimaguas that was founded by Susan as a temporary home for women who are in high-risk pregnancies. It is a place for them to stay, while being attended to by the local hospital. At the most basic level, the facility is there to help reduce the mortality rate of these women, so that they can remain in their communities nurturing their families. Of course there is much more to it than that. Susan and her staff are doing incredible things to help these women in numerous ways and have fostered relationships with the civil, religious and medical communities that have far-reaching effects within the community. The women who come to the Hogar usually bring other children with them, and this gives the staff the opportunity to care for their many needs as well. Many suffer from malnutrition, dysentery and other maladies that relate to the conditions that they live in. Additionally, the Hogar has become a semi-permanent home to several children whose parents are no longer willing or able to care for them.

The Finca (or “farm” in Castellano) is a working 100 acre farm, 14 kilometers from Yurimaguas where the staff is building a model farm, in order to teach young Chayahuita men basic farming methods, with hopes that they will take these methods back to their villages. The Chayahuitas are traditional hunter-gatherers, who unfortunately have outgrown and over-farmed their land and haven’t rotated crops in order to renew the needed nutrients, Like so many in this part of the world, they have resorted to the “slash and burn” method of land clearing. The result is poorer health and shorter, less fulfilled lives. The farm introduces them to other options, which will help them to be more self-sufficient in the future.

During our short stay, we were able to lend a hand at both the Hogar and the Finca with projects and day-to-day care. We met with the Peruvian staff members whom Susan works alongside and were able to learn from them, the vision that they have for the people who they serve in the area. Like so many places in this part of the world, there is more need than there are people to meet those needs and these folks are putting all that they have into their work.

After 4 days in Yurimaguas, we got a lift back to Tarapoto (120 kilometers or 72 miles) and spent some time with Mary and Vidal Arevalo, who are also MVI missionaries. They have a ministry in Tarapoto, where they train carpentry to at-risk young men. They have a 12 month program where they teach the fundamentals of construction and carpentry in order to give these guys a trade and a second chance at a decent life. While we were there, they were also hosting a team of ladies with Threads of Hope from Canada who were holding a sewing workshop with local women (some who flew up from Lima when we did). They gave them instruction on some basic sewing skills, with the intent that these ladies will take those skills and train others in their communities. We saw some of their work and were very impressed!

Next we flew back to Lima for one more overnight – (Is it becoming obvious that the majority of our time was spent traveling?) In Lima, we were met by Pastor Alex, a Peruvian pastor who is partnering with MVI. He picked us up at the airport and got us settled into our room for the night. On both ends of our trip through Lima, we stayed at a Guest House run by the South America Mission (SAM). It’s a great facility near the airport that is there for their missionaries who are traveling through, and was offered up to us as an inexpensive and safe place to stay. Since we had a late flight the following day, Pastor Alex picked us up in the morning and took us to see some of the things that he is doing in Lima. He showed us around the city, made a quick stop by a shopping district for some local flavor, and then drove into some of the poorer villages that he ministers to. He has several churches that he pastors, directs or oversees, and two that he preaches at on a regular basis. We had planned to attend one of his services, but the timing wasn’t the best, so we had him drop us at the airport early, so that he could rest and prepare for the services.

The trip was a great opportunity for us to see the ministry opportunities in Peru. Before we left, we talked with Susan about how we can fit into what she is doing and agreed that we will return after language school. The agreement is that we will intern with her for 12 months, and then see where the future leads after that. During those 12 months, we will work alongside her and learn from her, and also help her with whatever we can. She is one person doing the work of 4, so it should be a great help to her as well.

Fin del Trimestre & Onward to Peru

Wow! The past four months have flown by, but here we are nearing the end of our first trimester here at the Language Institute in Costa Rica. We are amazed at how fast the time has gone by and how much we have been able to accomplish while here. As I wrote earlier, we were able to get quite far along in our grammar lessons. The Spanish language is built around the use of verbs, and the way that you express different tenses (present, past, future, etc.) is through the different conjugations of the verbs. So far, we have been introduced to 6 different conjugations (I think that there are only about 144 more to go). Our Phonetics professors have taught us how to speak without a gringo accent (but we still speak with a gringo accent) and our language teachers have sat through hours of us trying to put sentences together (ensuring that we use the proper conjugations of the verbs). We still have daily frustrations as we try to comprehend what native speakers are saying. We do pretty well as we listen to other gringos speak, but I’m afraid that will do us little good after we leave here. We also struggle with putting the words together into sentences. We have learned that the distance between your brain and your mouth is tremendous. We know the rules for speaking in our brains, but we can’t easily move it to our lips!

Tomorrow we will have our last day in class, and then Friday we will fly onward to Peru. Ironically, we will be flying through Florida, as it is twice the cost to fly direct from here. We are going to spend a day with Ginnie’s Aunt & Uncle before flying from Orlando to Lima on Sunday, where we will meet Susan, the missionary working in Yurimaguas. We will stay in Lima Sunday night, then the three of us will fly to Tarapoto, then drive to Yurimaguas on Monday. Susan will be in Lima to drop a medical team that has been working with her for the past two weeks. I’m sure that she will be exhausted, and we will probably not do much while there, which is OK with us. We hope to get a glimpse of the work that she is doing and get a feel if it will be a good fit for us, once our schooling is completed. Susan is involved with several ministries there including a high-risk maternal health clinic, several church-based feeding centers, and a working farm. She works primarily with the Chayahuitas, who are an indigenous people who live up and down the rivers of the area. We know that it will be an exciting time and we long to see what God is doing there. After a couple of days there, we will reverse the trip. We will fly out of Tarapoto on the 3rd and stay one night before leaving Lima on the 4th for Orlando. The layover in Orlando is minimal and we should be back to San Jose on the 5th – Just in time to begin school again on the 7th. WHEW! A restful break it won’t be, but we know that it will be great. Keep us in your prayers – especially for discernment about our future, and we’ll pass along the latest news on our trip when we return.

Rahab Work Day

Rahab is in the middle of an extensive construction project in San José. They are building a three story facility that will be used for several purposes. It will include offices and classrooms, but will also include some wonderful spaces where the ladies will be able to learn a new trade. There will be an extensive computer lab, a kitchen where they can learn culinary arts, and a sewing lab where they can pick up seamstress skills. The long term plan is to also build a child-care facility on an adjoining piece of land, as well as a storefront where they will build a retail cooperative in which the ladies can learn the skills needed to sell the products that they create.

We took advantage of the long weekend here (Monday was a holiday) and led a group of 10 adults and 6 youth there to spend a few hours working on the site. We did some painting on the third floor, as well as some demolition clean-up on the site. The pile of debris that we worked to clear was huge and had to be sorted through, as much of it is still reusable, and had to be set aside. We looked at it, and suggested putting a match to the whole heap, but the definition of reusable differs here from what it is in the States. A good example was the construction worker who was putting down flooring on the third floor. He was affixing sheets of old corrugated metal roofing to the floor beams, to make a “sub-floor”. Something that we saw as rubbish, he was reutilizing in new construction.

In all, it was a good day, and we enjoyed the opportunity to do some physical labor. On Tuesday it was obvious that we had used muscles that have been idle for a while, as several of us were moving a bit slower than usual.

Cows on Parade

Today we had to go downtown for some shopping and we had a chance to see “The Cows” in San Jose.

CowParade is an international public art exhibit that has been featured in major cities all over the world. Fiberglass sculptures of cows are decorated by local artists, and distributed over the city centre, in public places such as train stations, important avenues, and parks. They often feature artwork and designs specific to local culture, as well as city life and other relevant themes. After the exhibition in the city, which lasts many months, the cows are auctioned off and the proceeds donated to charity. Stolen from Wikipedia.org - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cows_on_Parade

It was fun to see the different designs that were put together by some really talented artists. I have put some photos of a few of the cows on our Photos Page. Although we were in a bit of a rush, and were unable to see them all, we did get to see quite a few. They’ll be on display till August. For a recent write-up go here - http://www.costaricapages.com/blog/costa-rica-news/cow-parade/758