New Beginnings

Our first band practice  

 I am super excited about all of the new doors God has been opening for us this week.  For starters like I said, my brother and I are heading up the new youth band for the youth group that meets on Saturday nights.  Tonight was our FIRST band practice and let me tell you it was VERY interesting.  I decided that it was best for me to take the vocalists and work with them separately while my brother worked with the band.  I am SO thankful for my experience at Church by the Glades working with Amy Evans and Jade vocally because I feel like I learned A LOT from the view times I was able to learn from them.  I tried my BEST speaking in Spanish.  I noticed I used a lot of hand motions when I wasn't able to remember how to say a word.  I didn't know the word for "Blend'' as in blending vocally, but they helped me figure out that I could say unidos or igual.  I really enjoyed my time with the girl.  There were three female vocalists: Karen, Kimberly and Fabiola.  They actually did an excellent job listening to my suggestions in my BROKEN Spanish, I was very grateful for their patience with me!

Volunteer Opportunities

I spoke with the director of the school this week, Hector, and he was very excited to speak with me about more opportunities for me to serve here in the community.  That morning I spent some time with the Lord and I am also reading this book called "Crazy Love'' I recommend that everyone should read this book.. it is truly eye-opening and life changing.  Well needless to say from my time with the Lord I felt compelled to act and be proactive toward coming up with ideas to reach out to the community surrounding the church.  Last Sunday I had a lot of opportunity to just be observant, and what I saw was a LOT of people walking in the opposite direction than the church, and a lot of people attending the local Catholic church, and many  more people not attending church at all.  I also noticed an abundance of runners, walkers and mountain bikers out on Sunday.  Many people here seem to be into fitness and physical activity.  That gave me a great ideas for future events at the mission for outreach.... and it involves a certain someone who knows how to teach Zumba ;)    Some other ideas that I discussed with Hector was starting a Bible study for the CISA students and any other person that is interested in coming, but the Bible study will be in English.  We have church each Sunday and a Thursday Bible class that is all in Spanish, and although it is a great challenge for us to hear and understand the language, I'm finding it difficult to truly receive the Word when I can only understand a few words here and there.  Hector said he thought it was an excellent idea.  My hopes in starting this Bible study is to get to know the other students better spiritually, to grow in unity as a school, to grow in prayer for our community and as a support to each other and to offer locals an opportunity to communicate with us in English.  I'm noticing there is a handful of local students here that have very good comprehension of English but can not speak in English.  So we are able to communicate pretty well in ''Spanglish"' for now :) Finally, Hector asked that I get involved with the youth group activities and to possibly disciple one of the girls here. I feel so humbled and so thankful that God is opening these doors for me.  I am just so excited to get more involved while being challenged to speak Spanish!  I love it!

Making new friends

So I am becoming better acquainted with some of the locals here, mainly the family members of my host family.  Well they are also getting better acquainted with me.... and especially with my fear of BUGS.  Its a running joke here, and most of my host mother's grandsons try to scare me by picking a stick or a rock and tossing it near me while yelling "cucaracha!" They just LOVE my reaction and CRACK UP when they see me jump and scream almost every time it happens!  The latest hilarious prank done to me was by Juan-Gabriel.  Yesterday he told me that he had a few gifts for me!  Of course my first reaction was to say "I better not be BUGS!''  He laughed and said, ''No.. no''  So when he returned from his house, he had his gift behind his back and said, "Tengo un regalo para usted!" and showed me THIS....

Que asco!!!!

I RAN straight to my room screaming!!  SOOO digusting!  But I must say I laughed pretty hard that he went through all that trouble to catch and kill those monsters! 

Mejor Salud :)

Praise the Lord, EVERYONE is finally feeling MUCH MUCH better including baby Jaden.  He hasn't been sick since he began taking his medicine and you can definitely tell by his attitude that he is feeling much better

 :)

Jaden back to his old silly self again :) 

Jaden LOVES to be in control (wonder where he got that from lol)

Mis Clases 

School has been going very well still.  I am starting to feel overwhelmed by how much I still don't know and how much I NEED to know.  In one week, I acquire over 200 verbs that I need to memorize.  Its hard enough conjugating them, but its even more difficult for me to remember what they MEAN.  On top of that I have at least five pages full of vocabulary terms that I also need to memorize.  I need some SERIOUS prayer for this, because memorization is NOT my forte.  I struggle with memorizing song lyrics!  Please be praying that God will supernaturally enable me to remember these words and that I will challenge myself to use a least two new verbs and vocab words each day in conversation.  That is how I learn best... having opportunities to participate in natural conversation with locals.  I don't do as well in the classroom setting but I am definitely trying my best!  Today and every Thursday we have culture class, since I was in the hospital last week I didn't have the opportunity to do the research... so I am very thankful to my brother for doing all the work for us :)  Deanna did a great job speaking in Spanish during her presentation, however, next week, NONE of us are allowed to read :/  We are pretty nervous about that!  

Deanna giving her presentation sobre los Chinos en Costa Rica

The students, and teacher intently listening :) and me ...taking a picture of them listening as usual  (tengo a.d.d)

I really enjoyed class today though, we did a lot more talking than usual and I found myself talking a lot more than I normally do.  We are learning about future tense which I find rather easy and enjoyable to talk in.  Today we had to talk about our plans for the future....

Finalmente

Pienso que cuando yo regreso a los Estados Unidos voy a cambiar mi casa (PIENSO) a la casa de mi hermana, porque quiero vivir con ella.  También, creo que voy a ser una niñera para su hijo :) No puedo esperar! No se los planes de Dios, pero mi confianza está siempre en Dios!  Amen!