Spiritual blessings surrounded by chaos

Things have been lets just say an adventure this past few weeks.

I am having a bunch of the friends over for dinner after a long service day. I have just enough time so everything will be ready right before they arrive. I am using the top of the stove and was about to throw the dessert into the oven when I started to smell plastic burning. I didn't realize where it was exactly coming from so I was checking in the oven when I started to see sparks fly. The wires in the back of the oven were on fire. I yelled for Brian and he was able to shut the power off to the oven.  Not what you want to happen when you have people coming over for dinner in less then 30mins. Let's just say we had no dessert. It turned out to be a lovely evening and funny thing is people were just like ohh your oven caught in fire no big deal at all. You get use to stuff always happening to you eventually I guess.

Our assemblies are held in San Jose which is about a 5 hour trip from where we live. We had two other brothers riding with us. We headed out early just in case we had car problems that others would be behind us. The trip starts out well but at one point we missed a turn so we pulled over to look at the map. Brian hops out to check the car and see oil leaking. Great!!! We realize a battery ground cable had been rubbing against our oil filter which created a tiny whole in it. We didn't have much with us and we were no where near stores so we got creative. One of the brothers had band aids with him. So two band aids later we were back on the road until we found an oil change place. An hour later we are back heading to San Jose. After driving awhile Brian keeps pumping his clutch which we all notice and then says the clutch is gone. At this point I am thinking are you kidding me what else can happen to us. We pull over realize a spring is not working but once again we are near nothing. Brian gets the car started without a clutch and makes it into third gear eventually. But now all we have is third gear. We are backing up traffic. Finally there is room to pull over but one cars keeps following us. It's our friends from our hall. We pull over at a spot but now the car wont start without the clutch. Doing it earlier ruined the starter so the guys push us down a hill and we coast into a mechanic shop. I think Jehovah was really looking out for us.  They fixed the clutch but not the starter so we push started it and finally roll into our hotel over 8 hrs from when we left. After all that, we were really looking forward to assembly. It was a beautiful program and was just what we needed. We met so many awesome need greater couples who understood exactly what it took us to be there because at some point it had been them. In San Jose we went to Starbucks, a movie, a mall, and price mart which is like a costco. It felt like home :) our trip home was smooth with no problems at all.

Memorial is something we all look forward to and you want to dress up for the occasion. As we are getting ready I see some ants in our bathroom. I kill them but see more so I go get the ant killer spray. When I walk back into the bathroom with it I see hundreds of red flying ants crawling out of our ceiling. Then we notice they spread to our bedroom too. They are crawling and flying everywhere. Ewwwwww!!! Lots of ant killer spray and realizing they like light we were able to get rid of them. Now it was a mad dash to get ready for memorial. We had about 10 interested ones come. Many it was there first meeting ever and two said they want to come more often. We had 45 in attendance. We have just 14 publisher cards now but we still have a few visitors here until the end of the month.

Jehovah had blessed us in many ways and just when we feel like we have had enough we see him take care if us.

Our new house, the porch is my favorite part

The Good, The Bad and The Funny

THE GOOD

Bioluminescent Waves- This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life. One evening we were at one of the beaches watching the sunset and having a fire when the waves started to glow and light up bright blue as they were crashing. We had seen it before at this beach but tonight was extra bright. The four of us jumped in the water and every where you would walk or splash it would be sparkles of glowing blue. You could throw water on each and your whole body would look like it was splashed with glitter. As you ran your hand through the water it would leave streak of shimmering bright blue. I couldn't get enough of it. Seriously one of the most unique things I have ever seen before.

What causes this? Marine microbes called phytoplankton cause the waves to light up bright blue.When the ocean is full of these bioluminescent phytoplankton the result is a glowing blue ocean.

So I didn't take this picture but this is what it looked like. This one was taken in Costa Rica.

Pig Roast Good-bye Party- We were very sad for 4 our congregation members to leave. The two couples have been here for 3 years and have did so much for the congregation. We are going to miss them a lot. But I put this in the good section because we had such a fun party for them. One of the brothers decided to roast a pig. We also created a fun little photo booth with props for the party. The party was at the beach so a lot of us went surfing, watched sunset, ate amazing pig, did the photo booth and ended the night with a bon fire. It was a good party :)

 

THE BAD

So Brian and I came up with a term when we have a really bad day. We just say ohh it is a Costa Rican day. And we have had our fare share where just everything goes wrong. Usually the days involve our car somehow too. Here is one story and I will share the other car related one later.

I'm a Mechanic= We modified our back seat of our car to be more comfortable for service but we when we did it we needed to get a piece of metal welded. We dropped it off in service and left it with a guy that did welding. When we came back to pick up our car it was ready. We pay the guy way more then we should have but we understand we are gringo and are going to get ripped off especially when we don't speak the language well. So we were fine with paying the extra. Right before we leave the welder tells us he is also a mechanic. We thought that was a bit odd but we told him we have a friend who is a Jehovah's Witness who is a mechanic that we use. As we start to drive home we notice that our hood had been popped. And I guess for welding they have to disconnect the battery sometimes so we are like okay. But then the car starts riding really rough so we pull over and Brian pops the hood and checks the engine. Everything looks fine but then he decides I should check the oil. As he checks it he sees that is almost empty. Interesting thing was we had been to our mechanic two days earlier and had everything checked on the car including the oil. 3 quarts later of oil we finally had the right amount in our car. Thank goodness a brother drove by and stopped and took us to the gas station to get oil. It was a very close call to our engine seizing up. It could have been so bad. And honestly it made us so aggravated that someone would drain our oil all so he could get more business from us.

THE FUNNY

Heard of Cows- It is 4 AM and I am sound asleep when I am woken up by what sounds like a herd of cows right outside our window. I wake Brian up asking what is that outside. He sits up, looks out the window and says ohh it is just a bunch of cows and then falls back asleep. So this time I look out the window and yup a huge herd of cows is running through our porch right next to our window. Then I see a cowboy herding them with a flash light. Now that I understood what the commotion was I just fell back asleep too. In the morning both Brian and I were like did that really happen last night, did a herd of cows really run right by our window.

Locust- One meeting we were all paying attention when we hear a bang and then a few girls squeal. I guess one of the huge locust hit the fan and it shot the locust against the back wall right next to where they were. Reminds me of the days in when I was in Huacas congregation. It use to happen all the tie at that hall.

Miss you all! Here is one from memorial campaign

Pictures

Sorry for not posting anything for awhile. Here are a few pictures of the last month.

 

Our traffic jams in service

A huge bug that looked like a leaf we saw in service

The roads are super rough in service. Here is a video from the back seat of our car. We just lowered the backseat and moved it forward so now it isn't as bumpy as it use to be.

 

 

Our neighbors decided to start a huge fire in our backyard right next to this huge pile of logs that is next to our house. People are constantly burning things here. There are always little fires alongside the roads. I am surprised it doesn't turn into more forest fires with how dry it is right now.

 

Brian modifying "Jimmy" and me enjoying the hammock watching him

 

 

Trimming Brian's hair until he could get a real hair cut. It actually turned out pretty good. Got us through a couple more meeting until he could find some to cut it for real.

 

 

Congregation picture with tons of visitors. Brian was outside during the picture so it looks like I am married to someone else and have a child. LOL!

 

 

A few pictures of inside our house. Our kitchen

 

Living room

 

Our bedroom

 

In April we are moving to a new house just down the street. It has a lot more privacy (ya no more neighbors, chickens and dogs walking right by our door and windows) and is a lot better for having people over. We are pretty excited to upgrade :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Service Adventures- Sometimes you just have to make due

Today was an adventure in service. After picking up two people from a car that broke down we headed up to do some mapping territory. However as we were driving, our throttle cable kept getting stuck. After realizing it couldn't be fixed and needing to drive 20 minutes to the nearest mechanic, Brian got creative and realized that he could tie his shoelace to the throttle and control the gas with his hand. So off we went to Nicoya to get it fixed. We were able to do some calls in Nicoya so it wasn't a ruined day of service.

 Our new car (this one with way better gas mileage) has official earned the name "Jimmy", due to the fact it had to be jimmy rigged to make it to Nicoya. And they didn't have the part we needed in stock so the mechanic jimmy rigged it with a bicycle break cable as our throttle cable until it could be fixed correctly.

Let the service adventures begin!!!!

The days are getting hotter

It feels like each day is getting hotter and hotter outside. The temps have been in the high 90s this week. Which makes a 6 hour service day seem like a 10 hour service day at home. It is only going to get hotter too up until May when rainy season will start.

 

Both Brian and I got a few calls this week in service. It is really hard from having lots of calls and a study to starting at scratch. But slowly we will build up our call base. In this area it really feels like you have to take a different approach to service. At home you need to tell people why you are there within the first 10 seconds. Here you have to chat a bit and then get into the truth. The CO encouraged us to become people's friends then slowly bring in the truth. Both Brian and I wanted to work on our informal witnessing so this has been perfect for that. One afternoon after territory we decided we would just go into the town and make conversation with people. It is a bit awkward at first but you slowly get the hang of it. We met this really nice girl at a fruit stand. She grew up in the States and Germany. She asked what type of volunteer work we were doing down here and we were able to give her a really nice witness. Only thing was someone had talked to her earlier and already left her something to read. Guess everyone in our hall is trying to put informal witnessing into practice :)

 

We have a huge mango tree in our yard that hangs over part of our house. So at first I thought how cool is this we have a mango tree in our yard. However when the mango are constantly falling on your tin roof it is not so cool I decided. Thru out the day and night you will hear a huge bang that will make you jump. Not sure I will ever get use to that one. I think I will be pretty excited when mango season is over.

Here is the beach that is a 5 minute walk from our house.

 

 

 

 

Brian's new favorite study spot.

It is never quiet at our house. We have our neighbors chickens and dogs which think they live at our house, monkeys that are constantly howling, horse tours going down our road, cows on the road, men selling fruit super early in the morning and a lot of random people that like to walk thru our yard. We also have a 3 foot iguana that keeps visiting too. Brian likes to refer to it as Godzilla. I don't think I have ever seen an iguana so big before. Here is a picture but it is hard to show how big he is. His tail goes out of the picture.

 

 

And  a pretty sunset to end this post

 

 

Our First Week

We are here!!! I can't believe it has already been a week. We are in our home and getting all settled in which is really nice. The day we arrived we were able to buy a car which actually went really good. Buying a car here in Costa Rica can be a really big stress. Since you have to pay a lot more for not as nice of a car and you have to go through a lawyer to buy it. But we found a decent Montero with 4 wheel drive which is needed for the roads around here. We spent one day in San Jose before making the 4 1/2 hour drive out to Huacas where I use to live. As soon as we left the city our check engine light came on. The car seemed to be running good. But it still made for a very stressful drive, along with the already crazy driving here in Costa Rica.  We have already seen two roll over accidents and a semi that back end was jack knifing but somehow he saved it.  Our check engine light now goes on and off now when we hit bumps. One of the local brothers was like ohh cars always have that light on.   It was so nice to get to see all my old friends and make some news ones as well. Were able to spend two days  in ministry. We got to do witnessing with the cart for the first time in one of the tourist towns close by. Which was cool since our hall at home didn't have one yet.

On Saturday we made the almost 2 hour trip to our new home. After getting a little lost we found the kingdom hall. Everyone was there doing hall cleaning so it was a perfect time to meet everyone and jump right into helping. Our hall has about 30 people in it right now but only 16 of those are more permanent (that's including us). They have 2 elders and Brian will make 3. At our first meeting Brian was asked to do the public talk in 2 weeks, bible highlights tonight for CO visit, me a talk in a week and both of us an interview tonight. Its nice to hit the ground running.

Sunday one of the couples in the hall did a big super bowl party. There were 8 people from Seattle so we were pretty exciting since the Seahawks won!!!! There were some funny moments with bugs after the game ended. This brother who they were calling the "bug whisper" caught a Chinese cockroach which is basically a huge cockroach. He tied a string around it and walking it around like a little dog. We couldn't stop cracking up. Then they also found a tarantula spider. Some were even holding it. But definitely not us!!!

 

 

The last few nights we have been hearing the howler monkeys. Poor Brian didn't know what it was at first. But when I woke up I was like "ohh we have monkeys here." He is like those are monkeys!!! Howler monkeys sound a little bit like lions, hence how they got there name. We saw a bunch of them hanging out in the tree this morning. It was super cool, even some little baby ones.

We have a basic two bedroom tico style house. It has all the basics and all we really need. I am still getting use to the cold showers, which hopefully I will eventually. I figured out the best time to shower is mid day when it is so hot outside that the cold water actually feels good. There is a mango tree right outside our door and some banana trees so I can't wait until they are ripe.

Our Casa- Our car is so dirty

We live about 10 to 15 minutes outside of Samara and in order to get here we have to cross a river and all the roads are dirt. However once rainy season starts we will have to drive around since the river will be too high which can take 45 minutes just to get to the small town.  We heard everyday in service is 4x4ing. The bad part of that is it takes a toll on all the cars. They constantly are having problems. So I am sure we will have lots of stories in the future.

 

This week is CO week so it will be busy and it will be nice to get out in the ministry here in our territory. Let the adventure begin!!!