Therefore, we beg you to hit your knees on our behalf.

I realize the word beg might seem like a strong or possibly harsh way of expressing our need, and yet, it is how we feel. If there is one thing that we learned as a team in the last months of 2008, it was probably that prayer is a necessity. When we arrived in Costa Rica as a team, we did not have any clue as to what the months of August through December would bring. In the midst of some fun times, opportunities to meet great, new Christians, and learning a beautiful new language, we experienced attacks from Satan that we had not seen coming. As a team, we have prayed, and we have solicited the help of outsiders. As a result, God has been faithful. In most of our situations, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope, and where we are still struggling to find that hope, we continue to pray for one another. This has been our story.

When we came together to make “Team Lima”, we were aware that our future would hold struggling and strife. After all, isn’t that what the life of a Follower includes? Despite this, we each feel that our ultimate goal of reaching lost souls in Peru is worth these struggles. This is the exact reason that we solicit you all as prayer warriors. We have had moments, and we will continue to have times in which there are some of the 9 of us that feel lost. We might feel like our goal is out of reach. Our passion for Christ might only be at a simmer. We will miss comforts of the home we used to know. Peruvians might disappoint us. Our marriages will be attacked. And the list could go on. Without a group of prayer warriors, we might never make it.

God calls us to call on him. We are learning as a team and as individuals about the power of prayer. We have experienced both lack of desire to pray as well as desire to do nothing else but pray. We hope that we will learn to do the latter more and more as we grow in Christ, but we also know that we do not have to be the only ones petitioning our Lord to hold us up in times of trouble as well as praise Him for his endless blessings.

As it stands, we are not completely out of the clear as a team when it comes to struggling. I don’t know that we will ever be. There are just too many of us to be honest. But, you know, this is not a complete discouragement to us. We realize that we have chosen a life that makes Satan unhappy. We also know that no matter where we live in this world, we are not promised a life without hurt. All we can do is continue to hand over our fears, our frustrations, our praises, and our lives to the One Who Promises Never To Leave Us! Praise Him for that!

Please join us in prayer. We beg you.

A Start to some of our Prayer Lists:

Yoakums:
-Strength as they seek counseling and healing for their family
-Opportunities for the Yoakums to continue practicing his Spanish despite being away from language school

Davidsons:
-Safety in their move to Peru in a week
-Strengthened desire and commitment for their relationships with God

Mark Clancy:
-Wisdom as he leads the student body at ILE as President as well as continued learning of the spanish language
-Encouragement as he begins to be involved in new ministries here in CR.

Fletchers:
-Strength as they grieve the loss of two sweet babies and try and make sense of their hurt
-Wisdom as they seek God’s plan for their entrance to Peru in a few months.

Thompsons:
-Commitment to the spanish language as they continue language school for one more trimester
-Strengthened desire for time in God’s Word

Through these ‘new years’ we’ve seen:

A cold war
Economic highs and lows
A presidential assassination attempt
3 Middle Eastern wars
A dividing-wall come down

We’ve been shaped by a few social revolutions (fads if you will):

Tight-rolled jeans
Stone-washed jeans
Parachute pants
‘Jams’
Wind suits
Shoes you can pump-up full of air

Then there’s the music we’ve grown up to:

New Kids on the Block (makes me sick to admit this)
Accappella
Guns N’ Roses (Heaven help us)
Tiffany (I’m blushing as a type this)
Micheal W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman and the christian-music revolution (yeah!)
AVB
Take 6

A few words we learned to say….and to say a lot:

Cool
Dude
Dudette
Awesome
Nasty
‘Like’
Sweet

So, this seems to be where we’ve come from. This, good or bad, is part of our slant. It will be amazing to watch God use these influences, and give us new ones, in the coming year. 2009 will undoubtedly be a big year. A year of change. We are moving to a new country, for a long time. We are tackling a new culture and a new language. While Costa Rica has been great….Peru stands to be amazing. May God bless you, and us, in the new year…and the ‘new years’ to come.

Lima Video from JM Davidson on Vimeo.

We have made some amazing friends here at ILE (our school). They are a big part of what makes our time here in Costa Rica so fun. We didn’t figure we could have a party and not invite them, so we enjoyed the company of some of our wonderful friends as well. We definitely had a blast, and we were all “sugared out” by the time the night was over. Our biggest, and probably most fun activity was our Cake Walk. The kids caught on really quickly that their number being called was a GOOD thing! We had tons of dessert to give away, so we played that game several times. The kids and adults got to bob for apples, so that was entertaining. After a while, the kids really didn’t care much for the whole point of the game. They just had fun splashing each other and eating the apples. The kids also got to “fish” for prizes at the Fletcher’s house as well as color pictures of pumpkins and candy corn. We just enjoyed our time together, laughed a lot, made fun of each other’s costumes, and got crazy as the night and sugar set in. Here are some of our fun times documented through pictures. Enjoy, and Happy (late) Halloween!

This was the Thompson house all decorated – only half of the party area. The other part was next door at the Fletcher’s…




This is Jason Kliewer, the husband of a couple that is actually going to be in Lima just near where we will be. He and the Yoakum boys all had the same cool costume idea…

After the party, our team pigged out on pizza together along with Steve Allison, an ACU professor and counselor that is here to visit our team! He came in on Thursday this past week, and he will be leaving us on Monday. During his time here, we have had a great time meeting with him as couples and as a team.

Just thought we could share this picture of our kids. Minus 4 month old Derek, they are all just old enough to sit down and have a meal together.

Oh…wait…once one of them decides to get up, it’s all over from there…

Stay tuned this next week for some pictures and stories of what we got to do this past Saturday with Steve Allison…it was tons of fun!

As we’ve expressed before, language learning can certainly be a humbling experience. Try to imagine yourself in the shoes of someone asking the Lord, in all His mercy, to forgive our “pescados” (fishes) rather than our “pecados” (sins). Or what about the guy that when teaching a Bible class described Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem prior to being crucified in a vivid twist of scriptural content. In this case, the young teacher (yours truly) painted a picture of Christ arriving in Jerusalem “as” (por) a donkey rather than more accurately saying that Christ arrived riding “on” (en) a donkey. Of course, there are the frequent mistakes we make using articles (los, las) incorrecting and ultimately calling men, women and women, men. These mistakes certainly get some raised eyebrows but I think most Spanish-speakers are used to this by now.

One of the best boo-boos, however, may have just recently taken place. A fellow student of ours recently decided to make a donut run prior to class one morning and quite likely gave the young cashier the biggest laugh of her day. Our dear friend slightly confused a word pronunciation that had quite an impact. You see, in this new language we are tackling, “dona” is a Costa Rican Spanish word for donut (I’m sure you can see the English influence). By way of comparison, “doña” (pronouced with a ‘ya’ sound like ‘doenya’) means something quite different: a woman. So imagine the laughs and embarrasment when our friend asked for “dos doñas, una negra y la otra blanca” (two women, one black and the other white) while trying to order donuts! Can you imagine? In all honestly, I think both the missionary and the cashier still must blush when they see each other!

Amazingly, however, we’re still here chipping away at this new tongue. Seems you’ve certainly got to be convicted about God’s call in your life and you’ve certainly got to have a sense of humor.

May God bless us, and all the other poor souls learning a new language, as we trust Him to one day allow us to share His story with His Spanish-speaking children. What a challenge this is proving to be; but, what a blessing for us to be called by our Lord. Even amid all our embarrassing stories, I couldn’t imagine any other way.

Ursus suda much (Ursus perspires greatly)
Averigüe si la cigüeña tiene vergüenza (Find out if the stork is bashful)
El austero bautista bautiza al gaucho (The austere Baptist baptizes the Argentine horseman)
La reina se peina (The queen combs herself)
Hay cuarenta guantes iguales del Ecuador (There are forty identical gloves from Ecuador)
Había un bledo cerca del roble (There was a wild amaranth near the oak)
Ponen clórox en la cloaca (They put Clorox in the sewer)
Los acróbatas comen croquetas (The acrobats eat croquettes)
El drenaje de la casa de mi padre es muy bueno (The drainage in my father’s house is very good)
Puede pasarse sin flores de glicina, pero no sin glicerina (One can live without Glicina flowers, but not without glicerine)
El intruso pidió una trusta y triunfó en la natación (The intruder asked for bathing trunks and won the swimming event)

We look forward to the day when we can use these sentences in real life. I can just picture one of our team members sharing the Gospel with a Peruvian one day and suddenly having to say “Look, there is a wild amaranth near the oak!” In seriousness, we are thankful for Phonetics class (even if we never see forty identical gloves from Ecuador) because it helps us sound less like Gringos, and more like Peruvians. We just have to remember that in Phonetics class it is not about the meaning, it is about the sound.

We hope you all have a great week. Thank you for your continued prayers.

Yesterday we were able to have some intentional girl/guy time. The girls got together for some prayer time and just some moments of sharing our hearts. I feel so blessed to have those girls as teammates but more importantly just friends.
Stacy is so kind and unassuming. She keeps me on my toes about having an intimate relationship with God. She’s a care giver and I love having her by my side. Alison and I are blessed to be neighbors here in Costa Rica (well, when they get to move in.) She has such a passion for people and truly gives her heart. I’ve loved sharing the last year with her and have had more laughs than I know what to do with. Tara continues to surprise me with her wisdom. When we met yesterday she talked about how being here, we were stripped of everything except our identity of being a “christian.” It’s so true and she is so good about seeing situations in such a Godly way.
Needless to say I am BLESSED by these women. Every one of them brings a different aspect to “team” that wouldn’t be as strong without them. The guys took the kids to the park while we met and let me just mention how blessed we are to have such amazing, Godly men on this team. We then switched off the kids and the guys got to go eat, pray and also “share feelings.” Ok, well they didn’t call it that but it’s exactly what went down.
It has been a wonderful few days and were all ready to get started on the Spanish language (ok, well I’m a little nervous.) I’ll write again soon. Blessings to all!

But, we are all here in San José, Costa Rica, adjusting to our new home – or should I say, nuestra casa nueva. Either way, we are setting up our houses, paying rent, locating stores, buying groceries, learning about the city, and trying to figure out how to say what we need to in Spanish. The process of adjustment has begun, and it looks like it will be one fun (and sometimes stressful) adventure!

*I can’t wait to have some girl time with Tara, Stacy, and Stephanie,
*I love to watch the guys all interact as they joke with one another, encourage one another, laugh, and pray together (from what I hear, they have a mock “Olympics” all planned out for themselves to be held in College Station before we leave. Pretty much, they’re crazy.),
*It will be priceless to see all 7 of our kids begin to develop what we hope are lifelong relationships with one another,
*I LOVE having worship time with these people,
*I laugh more with them than I do with almost any other group of people,
*I will have work-out partners again!,
*Justin and I will be around others that support us and hold us accountable in our marriage and as parents to Cailyn,
and
*The work that God has called us all to is finally beginning (at least internationally!)

Honestly, I could continue this list, but for your sake, I won’t. I just had the urge to share the excitement that is welling up within me with someone. As each day passes, I grow more and more in love with the path God has for our lives at this time. I pray that in return for you as well. May God grant you the ability to surround yourselves with people who encourage you to do the will of our Creator – whether in your home in the US, or in Peru!