As most of you know, our team is attending language school in Costa Rica before heading to Lima, Peru. We are really blessed to attend the Instituto de Lengua Española (Spanish Language Institute) in Costa Rica’s capital city, San Jose. Our team is doing amazingly well, and we are impressed with everyone’s gift for the Spanish language. Most of us, with the exception of Lee and Mark (because they are more advanced), have the privilege of attending Fonética (Phonetics Class), 50 minutes a day during the school week. In Phonetics we practice things that have to do with pronunciation. Some examples are diphthongs, syllables, accents, contractions, etc. In order to practice correct pronunciation, we repeat sentences that highlight specific Spanish sounds and combinations. Sometimes these sentences, when translated, have strange meanings. For example, we end up saying things like:

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.

This is what our team has been experiencing since last Thursday, September 4th. Please be praying for the Fletchers. Stephanie scheduled an ultrasound last Thursday to check on the baby in her womb. She was almost 18 weeks pregnant and had an uneasy feeling that something was not right. To their despair, the ultrasound showed the baby to have no movement and no heartbeat. For more details and updates on how Lee and Stephanie are doing, please click the link to their blog.

Words can’t describe the emotions that flood your heart and soul when something like this happens. I know for some, they say it is times like this when they grapple with God the most. It is comforting to know that it’s okay to be mad at God. That it’s okay to wrestle with difficult emotions and have thousands of questions that you want answered. Because no matter how you look at it or what happens in the end, it’s like Steph said on her blog post, “God is still God.”

I heard this song by Derek Webb for the first time last night. It’s called, This Too Shall Be Made Right. It’s a song full of simple verses that have a powerful message. These are the lines I heard:

Yes there’s a time for peace, there is a time for war.
There’s a time to forgive and a time to settle the score.
A time for babies to lose their lives.
A time for hunger and genocide.

And this too shall be made right.

Oh I don’t know the suffering of people outside my front door.
And I join the oppressors of those I choose to ignore.
I’m trading comfort for human life.
And that’s not just murder it’s suicide.

And this too shall be made right.
Oh this too shall be made right.

We love you, Lee and Stephanie. And we love the little boy we never got to meet, simply because he was a part of you and a precious creation of our awesome God. Time will heal the wounds, but the scars prove he’ll never be forgotten.

And this too shall be made right.

Well I have been hounded about my lack of posting/blogging so I took the afternoon to learn how to post on blogs and I admit, it’s not as bad as I thought! Costa Rica has been a whirlwind! We’ve been here barely a week and it seems like we have all jumped right into Tico-land. The food is awesome, the people are so kind and we’ve all been blessed in many different ways.

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!