Friday, October 9, 2009

La Carpio

La Carpio is a neighborhood of mostly immigrants in San Jose. It is a poor area streaming with young children. A few years ago, a Thursday afternoon children's ministry began to help minister in that area. Each trimester students from the Spanish Language Institute volunteer to be a part of that ministry. This trimester, I have had the opportunity to be a part of. The above pictures are of a few of the precious children that attend the program. The following link is a video about La Carpio that a former student of the Spanish Language Institute made. He is now serving as a missionary in Costa Rica and does some outreach ministries in La Carpio. Next week, I will be teaching a lesson at La Carpio in Spanish. So say a special prayer for me and the children of La Carpio. I'll update you again next week.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

It's a boy!

Congratulations to Neil and Ashley and of course big sister Ava on the arrival of their newest family member. Harrison Ethan was born September 30 and weighed 7 pounds and 11 ounces. Ryan and Erin are proud to me Harrison's aunt and uncle and Micah is proud to be his big cousin.
We look forward to meeting him when we visit the US this coming Holiday season. We are so thankful to God for Harrison and our family.

Look to the SON

This past Saturday started out like a typical Saturday for our family. After off and on rain showers, Carlos came by to see if he could wash the car. Carlos is a Tican man that washes our car on a regular basis. He is deaf and unable to speak. He uses a little bit of sign language but communicates mostly with grunts and general hand motions. I looked to the sky, not wanting him to wash the car if it was about to rain, and noticed that the sun was burning away the darker clouds from the morning. “Okay, no rain for now,” I thought and nodded my head giving him permission to wash the car. Carlos smiled at Micah as he invited Micah to wash the car with him. “You’ll soak your tennis shoes! Go change them first,” I instructed Micah. Micah ran into the house to put on “car wash shoes.” I scrambled between assisting Micah with his shoe selection and helping Carlos hook up the water hose outside. I noticed that Carlos was looking at the sky but thought he too was trying to predict the weather. Carlos pointed to the sun. Our neighborhood guard, Luis glanced up at the sky, smiled and nodded. “Oh good,” I thought, “We all agree, it isn’t going to rain.” I returned to the house to see if Micah had finally made his shoe selection. When I came back outside, Luis and Carlos were still looking at the sky. I glanced up at the sky and then gave Micah the water hose. Carlos once again pointed to the sky and grunted “sol” which means sun. I grinned, happy to see the sun. But Carlos pointed again, this time handing me his sunglasses. I put on his glasses and looked at the sky again and noticed a perfect break in the clouds around the sun. “That’s neat,” I thought as I instructed Micah to put the water on the car not the sidewalk and gave Carlos his sunglasses back. Carlos joined Micah and they washed the car. A few moments later, Ryan came outside. Carlos stopped washing the car and pointed to the sky again. Ryan looked to the sky and exclaimed, “Wow, it’s a huge rainbow around the sun.” I looked to the sky and noticed what I now know is called a solar halo. There was a huge halo encircling the entire sun. Carlos had been trying to tell me but I had not listened. I had been too busy predicting rain, setting up the water hose, searching for the perfect pair of play shoes and telling my son what to do. I had missed it completely! I quickly got my camera and began taking pictures. The halo was so huge that I was unable to capture the entire circle on my camera, and minutes before, I had not even seen it! That day, God reminded me that many times we are so busy with our lives that we forget to look to the Son. Carlos repeatedly pointed me to the sky, but each time I missed it because I was preoccupied with trivial tasks. God is doing amazing things; we just have to slow down enough that we notice them. Usually His plans are so great we can’t even imagine what he may be doing. And when we finally see how is working, we are amazed that we didn’t see it before! Praise God for people like Carlos that help point us back to the Son when we get distracted by things less magnificent. And praise God for reminding me how great He is with Saturday’s solar halo!