Buenas from Costa Rica!

It has been an exciting 2 weeks here. We started meeting with our host congregation last weekend. So our meeting is now on Sunday at 5pm and then the spanish have their talk at 6:30. Its a bit of a tricky  transition because the spanish usually arrive while our meeting is still going on and we leave during the song midway through their meeting. Last night we were on the last paragraph during our english meeting and it started pouring rain, thunder, lightning, the works..all of the spanish were trying to huddle outside to avoid interrupting our meeting. Finally it got so bad that they all had to come inside and stand in the back while we finished up our meeting. Tyler gave the final prayer and it was so loud from the rain that we all had to just keep our eyes opened. We couldn't hear a thing!
In the future we will be able to have a full english meeting on Sunday but only if we have a speaker. Otherwise we stay for the spanish public talk. Right now we do know key words like faith, other sheep, anointed and so on. So we listen for those words and get what we can out of the talk that way. We tell the kids to use their imagination:)  We also listen for the bible book, chapter and verse so that we can at least see what scriptures are being used. Honestly, I'm thrilled if I get in the right chapter by the time he stops reading it! The kids are just picking up spanish like crazy! I wish I had their little brains!
Tyler joined the school and he also has his first service meeting part the first week of November. A 10 minute part! I haven't joined the school yet ....but I'm mustering up the courage:) We don't have any meetings this week because the spanish have an assembly this weekend and there are 4 bible studies getting baptized. We are all really thrilled about that! We are planning on attending the morning session and baptism, so exciting!!! Due to us having no meeting we are looking forward to listening into Firgroves meeting this Thursday and Sunday!! OH and speaking of the Assembly..we were suppose to have ours in December but just found out that it has been canceled. So we don't have another one until April. I will say it again..Thats Costa Rica!

In Service news..Wow the territory here is just awesome. I haven't done a whole lot of english service lately but I'm feeling more comfortable speaking at the door in spanish. Sometimes I actually have to open my bible and read directly from my notes but I explain that I'm trying to learn and people are very sweet. I loved the Kingdom ministry article about using the video. I downloaded it in spanish as soon as I saw that KM several weeks ago and it has become a huge part of my ministry! Here is what I say:

(Okay all of you spanish speakers this may not be correct but I get by! Ha Ha)

" Hola, Soy Amber. Somos Testigos de Jehova. Ayudamos a la gente a aprender acerca de la biblia a traves de la casa estudio de la biblia.  Mi espanol es limitado pero estoy aprendiendo.  Puedo mostrarte un video corto que explica mi visita? ..En Espanol"
( After the video I say..)   Gracias Usted puede solicitar un estudio de la biblia gratuitamente desde JW.org
( Also just for fun this is how you say JW.org .. phonetically ..(Hota due-blay OO punto orag) That is NOT spanish lol but allows you to see how it sounds:) Much different than simply saying JW.ORG:)

Translation:" Hi, Im Amber. We are Jehovahs Witnesses. We help people learn about the bible through home bible study. My spanish is limited but Im learning. Can I show you a short video that explains my visit. In Spanish. "
Thank you! ( I give them the tract on the website at this point and point to the website address on the back) You can request a free bible study by going to JW.Org.

Some of my wording is probably incorrect and sometimes people do correct me but they ALWAYS listen. I mean always. I have been able to show this video in spanish to so many people and place literature along with it. Usually it ends in a hug:) ..and usually the tighter the hug, the worst my spanish was. :) After my presentation,  I would love to offer a bible study and Im working up to that but for right now I feel pretty good about what I am able to do. So if you find someone that speaks  another language and are able to leave them anything with the website info on it..you may have started a study! Ya never know:)

I have also talked to a lot of english as well and have been able to have some really nice conversations. The problem is that most of them don't live here permanently. The up side though is that when we do find them, because they are on vacation,  they are relaxed and willing to listen and talk. I think a lot about that scripture at 1 Corinthians 3:6. Some plant, some water, but Jehovah makes it grow. It has a whole new meaning for me now that I am in the situation that I am in. The ministry is so different here and I really rely on Jehovah. A lot more than I did before so that was eye opening for me. When I walk up to a door I am so nervous because I can really only say what is on my sheet of paper or what I have memorized. Somehow thats been enough, every time. It really keeps me motivated everyday to learn spanish even faster because there are so many people hungry for the truth here.  Okay thats it for this installment! I know I sound like a broken record but thank you for the emails and for keeping us a part of your lives:) We have the greatest friends and we miss you all so much but its awesome to hear all of the wonderful things everyone else is doing! We have so many friends moving to other countries, areas, language groups and halls that need assistance, auxiliary pioneering and making adjustments during the week to support others who want to! It just shows that Jehovahs people are willing to take on any assignment Jehovah has for them:) Love you all!!!!!!

This is Jason. He's teaching us spanish. He is a bible study and a great teacher himself! Every Sunday he has a spanish class for all of the English friends. 

Out in service. The awesome view of the whales tale  in the background! 

Tylers new Pride and joy:)

Our car load heading up for a day at a waterfall

 

A snippet of a Costa Rican bamboo forest.. it's huge! 

Sometimes folks get stuck.. and we have to weigh down the car and pull each other out

 Waterfall day! 

After waterfall dinner:) 

The weekly market 

He can't take a normal picture anymore, silly pictures are all I get now

Tico coffee👍

 

This is our cat.. I'm not sure how this happened ..

but I made sure this also happened..  She knows I mean it too 

service .. near a crocodile River..!! Don't worry I had them take this photo quick:) 

Costa Rica! It really looks like this! Beautiful. I still pinch myself, can't believe I live here!!!! 

School SnAkeS & Other Stuff

Hello everyone!! Well we started home school last week and it was pretty good! I have had to make a few changes to the kids curriculum because I was way overloading them!I have heard that this is a typical Homeschool newbie mistake. So now that I am back down to reality things are good. We did try and enroll the kids in school down here but that proved to be very challenging. They want so much paperwork its ridiculous! School here is only in spanish but other need greater families have really encouraged us to put them in school here and continue some of their homeschool curriculum also. When we mentioned this to the kids they were so excited. They really want to go to school to learn spanish! I had no idea. I was pretty impressed with their attitude. Kids are so open to change and new things. No wonder Jesus used them as an example! School here runs from February- November. We have stayed on a U.S. schedule for our homeschool program so they have started 1st, 4th, and 6th grade this past week. If they go to school in February they would start those same grades but continue in the U.S. homeschool  program on the same schedule. It may be tricky. We are still deciding on that whole situation. Okay enough about that..

We had our first snake sighting and it was in our house! Off of our bedroom is a screened in sitting room and this is where our computer is. The kids were in there watching a movie with the light off. I went in there and turned the light on and there he was just chilling..kind of looked like he was watching the movie. Well because we are "new", we cannot spot a venomous snake VS non venomous snake just by sight so we had to chop him :( So sad. He was a baby about 1 foot long.  Afterwards we identified it and it appears to have been a baby Tree Boa. We think it got in through an open door. That will never happen again! I was a little concerned that my kids weren't that scared honestly!

The congregation is doing well. As usual we still have some changes going on. When the CO came around we got 3 new Ministerial Servants! So we now have 4 servants and 2 elders in just the english group. As a whole we have 6 servants and 4 elders.

We found out this week that a couple is coming from France in November! They are, of course, the talk of the hall now. We love when people visit or move here! We just love people here:) We also have a family of 5 coming in December that were here last year. They are moving here permanently. And of course my sweet friends Sara  and Kressa will be here soon!!!! Sara for about 4-5 months, and Kressa for 1 month. Can't Wait!!!! We met a sister from Florida ( @ our meeting) today who was here  last year. She is here for 1 month helping out a congregation about an hour away. She was so sweet! She is hoping to come back and serve in Uvita again next year if finances permit. I hope so!! It really is awesome to see so many young sisters who are not afraid to come out here and serve. They are so brave. I really admire them.  Not to leave the brothers out..we have one servant in our hall who is also younger and has chosen to be here where the need is great. He is currently in the states. I haven't met him yet but he has been in Africa at the International Convention in Zimbabwe for 5 weeks and now saving up to come back in a few months! The things these young people can experience from choosing this life of full time service is amazing. It really does change their whole life. Jehovah opens so many doors for them.

This week and last week we have had no speaker at our Sunday meeting ( In English) so we have only been able to do the Watchtower study. The spanish have this happen often also. There are usually 15-20 people at the English meeting each week. Its hard to get speakers, many halls are stretched pretty thin around here. Like...so thin that if you visit us..your giving a part of some sort... I'm totally serious. :) Because of this the branch is trying something new with some groups, ours is one of those groups. Soon we will start to have our meeting right before spanish on the weekend. Right now Spanish has their meeting on Saturday and we have our meeting on Sunday.  So starting soon, we haven't really been told when, we will have our meeting on Saturday at 5:00 and the Spanish talk will start at 6:30 and then we will have a spanish Watchtower study. So its an interesting arraignment. We don't have a back room so that has complicated things. I'm wondering what is going to happen in the future because our Kingdom hall is at full capacity right now. Per our branch diagram on the back board we can legally only hold 9 more people in the building than we have now. There has been talk of putting chairs outside the hall next to the windows! Ummm I dont know about that! But apparently thats what ya do here when ya reach capacity. True story! Seriously..They have done it in the past,  years ago before spanish split. Don't even get me started on my problems with that..night time bugs to name one..BIG ones that fly and jump and ..YUCK! I imagine the sisters and kids would  have seats inside..I HOPE:)

Yesterday we had a very bad storm! To get to our house you have to cross a small bridge but when it rains really bad the water comes up over and covers the bridge and its impassable. This almost happened yesterday and once last week. Yesterday our house got struck by lightening and it zapped  some of our electrical outlets and fried our modem. Costa Rican electrical wiring is sketchy anyway so if any other factor comes into play it just flat won't work. One caught on fire the other day when I turned a fan on..LoL Costa Rica I love you!  On top of that Tyler got a flat tire yesterday in service and on Sunday nothing is open. Tomorrow is Costa Rican Independence day so everything is still closed. Of course the jack he needed to remove the spar tire and put it on was missing from the car we bought! Costa Rica! Thats what we say every time..We love you Costa Rica but you do things  S..L..O..w..l..y.. Very slowly. So fortunately the house we caretake for has a car we can use so we were saved!!

We have been doing a lot of spanish service since we got here. With the campaign in August we were really pushing to help complete the spanish territory. Last weekend we did some english territory and that was great! We had been given the direction to go ahead and finish our english territory with the campaign tract in this area.  We met some very nice people. People here have such interesting stories about how they got here. It's very neat to chit chat about life with them. Almost always they will take the literature. This week we are going to add some more service into our schedule. Now that we are settled into our house and getting school under control we want to add a midweek day for service to our calendars this month. Hopefully next month we will be able to add more service time in. We are pacing ourselves though because learning the language is our priority right now. The more spanish we know the better we can learn from the meetings and the more people we can preach to. We have a simple 1 line presentation right now and then we say have a nice day. Its so hard for me sometimes because I want to do everything just perfectly when I speak spanish (I'm a perfectionist and I really hate it)  So a sister took me aside and said, " Just say it Amber! You won't learn until you let go and start speaking incorrectly. That's how you learn". Ugh!  She was right. I am so happy she told me that. So sometimes I don't know what I'm saying. It is humbling and sometimes embarrassing but I feel like I'm making progress. Someone told me don't measure your progress by how you did last week measure it by how you did 6 months ago..6 months ago!!! Okay ..that was a hard pill to swallow but its true. Big changes take time and patience. That advice came from a gringo who learned spanish too.. so theres hope for us yet!!!!

Thanks for all the emails and pictures!! We didn't bring a lot of pictures with us:( The next time we go into the city we are going to get them all printed so we can put them around our house and in albums so please keep sending us your pictures. We wish we had brought more because  those make our house feel a little bit more like home, so keep em' coming please!!! Until next time, Adios Amigos!

We tried to tell them that that's not what a surf board is for .. 

2 sweet little sisters from Spanish giving a talk

Peyton & his buddy Mylos

Service pics... I had to choose between rickity bridge or washed our creek..

Asher & Tyler are loving surfing and boogie boarding 

Snake intruder.. 

This is our Gardner Fransisco taking Tyler to the property we have to check ok as part of our care taking job. it's a but rural...

Care packages are hard to get here but we got one!!! The kids were thrilled ..

This is the bridge to our house but here it just looks like a stream!!

Ella with her watchtower.. December cover Costa Rica!! 

a little cuteness❤️❤️

This was a bridge to a house in service! 

Can't remember if I added this one.. Asher running mics:) 

A little congregation bowling! 

A sloth trying to cross the highway

Some things haven't changed.. Legos are still his go to toy 

Ella getting some backyard surfing lessons 

Regional Convention

Hey everyone!!!! This weekend was our regional convention. We have been looking forward to this since we got here. Seeing the friends again that we met last year..we couldn't wait!! But a few things dampened our plans:( Last Saturday (weekend before the convention)  Tyler fell really ill. At first he thought it was the flu and just tried to stay in bed but by Tuesday I just felt something wasn't right so I pretty much begged him to go to the doctor. I had already been the doctor the week before for some ongoing ear issues with all the kids and I really liked the doctor. Well 2 shots later and $100 in prescriptions...he had a bad lung infection AND the flu! I have never seen him this sick before but he is finally getting better. Funny little story..Our Co ordinator owns the pharmacy in town and when Tyler got to the doctor they actually had to drive down to that pharmacy and get the shots to give him! So our coordinator knew what Tyler had before he did! Small town?... I think so:)
So off we went to the convention on Thursday morning.

The convention (what we were there for) was amazing! Tyler and I were asked to do a part last minute which we were so excited about. We did the skit on public witnessing. We played the part of  the couple passing by the table that got ignored. It was so fun! Some of you may have seen the video I took of our rehearsal. It consisted of us doing the part on a sisters porch while the CO skyped in to watch. Then on the day of our part, we ran out of time during the walk thru and had to show a team of brother the actual part in a 4X15 hallway backstage! There was like 20 people in this little hallway! It was crazy but so much fun!!

Friday we were only able to stay for the morning session and same with saturday. Tyler was really bad you guys, I was really worried:(

I want to share 4 experiences from our convention that were so awesome:  The first is a couple who were in the 32nd class of Gilead and had to learn Chinese. Just 1 year later they were relocated to Costa Rica and had to learn Spanish! Seriously!!?? A YEAR later. That brother and sister are my new heroes!! " Hi I know you just learned..CHINESE..now learn spanish..and could ya make it snappy because were moving you in 4 months..Thanks" Okay maybe it didn't happen like that but I'm probably not too far off! They have been here ever since. I just wouldn't have the room to share the tidbits of experiences that they shared but they have had such a rich life serving Jehovah. The way he found the truth was by being invited to a talk in someones house when he was in his late teens, 3 years later he was a regular pioneer. They are now very up in years but still faithfully special pioneering! WOW!

The other experience was a couple serving in Panama. They are from Canada originally. They were only in Panama 2 years before they were invited to attend the couples school. They serve the english circuit, but in Panama couples school is only in Spanish. So they had 3 months to learn Spanish before couples school and thats exactly what they did. Now that I know what it is like to learn another language as an adult I am really amazed at this brother and sister.

The third experience was a sister who came into the truth after she was newly married. Her husband had tried on many occasions to get her to stop her study. She went back and forth with her study because of this. One day she decided that she needed her study and she knew it was the truth. So she resumed her study. Shortly after that, one day she came home from her study to find her husband home early. She went to take a shower. Little did she know that while she was in the shower, her husband had called her bible study teacher and said that they had better come get her because she was on her way out! Unbeknownst to her, she got out of the shower,  got dressed and stepped into the living room. She saw a brother standing at her open front door, thats when she heard the cock of a gun behind her. She begged the brother to leave but he refused and said he wasn't going anywhere. She pleaded with her husband to just let her go as she slowly walked toward the door. He did. She left that day with just the clothes on her back and became our sister. She is in my congregation, so if you ever come visit,  you will be able to meet this fearless sister.

Last but not least, was not actually an experience but a couple that we met who sat in front of us. They are from Nicaragua serving as special pioneers. They are in Managua which is about 2.5 hours outside of Costa Rica. They told us about all of the wonderful experiences there and how the congregations are just growing tremendously! They serve in a Spanish congregation but told us that nearby is an english congregation with almost 100 publishers that more bible studies than they can handle! The sister, Karen, spent several years in Nicaragua when she was a child. Her parents went there to serve where the need was great and thats how she learned spanish and also developed a love for the ministry. She watched her parents struggle with the language and never forgot that. She was 6 when they moved there and actually got so accustomed to speaking spanish that she started forgetting english! So her parents made it a rule that at home, english had to be spoken:) They were so encouraging and had some great stories! I was glad we were early that day because we spent the whole morning hearing about life in Nicaragua. Even the kids were intrigued by everything they were saying. Of course they insisted that we must come visit them for at least 2-3 weeks. That's just how it is here, you never go anywhere for a few days.  They were amazing and I actually am really excited to be able to visit them and experience what Nicaragua is like!

Okay I'm adding another one! Brother and Sister Morales talked about their experience going to couples school and serving as special pioneers. They then asked him to explain to us what it was like to serve on an elder body with Brother Pierce . He said that Brother Pierce kept very quiet during elders meeting and always let everyone express their thoughts. "Sometimes", Brother Morales said,"We all just wanted to look at him and say... Just tell us what to do, we know you know." It was so funny! He went on to explain that Brother Pierce was learning spanish and I never knew that! He said that he often made mistakes and asked the friends to please correct him. When he was asked what he felt was the most memorable thing about Brother Pierce this is what he said:
" His time. He never made you feel like he had other more important things to do. When he would invite those from the congregation to his room at bethel he would be preparing the meal and he was present in that moment. Not distracted by other things but present with you,  getting to  know you and allowing you to know him." He even said brother Pierce would often call other brothers and ask their opinions about things. It was so sweet the way he spoke of Him. He said that when he died,  the congregation wasn't upset because they had lost one of the anointed, but because they lost a genuine friend.  

SIDENOTE: For those of you who read my blog before I changed it... Bro L is still alive! lol There were 2 experiences on the   program about GB members and I got the names mixed up! Thanks mom! LoL She about died laughing when I related the experience and said," ummm Amber he's not dead" So there you have it, Bro. L is alive and well:) 

Phew! Okay It was a great program (what we saw anyway). There were only 650 at our convention this year. Last year there were 850.  It has been a difficult adjustment for many, learning a new language so this convention was a huge boost for us all! So although our numbers have shrunk, the friends spirit of happiness has not! More will come as they always do and Jehovah will make sure that there are always enough people for whatever is needed.

In other news: In San Jose we got to eat at McDonalds and Outbacks Steakhouse!!! We found Price Smart! Its just like Costco. This will save us so much money on food,  we were thrilled. Also, my mac died you guys:( I know I'm so sad!!! I came home from convention, tried to turn it on and..nothing...just the 3 beeps of death. And of course it's out of warranty by 2 weeks! UGH! So no pics this blog, sorry. I will try to add some later.

The kids start school next week! I'm a little nervous about that but I think we are ready. We are actually getting a really good routine with work and service so I think everything will work out really nicely.

Thank you so much to all of you who email, text and Skype us! We love it. Really, the highlight of our month a few weeks ago was when Tyler & Paul skyped and he was just leaving the meeting and we got to see a bunch of you!!! Firgrove will always be our true home:)  We love you guys!
Well I better get going guys I still have dishes and some cleaning to do ( Yeah, those things followed me to Costa Rica:). My plan is to do a blog every 2 weeks on Sunday or Monday and I would love to hear from you guys too! Talk to ya soon!