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| Worshiping with a church in rural Costa Rica |
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| Enjoying warm hospitality on the front porch in Spanish! |
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| Our class learning numbers by playing BINGO! |
We are learning patience in so many ways...
In the
classroom. We, along with our fellow classmates, are so anxious to learn
Spanish that we repeatedly badger our teacher and ask why about this and what
about that as we seek to understand every little nuance of the language. Our
teacher gently reminds us that little children never ask such things and are
just patient and satisfied with what the teacher presents. One of the few benefits of being a more
"mature" student is understanding that this language learning is a
definitely a process, a marathon rather than a sprint.
At the
grocery store. We recently moved from
living with a Tico family into our own studio apartment and thus have begun
grocery shopping. We walk about 10 minutes to the local grocery store called
Maxi Palí, a subsidiary of Walmart. It it a good sized store but the check out
process is ridiculous (to us North Americans). Maybe because it is a US based
business we expected more from them, but as we wait in line for about 30
minutes (average check out time for us) we realize how little tolerance we have
for such things. We keep looking at our watches, shifting our weight from foot
to foot barely containing our impatience at the wait. The few checkers working
do the scanning and the bagging themselves. And then we take a look around at the
Tico shoppers and they are perfectly patient as they wait. They don't have
shifty eyes looking for a faster line, they aren't craning their necks to see
what can possibly be taking so long, they're not sighing or complaining (even
from the
little ones sitting
in the carts) and we think, O Lord, we have so much to learn!
In our
faith. We are waiting patiently on the Lord to show us the future ministry that
He has planned for us. To that end, we have been attending different churches
each week and last weekend went on an overnight trip to visit a rural church,
which was a whole other experience in learning patience on a very curvy, bumpy,
3 hour bus ride around the mountain! We keep seeking the Lord and He continues
to remind us that He knows the plans He has for us, that He wrote them for us
before we were even born, so He just keeps whispering to us to rest in Him. We
know we are on a journey together and this is just the beginning. We just keep
clinging tightly to His hand and following His lead.
In so many
other areas, but we're afraid you would lose your PATIENCE reading about all of
them!
Thank you so
much dear friends for journeying with us. Your love and support are a constant
encouragement to us.
Additionally,
Hellenic Ministries will continue to process our monthly donations until we
have formalized a new mission agency.
Please pray
for us:
* Good
language learning capabilities.
* Pray for
wisdom for Peggy as she was asked to co-lead a Bible study (in Spanish)
beginning in September.
* Please pray
for a steady recovery for Mike's Dad. He had a successful surgery to remove a
mass in his pancreas June 8 and is slowly recovering. We continue to be
thankful for Mike's family who are caring for him in our absence. Wisdom for us
being so far away.
* Please pray with us for Greece.
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