The Stairs

This post is long overdue, but I thought I would post it anyway :). Most of the time my work is behind the scenes in a support role. I get to support our staff at the various ministry sites and get to do a lot of logistical work and coordination for our student teams. In March we had a large spring break outreach of 34 people! Too be honest this was probably too big of an outreach for us. But we have to commit to the size of an outreach almost a year in advance. So at this point in time, as SI-Costa RIca continues to grow and develop, our outreach size is often an educated guess or a prediction of where we think we will be at a certain date. Well let's just say things didn't go as well as anticipated and we had room at our sites for about 20 people. Fortunately we had just rented an old auto shop to turn into a carpentry shop, so we used about 10 people from the team there helping us to scrub walls, put up dry wall, paint, etc. That left us with about 6 people without a site.

In our model of ministry we seek to incorporate the teams into the ongoing regular ministry that our staff are doing with or without teams. Of course having teams here allows us to do some things at the ministry sites that we couldn't do without them, but we do not want to create things to do just for the team, especially if they will not be sustainable.

A month or two before this team was to come Pastor Gilbert mentioned that he was recently told by the city that he needed to improve (read tear out the old and put in new) stairs on the property of the church. Pastor Gilbert is the pastor of the church in Las Fuentes that Cailah partners with in our Social Work site. So I decided that I would work with the 6 without a site to build the stairs at the church. It was a project that needed to be done and it would help further the ministry of one of our ministry sites and key partners.

The only catch would be that I would be leading this project and that I have little construction experience. Fortunately what experience I do have has come in Latin America and working with concrete! Much more fortuitous was that there was a contractor in the church without work who agreed to work with us for the week. Without Eddy we would have had issues!

So the students came and we worked hard and built some stairs. For me the experience was much more significant. As I mentioned I usually do the behind the scenes coordination for our outreaches and our staff do an incredible job of working with the students who come day in and day out while they are here. During this outreach I had the privilege of working all day every day with students. I was reminded of the powerful experience a trip like this is for the students that come. I was able to witness many "ah ha" moments in the lives of the students I was working with and was able to see them interact in a beautiful way with Eddy and the other church members who worked alongside us. I was reminded of the power of what God is doing through us and the privilege it is to work with students and the poor.

These days I often think back to the students I worked with in March and to the other emails and comments from past students as i am swimming in a sea of logistical work and preparation for our summer outreaches. Remembering the impact an outreach had on one student and the impact of a ministry site on one person in the community gives me motivation to make the phone calls, write the schedules, and to do what God has called me to do.

Here are a few photos of the stairs:
The Before

From Las Fuentes Stairs

Getting ready to pour

From Las Fuentes Stairs

The Construction Crew

From Las Fuentes Stairs

The Finished Product

From Las Fuentes Stairs

Psalm 112

I felt like the Lord gave this Psalm to us today as I was reading, in light of the break-in, hassle, etc.:

Psalm 112

1 Praise the Lord!
How joyful are those who fear the Lord
and delight in obeying his commands.
2 Their children will be successful everywhere;
an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.
3 They themselves will be wealthy,
and their good deeds will last forever.
4 Light shines in the darkness for the godly.
They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.
5 Good comes to those who lend money generously
and conduct their business fairly.
6 Such people will not be overcome by evil.
Those who are righteous will be long remembered.
7 They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
8 They are confident and fearless
and can face their foes triumphantly.
9 They share freely and give generously to those in need.
Their good deeds will be remembered forever.
They will have influence and honor.
10 The wicked will see this and be infuriated.
They will grind their teeth in anger;
they will slink away, their hopes thwarted.


Good, eh? God makes all things right in the end, and as many promises of the good to come, I noticed that the troubles are also assumed. But we have a God who fights for us in the middle of those troubles--He is our defender. --Tracey

Making Lemonade

We have all heard the saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." These days we are in the midst of making a big batch of lemonade and day by day our gracious heavenly father is giving us more sugar to use in the mix.

Saturday evening we went out to and early dinner to celebrate both Tracey's and my birthdays with our moms (Yes both Tracey's mom and my mom came for a visit last week). We returned home about 7:30 to discover the door leading from the garage to the house was open and almost all of the downstairs lights were on. Telling everyone to stay in the car I grabbed the most manly weapon I could find, Olivia's Barbie Umbrella, and went through the house making sure no uninvited guests were in it. Thankfully no one was in our home, but neither were our home computer, my work computer, our cameras (we had just purchased a new one to replace the old one), the SI safe (fortunately all that was in it was some personal cash, a couple of credit cards, our social security cards, Califonria Driver's licenses, and a box of checks), a dying portable DVD player, my iPod, Tracey's jewelry box (the biggest loss was Tracey's wedding ring ;(, and a few other small items.

So we started knocking on doors to see if the neighbors saw anything and called the Fuerza Publica (police). No one saw anything that we found that night and the police told us that we needed to go and file a complaint with OIJ (the investigative arm of the police). So I went to file the report while Tracey and the Grandmas put the kids to bed. After filing the report I returned home and we waited for the Crime Scene Inspectors to come. They came and by 10:30 or 11:00 they were done going through the house gathering what evidence they could. Needless to say we had enough figurative lemons to make a pretty big batch of lemonade.

There are also several things to be thankful for with this incident. First we were not home. We don't know if they would have broken in not if we had been, but if we had been home or returned to catch them in the act it could have been bad news. Second they could have taken much more than they did. They left an external hard drive which we used to back-up both computers, so we have all the information that was on them. The did not take any of our phones or printers, the TV, the WII, and a DVD player. They also walked by cash boxes with the cash need to facilitate an outreach (our first team of the summer arrived yesterday).

While the chances of recovering any of our things is slim we have been pleased with the attentiveness of the system here. From the fast response times to the thorough conversation we had with two investigators today (they sat with us for about an hour in our living room while the team had devotions upstairs). We have gotten to know a few of our neighbors since living here, but ones we have barely known have gone out of their way to call or come by to offer to do anything they can to help. And in talking with more of them one person saw the couple that robbed us and the car that they used to haul everything away. There have been a couple of other robberies in our neighborhood and we are discussing organizing in a more formal way some sort of neighborhood watch. So there will be a neighborhood meeting soon (most likely at our house).

Our teammates have also responded in a loving and caring way. Letting us borrow computers offering to help us weld added security features on our house, and most importantly simply being a loving presence during a tough time. Throughout the last couple of days we have not felt alone and have felt carried by the love, concern, and prayers of our team, our families, and our many friends. Thank you!

Please keep praying! Pray for God's peace to reign down on our home and for all fear to be washed away. Pray also for the many processes that we are involved in at the moment (the police investigation, canceling all of the stolen cards, getting new social security cards and driver's licenses, placing fraud alerts on our social security numbers, etc). Pray also for discernment in knowing what additional security measures to take, and as we decide what we need to replace and what is the best way to do so. Pray also for the team that arrived yesterday. Pray that we would be able to devote the needed time and energy to them and that God would move in and through them.

So life has given us a good supply of lemons in the last few days. But we are thankful that God has also supplied us with enough sugar to make some lemonade. Hope your thirsty!

It's a Girl!

18-19 weeks

We had a doctor's appointment yesterday and found out we are having another daughter! We're all excited; Mommy was sure it was a boy, but is happy to have more pink around. :) We are planning to have the baby at Clinica Biblica, which is a wonderful hospital in San Jose, only a few miles from our house. We are very thankful to have found a good doctor, and to make it even more convenient--his office is right at the hospital. Yesterday they even let us have a brief tour and we were happy to see that the maternity rooms look like everything we would hope for. Apparently CB usually has mothers labor in one room and then moves them to a birthing room, but they are now starting to let labor and birth happen all in the same spot--really hoping they continue that trend! Everyone there has been very knowledgeable and helpful, and we feel very comfortable going there to have a baby. Thanks to everyone who has prayed about all this with us.

Isn't she beautiful?

Spring Newsletter

Here is a link to view our spring newsletter. If you download the PDF file the picture quality is better. As always you can also access our newsletters with the links on the right. Happy reading!

Spring 2010 Newsletter

What a day!

There are times that I wonder. I wonder if I will ever have a commanding grip on Spanish, I wonder if we are moving in the right direction, I wonder if we are actually making a difference, I look around the table at a staff meeting and I wonder why I am one of the leaders (along with Tracey) when any of the people around the table are more than capable. I wonder. It is what I do, I analyze things and look at them from a variety of angles. Perhaps I over analyze and then I analyze some more.

It is because of my tendency to wonder and to be perhaps a little harsh on myself that I cherish days like yesterday. As I have done several times before yesterday I spent the day taking someone to visit SI Costa Rica's ministry sites. But yesterday was a little different than previous times. Usually I am showing around fellow North Americans. Often with the hopes that they will bring a team back or somehow be involved in what we are doing. Yesterday I showed around a Tico friend named Jonathan Campos. Jonathan works at a church helping to coordinate their community programs. I was showing him around to help him get a better understanding of who we are and what we do, as well as to spend time talking about ways we can partner together.

I was curious about what he would think. He was very impressed with what we are doing, and had numerous ideas for how we can work together. The church he works at is a large church and is very well connected with various resources in and around San José, and he is excited about connecting us with some of those contacts. It was encouraging to get some feedback from someone outside of SI who thought we were on the right path and who took it a step further wanting to be involved with us.

We ended our time together by visiting a house the church uses to host various community programs in a neighborhood called La Capri. At the moment the church's activities are all in the evenings and on the weekends. He invited us to use the house during the daytime throughout the week. This looks like the neighborhood where Dustin, our newest staff member, will begin to invest his time and where we will launch our next ministry site. We are very excited to expand our partnership with this church and to begin a new site. Please pray with us for guidance in this process. That God would give Jonathan, Dustin, and myself creativity, wisdom, and unity as we design and implement various programs.

So at times I wonder, maybe even doubt, and then God gives me days like yesterday. God spoke to me encouraging my heart to press on. He also told me to turn my wondering into dreaming about what might be and then to use the analytical gifts and skills he has given me to help make those dreams a reality.

Tim

While we were in Visalia we had the privilege of sharing at Savior's on a Sunday morning. Our thought was to share not so much about what we do, but about what God had been teaching us with the hopes that perhaps God would use it to someone's life. So both Tracey and I prepared to share and felt prepared. Well as I (Jeff) was sharing it felt like I was stumbling over my words, I was struggling to tie my thoughts together and it felt as if it wasn't connecting. When I have the opportunity to speak I often pray that God will push me out of the way and do what he desires. So as a closing song played my prayer was that even though I felt like it hadn't gone as I wanted that God would keep pushing me aside and speak to those that were there.

After the service we had a lot of friends we wanted to connect with as we had not been at Savior's since we moved to Costa Rica. After talking to people for a while I was gathering our things to leave when a guy I had never seen or met before grabbed me and we started to talk. He introduced himself as Tim. I was humbled as he told me that God spoke to him through me and that it was exactly what he needed to hear. He was passionate about how he just wanted to know Jesus better and to follow him. As we talked a couple other people joined us including Mark and Kathleen Condie (Mark is the pastor at Savior's) and he mentioned that he was not saved and didn't feel like he had a relationship with Jesus. But that someday he would. We of course asked him why not today and so Tim committed his life to Jesus that day, confessed his need for a Savior, and his commitment to follow Jesus.

Now I don't know at what point salvation becomes salvific, nor do I necessarily want to know. I don't think it is not a magic formula or necessarily a moment that can be pinpointed. Rather I think it may be more of a process and Tim was definitely in process when our paths crossed that day. And I was privileged to be there at the moment the process took an important step. In talking to him I would have sworn he was a passionate follower of Jesus. He had more passion and life in his eyes than most people I know who have been following Jesus for years. I pray that as Tim's process of getting to know Jesus continues that his passion doesn't wane.

This encounter with Tim is also a perfect illustration of what God has been teaching me. What he cares about is obedience not success. If we are obedient to be about what he calls us to (most importantly to know him) he will take care of the results. Even on a day when it feels like nothing goes as we planned.