Blessings....

  Blessings come in many forms. We were very blessed to host our first mission group.   It was a little crazy trying to organize a mission trip when we had only been here for 5 days.  Several of our plans fell through (which seems to be fairly typical of the area). So....we improvised. And as always God was faithful.

In March, Pat and Austin met a family that lives right down the street from our house. Austin was able to keep in touch with them via Skype until our move. Twenty minutes after we arrived in July, Valentina (5) rode her bike by our house and spotted us. She greeted us with the loudest, happiest scream I have ever heard.  She quickly ran home and returned with her siblings, Nahomy (12) and Gael (2).  We became very close to their family in just a few short days. Evelyn and Deiver ( the parents) hung out with us for 4-8 hours a day.  Our relationship has been much like that of long lost cousins. Deiver was laid off from the Rawlings Baseball plant. He has been out of work for about 3 months now and is having a hard time looking for work with no car, scoliosis, and a herniated disk in his lower back.  The night we were preparing for The Stephens and Jon Nicholson to arrive, the kids went to their house for dinner. Grandma was visiting and had promised Austin a home cooked meal. The kids had a great time and mentioned that floors of Evelyn and Deiver's house were all cement. Ok...they do things differently here. No big deal.

A few days later, Pat walked down to their house for the first time.  He noticed that they could use our help.  Here we were searching for ideas and projects in town and our very own neighbors (notice a theme here) could use some help. They had recently done an expansion on the house and ran out of concrete before finishing the kitchen.



Nahomy doing the dishes in the before picture.

Bags of concrete mix.




The floor after removing the sink.

View of the kitchen from the outside.  Notice there is no door.  They have 2 old doors that lean up against the opening.



We were all blessed to love our neighbors and help improve their house. We have since helped them treat their kitchen table for termites, cut it down to a smaller size, and attach the top of the table to the base.  We left them with some paint and brushes to paint the table and chairs. But, the best part came a few days later when Deiver mentioned that he wanted to move the walls in his house. Pat and Austin were out of town, but Elmo (another blessing for another post) helped him find the right tools he needed. They completed phase 1 of the project themselves. I was very blessed that we were able to provide them with the tools to get them started. Deiver and Evelyn were very blessed to be able to make home improvements on their own. Later this week we will go down and help them move a few interior walls.  The simplicity of the design in Costa Rica makes this type of work much easier here than in the USA.