Paseo--field trip

Mike and I had a fun day today. A dear couple from church, Victor and Marlen, invited us on a paseo with them. Sort of a field trip. We opted to leave the kids at home as we spent quite a lot of time in the car and Sydney doesn't do well driving through the mountains. So thanks to friends who watched Sydney and Sam, we were able to enjoy the time without distractions.

They took us into the mountains south and east of San José. The hills are covered with coffee--small little farms, and big plantations. It is absolutely beautiful. And the whole area is dotted

with small pueblos that are very scenic. It was a wonderful opportunity to see the countryside.

We also visited the first Spanish settlements in Costa Rica. So we saw the ruins of a church circa 1540.

Not to mention all of the beautiful foliage. It was a beautiful day--lindo, bonito, perfecto as far as spanish goes.

Roblealto Christmas party

Last Wednesday the whole family had the opportunity to help out with a Christmas fair for a local orphanage. Our family was in charge of a bowling game--and we had lots of fun!

There was all sorts of games, face painting, piñatas and presents for all of the children.

In addition, the kids put on a small production of the gospel story that was amazing. There were lots of happy kids and tired hosts at the end of the day. But it was a fun opportunity to serve together as a family. Thanks for all of the pictures, Curtis.

Tuesday Bible Studies

kids playing

Karla and Davíd

Andrea and her kids

Suzanne holding David


I (Heather) have had a wonderful opportunity to get involved in a Bible Study on Tuesday afternoons. It originally started as an outreach to young pregnant ladies--but has evolved to include moms with small kids. We've had a small but committed group of ladies the last few weeks and it has been a blessing and an encouragement to study the book of Luke together. Many of the ladies come from very religious, mostly Catholic backgrounds--but they have never really had the opportunity to study the Bible. A small group of students from the Language Institute take turns leading the study and watching the kids which has been great Spanish practice. But we are all thankful that the word of God and the Holy Spirit can have an impact despite our less-than-perfect spanish.

Culture Day

So, I'm a little behind on my blogging. These pictures were taken on October 12--Columbus Day. This is a celebrated holiday here in Costa Rica--remembering when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered the Americas in 1492. (Anybody remember the little rhyme?=) Anyways, at the school Columbus Day has transformed into a World Cultures Day and each class in both the Language Institute and in Sojourn Academy was assigned to a country. We had to put on a display for each country--sharing information about the country, sharing food from the country and dressing in the colors or national wear of the country.
Can you tell what each of our countries was?
Mine was Costa Rica and my grammar teacher had this great dress for me to borrow for the day. What fun! She even taught me a few dance moves.
Sydney's class had Malawi--so we were able to use our chitenje and help provide information for her class. But no nsima.
Lastly, Sam's class had USA. Thus the red, white and blue clothing.
It was a fun celebration of all of the cultures and people of the world--and a reminder of the great diversity of people God has made--all for whom Christ came and died.

Iglesia (Church)

Displaying the traditional dress--aren't they pretty!

We have been blessed to find a small church that meets just around the corner from our house. Friends of ours from school are involved there and invited us to join them. It is a small congregation--about 50 people or so. Although all of the service is in spanish--the praise songs are often translated from the english, so even if we don't understand all the works--we at least know the general message.

Last week, in honor of Independence Day, everyone dressed in traditional Costa Rican dress--or Costa Rican colors (red, white, blue). A few people even performed a traditional dance.

Sydney and Kendyll ( a friend from school)

La Paz park

Last Tuesday was a national holiday in Costa Rica, celebrating its independence. We took advantage of the beautiful and hot day, by walking to a nearby park with a big hill in the center. As you can see, there is a different kind of sledding done at this park.

Sorry, this first video, you may get a bit sea sick--since I forget that a video camera can't take a vertical picture like the camera can.

The kids were both a bit tired and you may see the beginning of some outbursts at the end of the videos. But they both pulled it together and we enjoyed the day--flying kites, sliding and picnicking--with another family from school. Hope you enjoy my first attempts at uploading video. I'm so not tech-ie.

Mike and Heather's First Week of School

Mike and I have officially finished our first week of school and it's been a whirlwind. At times we think we are making such great progress and other days we are ready to pack our bags and go home because we don't understand anything. Please pray for endurance, patience with our language learning, each other and the kids, and for continued good health.

Mike and I are in different classes. We each have a class of 4 students--yes, four!! It's a great teacher-student ratio. We spend 1 hour in language class, 2 hours in grammar class, and 1 hour in phonetics class each day. We are hopefully going to get into a routine with our schedule and the kids schedule, sometime soon--but we are still struggling to figure out when all of us should be doing our homework. Thanks for the prayers.

First day of school

It was the kids first day of school on Monday, the 31st. Fortunately, they were already familiar with the school as they attended camp there this summer. They did awesome considering it was their 3rd school, in 3 years, in 3 different countries!

Sam is in 1st grade. He has 16 kids in his class and a seemingly wonderful, experienced teacher.

Sydney is in 2nd grade now. Her class is the largest in the school with 24 kids. She has two teachers--one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Their core classes--reading, writing, math--are taught in English. They have a spanish class every day. And their music class and PE are also taught in Spanish. They are both starting to pick up a little spanish and repeat things they've heard even if they don't understand what they are saying. But it is a challenge for them--it seems their first question when we are going to do anything new, or meet someone new is..."Do they speak spanish or english?"

Heather and Mike had their first day of school today. But sorry--no pictures with our backpacks for you =)

Walk to school

Here are some pictures of our neighborhood and our walk to school. The walls, gates and bars on the windows are already familiar to us after living in Malawi. And just like Malawi--the tropical trees and plants are beautiful! Here in San José, we have the added beauty of the mountains surrounding the city.

As I mentioned in the last blog--we have to be on the watch for "gringo-catchers". For some reason the tops to manholes and the grates on storm drains are hot-commodities and if you are not careful when you are walking, you could disappear down one of the holes. This is no laughing matter as a previous student apparently fell in one and broke both his legs.

Mi casa es su casa

The entrance to our downstairs apartment

We have a new house--actually it is an apartment. We moved last week and are finally feeling a bit more settled. It's a great location--about 3 blocks from the school. So it's a pretty easy commute to and from school. We are living in a 4-plex of apartments. Two of which are Tico (Costa Ricans) families and two which are gringos--other students.

The yard and the kids playing with our neighbor

As in most cities, green space is a hot commodity and quite rare with the houses in the area. So we feel blessed to have a common "yard"where the kids can play and even swing! Not to mention the park that is 2 blocks down the street with a field, a BB court, and playground equipment. We are enjoying the convenience of city life--with a grocery store, bank, and bakery all just around the corner.

Sam sitting on his bed on moving-in day

We are happy to be settled in our own place at last--it makes it feel a bit more like home--even if only for the next few months. Stay tuned for some pics of our walk to school and the infamous "gringo-catchers."

Our 12th Anniversary!

Wow! Has it really been 12 years?! All I can say is, "God is good" to have given me such a wonderful, faithful husband. And such great kids. We celebrated as a family this year. We all got dressed up and had a fancy dinner together of kid-friendly foods--hamburgers, corn, ice cream. But it was tasty and it was fun! The kids even surprised us with a little after-dinner entertainment--a song and dance.

For those of you who have prayed for our family and marriage over the years, thank you. May you be blessed as you have blessed us.

Waterfall Gardens

A traditional Costa Rican ox-cart

One of the beautiful waterfalls

Feeding the hummingbirds

The rain forest

If you only looked at our blog, you would think we were on vacation. It's hard to blog about the day-to-day activities like studying, going to school, laundry, grocery shopping and rainstorms.

After a week of the kids being home from school and mostly being stuck at home because of rain, we awoke on Sunday morning to bright sun and decided to take a day trip to some Waterfall gardens that were recommended to us.

The drive was incredible. A windy road through the mountains of coffee plantations. When we arrived at the gardens we found out that half of the trails were closed due to an earthquake in January. As a result, we were only able to hike to 2 waterfalls instead of 5. But we got a discount which was fabulous, since we've found that the tourist attractions can be quite spendy here.

In addition to waterfalls, there was a small "zoo" of rainforest animals---monkeys, frogs, snakes, butterflies, birds, and our favorite the hummingbirds. They were amazing!! How is it possible that their wings beat 60 times per second. It was so nice to get away from the city for the day. And the rains held off until after lunch--what did we expect, it is a rainforest! =)

Field Trip

Our tour guide, showing us one of the many stores of wood. This is "purple heart"as you can tell by its' natural purple color
Mike--busy with his small project =)

Mike's class had a field trip on Friday. It was billed as a chance to learn and use their spanish and see a local business in action. But mostly it was a chance to buy curios from the gift store =) Although walking through the factory was quite interesting--and the amount of wood was unbelievable. It was amazing what they could make out of the wood--And we (and you) are probably happy to here that for every tree that has been cut down, ten more have been planted.

Happy 6th Birthday Sam!

Today was Sam's 6th Birthday! Here is a snapshot of our day!!
We had dinner at McDonald's with a playland!

Sam and Alton played on the playground after school. It's Alton's 6th birthday today, too!

Sam had a special muffin for breakfast and those are all the signs we made for him to celebrate his big day!

'Here his class is singing "Happy Birthday" to him in English and then in Spanish. Then the class enjoyed cupcakes.

It was a very fun day! And we are thankful for Sam and the blessing he is to our family!

Lankester gardens

Can you tell what we did this weekend? We thought about making a trip to the beach but instead we stayed locally and visited Lankester gardens. It was a beautiful get-away without really getting away. We saw beautiful plants, trees, and forest and enjoyed the quiet setting.

Walking through the forest

Syd and I in the orchid collections

We were blessed to have dry weather which is unusual this time of year. But we did find the mosquitoes--but thankfully, no malaria to worry about--just itching.

"Our" first house in CR

The road leaving our cul-de-sac

The kids in front of the house

Abby and the kids

Here are some pictures of the house where we are staying in San José. We will be living here until mid-August. The Happ family has been very generous to us--in exchange for watching their house and their dachsund, Abby, we are blessed with the use of their house and their car. This house is about 15 minutes away from school by car, depending on traffic.

In August, when the Happs return, we will be moving closer to school. We found an apartment that is about 3 blocks from school. It has a big common green space which is a bit unusual for the city. And as it is rainy season, and the rain always seems to come about the time the kids are finished with school, it will be nice to be so close for the wet walk home.