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Predique hermano, Predique.

June 21, 2006 in Mexico, Ministry, Progress by Dave | 2 comments

Preach Brother, Preach!

In order to keep a license to preach with the Assemblies of God, a minister needs to preach at least 10 times within a year’s time. Now while that wasn’t a challenge in the states where we preached over 150 times in the course of our itineration, we’ve had a more difficult time fulfilling that requirement here in Costa Rica, especially since we had to learn to preach in Spanish in order to secure a preaching date.

We’ll I’m happy to report that I got back on track in fulfilling my licensing requirements as I preached my first sermon in Spanish today before the professors and students of CINCEL. The sermon was on John 15, the passage in which Jesus talks about abiding in the vine. It is available here, for those of you who would like to read it in Spanish.

It’s hard to describe the significance that this event has for our lives. During our commissioning service, we were given a Spanish Bible with the admonishment to preach the Word in the language of the people to whom we have been called. I remember opening that Bible in the days after and finding it difficult to even understand a few words. Now to be able to not only read, but share the Word of God in Spanish is something of a dream come true. We are amazed at how far God has taken us, and reflecting on His faithfulness has increased our faith in God’s plan to use us to reach the people of Mexico.

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Estamos viendo el Mundial

June 14, 2006 in CostaRica, Culture by Dave | 2 comments

The sidewalks are empty. The shopping centers are deserted. There is an eerie silence in the streets. No, this is not a city-wide disaster drill, we’re watching the World Cup.

What is this you say? Well as you have noted in my previous post, soccer is not simply a sport, it is a way of life for many Costa Ricans specifically, and world sport fans in general. In fact, although baseball is America’s Game (and my favorite), soccer is truly the world’s sport. The World Cup is a tournament that takes place each 4 years, in which one country wins the right to be the world’s best in the world’s biggest pastime. 32 teams have classified in the years preceding this tournament and have won the opportunity to play for the title. The US is in it, and the Costa Ricans, having beaten the US last year in order to receive their classification have also entered into the tournament.

So what is this baseball loving north American supposed to do? Well, go out an buy a jersey and root for the home team of course! (Fortunately Costa Rica doesn’t come up against the US or Mexico in this round.) As a school, we watched the defeat of Costa Rica 3-2 against Germany last Friday, and we rooted and booed with the rest of the country glued to their TV sets. I realized, of course, that my Spanish wasn’t getting much better in the process, aside from being able to practice rolling my r’s with the announcers, but something happened in the process that was more profound than the conjugation of verbs. As I sat side-by-side with Ruddy Pizarro and his brother, sharing one of their passions, I found myself identifying just a little bit more with the culture that God has called us to serve and moving closer to the incarnational model of ministry that Christ modeled for us. And, who knows, although Spanish grammar is on the schedule, 8:00 AM tomorrow may just find us seated around another game as Costa Rica takes on Ecuador.

For more on the World Cup ’06 through the eyes of missionaries, Jim Cottrill, the man with his finger on the pulse of evangelical missionary bloggers at www.missionary-blogs.com, has posted some great highlights, including a World Cup Prayer Guide.

Photo credits: CLF (2006). Predator Absolute & Teamgeist. Retrieved from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/clf/85998174/

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Taking time

June 8, 2006 in Day2Day, Prayer by Dave | 1 comment

When I wrote down my thoughts at the beginning of the year, I intended to form a base from which to work, a foundation on which I could build the rest of my missionary life. But, as many of realize, our intentions are not always what get carried out. My conversation teacher, Giselle Mata, says, “Hay algo entre el querer y el hacer.” As I have reviewed my concepts for living, I have found that in some areas, I have moved forward, but also that in several, I have lagged behind, or fallen flat. I guess that is precisely the reason why many don’t make resolutions, because they are afraid that they can never live up to them. On the contrary, I believe that without a clear goal we’ll never know when we have arrived, or possibly we’ll never arrive anywhere. With a goal it is easy to see when you have failed, but without one it is impossible to know when you have succeeded.

Evaluating the past 5 months, the areas in which I have failed the most have been in the areas that have required taking time. Not that I haven’t been without excuses. This morning, for example, caused me to find a car that could borrow to take a lunch that my daughter forgot to her school and make it back to attend chapel at CINCEL by 7:45 AM all after running 3 miles and getting the boys showered and ready. I say this not to complain, but to show that time is something that has a tendency to slip through my fingers. Unless I mark out a place in time intentionally, I never get the time that I need to do the things that I believe are important, like pray with purpose, read the Bible allowing the words to affect my soul, and be an intentional spouse and father. I have been recommitting myself to these priorities.

In recent days, Kelly and I have started reading a devotional “My Utmost for His Highest” together. It has served as a springboard for sharing our feelings and out prayer needs like never before. But it would never have been realized unless we had put aside the books for a few minutes in order to share this time together. This last weekend, Joseph and I went on to a Father/Son camp. The picture above is of Joseph and me along with a few of the friends that we made there. We spent time learning to build fires, (campfires), shoot BB rifles, and roll in the mud. Certainly none of these activities was necessary on its own, but the time that I spent with him was priceless, especially as I got to see him pass to the altar on Saturday night to accept Christ.

We received a statistic from DeLonn Rance, a fellow missionary and AGTS professor that said that 90% of missionaries spend less than 10 minutes a day in prayer. Why: I believe for lack of time. I can understand this. I see my time taken up with homework, study, projects, preaching, and miscellaneous activities everyday, but I can’t allow them to be my excuses. I need to take time, time from the urgent in order to do the most important. How about you?

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Sickness, missionary ingenuity and why tubs are scarce in Costa Rica

June 1, 2006 in CostaRica, Culture, Day2Day, Prayer by Dave | 3 comments

Well you can’t tell from the picture, but this week found Jonathan sick for the third time in 2 weeks. This time with a fever. We are now in the start of the rainy season here, and like what happens in the States during the onset of winter, it seems like people come down with sicknesses during this time of year in Costa Rica.

With the kids in the Kinder program here at CINCEL it has been quite a ride. The ladies are doing there best to keep up, but sickness has taken hold of many as the children pass germs more readily because of the need to stay indoors. Today, the day Jonathan went back, three were sent home with fevers or symptoms of infection. So pray, please, for the kidos. When they’re down it really adds to the pressure of learning and adapting to the language/culture.

Now of course with sickness comes the great variety of home remedies, and Costa Ricans have an abundance. (One that was prescribe for the stomach flu that hit last week was a rice/cinnamon drink.) Now one home remedy that most believe in is the use of a tepid bath to bring down a high temperature. The only problem is that, here, bathtubs are almost as scarce as dish washers!

So what is one to do with a sick child, and no tub in which to give a bath. Well, if you are a missionary, you improvise! We hauled 11 action packers full of clothes and household stuff to Costa Rica. Their size and shape made them perfect for the taking on the plane with us, but the one-piece plastic construction also makes for a great substitute for a tub for a toddler with a temperature among other things. (Fellow missionary Kevin Stewart used one of his for a bassinet for his newborn.) So, the night before last, Jonathan got one of only a handful of baths in Costa Rica. Only this time his plastic tub also doubles as a suitcase.

That brings me to the last part of the post. Why are bath tubs so scarce here in Costa Rica? Well, the first answer that I received to that question was that it was because they were so expensive. However, is it because they are scarce that they are expensive, or is it because they are expensive that they are scarce? (If that confused you email me and I’ll explain that subtlety.) So in probing deeper, Kelly found that the Costa Ricans believe in taking cold showers. They feel that the cold shower helps their skin to stay younger, and helps their breathing as well. (One teacher explained that deep breath that one takes in when entering the cold stream is good for the lungs.) In fact, missionary Jon Dalahger when hosting a building team had to have electric shower heads installed in homes where the construction workers would be housed because none of the homes in that area had hot water tanks. So, according to one theory, since tubs are usually for taking baths in hot water, the fact that Ticos shower in cold water made the tub unnecessary.

So, if you are planning trip to Costa Rica, don’t assume your hotel will have a tub, or hot water for that matter, and if you are traveling with the kids, you may be surprised at how versatile your luggage can be.

Update: 6/7/2006 Jim Cottril has included this post in his compilation of missionaries blogging about culture on Missionary Blog Watch Check out his comments and the other posts that he has included.

The tongue…

May 24, 2006 in Day2Day, Language, Progress by Dave | 1 comment

A thing for talking. A thing for taming. A thing for tasting?

It’s funny how things seem to tie together in one’s life, but I recently came upon an interesting convergence of sorts. I was planning for my first Spanish Bible Study, and I was reading in James 3:1-12 where James talks about the tongue as an uncontrollable fire that can burn up our very lives. As I wondering how we could control such a savage beast, Myra, one of our Costa Rican friends, was introducing us to a new dish, tongue! Aha! I said to myself, pull it out and serve it for dinner! Of course, the idea quickly left the table of viable options.

However, As cataloged in one of our classmate’s blog, the tongue of a cow (pictured in Kelly’s hand) is indeed an edible, and actually quite tasty item. It is slow cooked overnight and then simmered in tomato sauce. (Myra used Prego.) The outer covering is removed during the process produce a very soft, pleasant meat.

Of course it may come to mind that what you are tasting may have at one time been able to taste you, but really, how many of us really know what goes into some of the things that we eat…like hot dogs? I highly recommend cow tongue, but if you buy it for the family, be sure to buy a big one, or get two because they shrink when you cook them.

But back to the convergence, the taming of the tongue is a daily process, is it not? We have now been in this stage of language-learning for about 8 months, and one of the more difficult things I have dealt with has been the phonetics involved in producing what I want to say. In Spanish a word with the same letters and different accent can have a completely different meaning. Also, words like “aeropuerto”, or “inmediatamente” were just a challenge for this Gringo to master. At times I’ve wanted to ask where I could buy a Spanish tongue so that I could trade it out with my American one before heading into class, but I have realized that there is no shortcut to pronunciation. It takes time and patience in order to speak correctly a foreign language.

So it is with God’s process in taming the words that we say, be it in out native language or a foreign one. We must admit that we need His intervention to pull out some of our cynicism, sarcasm, and complaining. It is a decision to allow Him to do his work, but it is also a process that takes time and a continual dependence upon the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I have more to say on this in my Bible Study (in Spanish).

So there you have it: The tongue: a thing for talking (in languages foreign or domestic), for taming (through time and the work of the Spirit), and, as long as it is tongue of cow, a thing for tasting!

It Lives!

May 16, 2006 in Day2Day, Misc by Dave | 1 comment

You may have remembered my casualties post, in which I had written about my Pocket PC that met its demise when I fell on it during a practice for the Luis Palau outreach earlier this Spring. Well, it lives again!

Proving that God indeed cares for the details in life, I had thought about purchasing a new screen for the PC after the fall, but the price, nearly $150, the hassle that is involved in shipping anything overseas, and the fact that Kelly philanthropically donated hers to me made me put off the purchase. I put the unit aside and put it out of my mind. On the desk it sat, unusable until our children decided it was time again to explore.

Rebekah, Joseph, and Jonathan are adventurous types. They would rather be anywhere but in their own home. So when Uncle Garritt and Aunt Tara* arrived home, they decided that they need to go upstairs to “see” their apartment, even though they had seen it many times before. The permission granted by the Kenyons allowed the kids to hang out in a different place for awhile, but it also gave the adults a chance to talk.

Garritt likes technology and gadgets abound in his apartment. Blessed with new iPods before coming to the field, he “just happened” to have a Dell Axim x30 that he wasn’t using, not the same exact unit as the one I broke but with the exact same screen. I told him of my situation, and he offered it to us free of charge. So after about 30 minutes of wrestling with both units, I was able to swap the screen of the lesser, functioning model for the screen of my non-functioning unit, and, as the picture shows, the old friend is resurrected!

That a replacement part for my specific Pocket PC could be hand delivered free of charge to Zapote, San José, Costa Rica to our apartment complex is absolutely a miracle. Situations like this remind me that God is truly in control of the big picture and the details as well.

*In A/G Missionary Culture, adults in the missionary family are called Uncles and Aunts by the missionary kids.

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Here Comes the Rain

May 15, 2006 in CostaRica, Missions, Prayer by Dave | 5 comments

As I had mentioned in a previous post, the country of Costa Rica has only two seasons, the wet and the dry seasons. We have enjoyed about 3 months now of dry sunny weather, but for the past week except for yesterday, it has rained every day. The picture above is a view of the storm clouds rolling in once again.

It’s funny how the changes in the weather can bring about a thoughtful attitude, but activity in the blogsphere has helped push me into a pensive mood as well. A post written by Amy Maxwell has caused me to think a bit about our lives as Christians, and how we view our relationship with God. Her question was a question about how we pray. Amy, along with her husband Joel, is now in the process of a personal storm of trying to pay off the debt of a failed business, and she asked:

Should we pray for sunny days? Praise God IN the storm? Praise God DESPITE the storm? Praise God FOR the storm?

This isn?t just a word game. These are drastically different ways of looking at and dealing with life.

It struck me as an interesting question, and many of us, out of our experiences or studies would be able to respond stating the method we feel that is correct or that more suits our personal style. However, I felt compelled to respond in a different way:

My opinion is that, for questions like these, it is best to turn to the prayer book of the Bible, Psalms. In it we see all kinds of prayers that may not fit with our personal style. There are prayers of questioning, prayers of frustration, and prayers asking for God to bring judgment. Also, there are prayers of praise and prayers that ask for God?s blessing.

What does this teach us? That there are some prayers that are better and some that are worse? I think no. (Perhaps there are some that come from a more mature understanding of God?s ways.) But I think that the important point that Psalms makes is that we should pray. Praise in the good and bad. Pray for God?s peace and blessing, and sometimes just pray in such a way that we spill out everything that is in us before Him.

Sometimes what comes out won?t be pretty, but in all of our laughing and crying, praising and (perhaps) cursing, words of faith and frustration, I believe that God is working something out in us through His Spirit, and we are telling Him that He is more than a heavenly vending machine. He is our perfect, heavenly Father. And, who knows, when we are done, maybe He?ll have time to say something to us.

You see, I feel that we as Christians spend so much time on how we should pray that we fail to actually take time to pray. This is evident even in some of the new, and might I say, well though out missionary blogs that have popped up on missionary-blogs.com. Both The M Blog in this post on Trinitarian Theology and RTBM in “Returning to Biblical Missions” question our methodologies and challenge us to take a new look at our dependence on the Spirit. How better to do this but to bend our knees in prayer?

Who knows, maybe this post was something I needed to write simply to air out some thoughts, but perhaps this question of this mother of 2 in Springfield and the thoughts of two veteran missionaries will do what it did to me: reignite a desire to pray!

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More Adventures in Eating

May 8, 2006 in CostaRica, Culture by Dave | 1 comment

Have you ever eaten a flower before? (No, I’m not talking about the couple of dandelions that you may have swallowed as a child) Well we just had some for lunch!

Here in Costa Rica, a white flower that grows on the Itabo tree (shown in the large photo) is now in bloom, and, on many street corners and country roads, one can see vendors selling bunches of these. Known as “The Flower of the Dead” in Nicaragua, this flower is a regular meal here in Costa Rica.

Our friend Mayra had us get some from the property of CINCEL in order to make what is shown in the inset picture. The green, bitter part is removed, and then the flower is boiled with potatoes before frying with eggs, onions, some pepper, and salt to taste. The resulting mixture is then placed over tortillas in order to make a delicious “gallo”, or snack served over a corn tortilla.

Reactions were mixed here in the household. I enjoyed the meal, eating four of the gallos de itabo. Kelly and Rebekah as well commented that the food was delicious. Jonathan ate all of his, without asking for seconds and Joseph had to be told to finish. All in all, I would rate it a success but designed for more mature taste buds.

Interested in seeing some other interesting dishes? Head on over to missionary-blogs.com to take a look at The Kautz Family Blog’s enty: “La-la-la Lengua”

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Belated Remarks

May 6, 2006 in CostaRica, Misc, Missions by Dave | Permalink

Cinco de Mayo, the holiday celebration that com- memorates the Mexican victory during of the Battle of Puebla, has passed without even the thought of a Mariachi band as pictured in the post. In fact, here in Costa Rica, we had let the day slip until Anthony Scoma, a pastor friend from Texas reminded us. (BTW, Anthony, the Yankees won last night. It wasn’t pretty, but they won!)

Still, we didn’t let the day pass without celebrating. We had the opportunity to celebrate with a Tico (Costa Rican) family who had invited us over for a cafecito. A cafecito is a light meal that takes place as early as 3:00 PM and as late as 5:00 PM, in which there are snacks, sandwiches, and some sweets, and of course, coffee! We had a wonderful time speaking in Spanish for 4 hours as the kids played through the house. Times like these help us realize how far we have come since arriving in Costa Rica back in August of last year.

It is a satisfying thing really. Language school is a transition time, and it is easy to focus on the field so much that we fail to identify with the culture and the people here in Costa Rica. We are glad to have been a part of the lives of so many Ticos, who through their generosity have welcomed us into their lives. The sad thing about it all is that just as we have advanced in our language skills to the point that we the opportunity to form relationships with others, we are looking forward to leaving Costa Rica in 3 short months. Still, we’ll choose to enjoy the time and the relationships that we have.

Update: 5-07-2006 Andy Raatz A/G Missionary to Moldova has some thoughts on transition here

Photo Credits: Java Cafe (2006). Mariachi Dreams. Retrieved 05/06/2006 from https://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=93107466&size=m

Happy Monday!

May 1, 2006 in Coffee, CostaRica, Culture, Day2Day by Dave | 5 comments

There is a saying in Costa Rica that reads, “Lunes ni las gallinas ponen”, which means On Mondays, not even the hens are laying. We certainly can relate to Mondays in that way. With all of the activities and projects, it sometimes seems like we need another weekend in order to rest from our weekend. For this reason, it is important to start off with a good breakfast to get our energy going, and on days like today, Costa Rica’s national holiday of Labor Day, we have the time to prepare it.

For starters:
Of course, no breakfast is complete without a good cup of coffee, but how to prepare it? Prepare it Costa Rican style, café chorreado. First, you need a chorreador, the coffe maker pictured in this post, which essentially is a cloth bag suspended by one of a various arry of wooden frames. I picked up what I thought was a fairly attractive one for about $12. The coffee, ground fairly fine, is placed in the wet bag at the desired strength. (I prefer 2 tbls. per 6 oz. of water.) Then, water, just off of the boil, is poured over the grounds slowly, so as to create a stream, or “chorro” from the bag into the cup. The result is a fine brew that allows the natural oils of the coffee to pass through to the cup. And although many Ticos have switched to the “coffee maker” because of convenience, the choreador is still the most repected way to make coffee.

The main course:
OK, the coffee is taken care of, but what to eat? Gallo Pinto of course! The traditional breakfast food of Costa Rica, Gallo Pinto consists of beans, (normally black) and rice to which is added cilantro, bell peppers, onions, and the top secret ingredient, Salsa Lizano. A truly Tico flavoring that gives gallo pinto it’s charateristic taste. Added to this is usually eggs, the tomato for color, and in this picture, some Mexican chorizo or spicy sausage. We added it to give the meal some Mexican zing. (We are missionaries to Mexico.)

So there you have it, a good Monday morning pic me up. Sorry that this came on Tuesday for those of you who are subscribing via email.

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