Change of Blog Title

Greetings all. Now that we have been back from Costa Rica for just over a month, I have decided to change this blog over to a general blog for Kimberly and myself. We can't promise that we will update it often; we need to still get used to this, but check in periodically for news, happenings and most of all, our journey on this adventure of life.

- Jeff

**We are at the Charlotte airport awaiting our connection home. I wrote this yesterday morning hoping to connect yesterday but it never happened. I will update Monday and Tuesday so you can get the full details. They were a great 2 days!!***

Hey Everyone! I am glad to finally update again after the long weekend of no connection! We are doing great and enjoying waking up to such beautiful sunshine for just another couple days, well aware of what awaits us back in Chicago. Though it is chilly at times up in the mountains where we are staying & working, the view is breathtaking any time we wish to look around and the sun continues to wrap us in its warmth. (deep breath, ahhh). This weekend was full for us. Saturday we helped out a family of the church by tearing down their house. The structure was

badly damaged as you can see in the pictures; there was nothing they could salvage. This picture through the windows of a bedroom shows where the dirt from a mini landslide has filled in their functioning green house. The

family is staying with the next door neighbor until they can get the money to build. The government will help rebuild, but only if you have a title to the house. This home is, in fact, this family’s home, but when they acquired it they were not given a title, so they can receive no help from the government. We were glad to spend our day helping them in the tear down phase. We all enjoyed the physical part of demolition and ripping this home apart; we worked together well and felt like a team. However, most difficult part for me was when I was using the mallet to bust out the walls of the back bedroom. I was just swinging away when I looked over at this little boy staring at me with this sad face (see picture). I realized at that moment this was his room I was destroying. He stood there like this for a half hour or so. A couple people from t

he team had to walk away because of the tears. It was a difficult moment for us all. For us, just another day of work together, and for this family, their lifelong home destroyed. Whew. They were really grateful, however, and thanked us profusely at the end of the day. See the picture together before we left.

Sunday was a fun day. We packed up from our hotel that morning due to and large group coming to the hotel we were already staying. We spent some time walking around the beautiful grounds there and taking a “coffee trail” where you can see coffee growing (picture) and read some interesting facts about it (picture). We then hea

ded to the church where we were going to redecorate their sanctuary. They began taking down the Christmas décor the day before the earthquake and never got it finished. So we spent the day taking it down, purchasing new fabric, and giving some new life to them through giving their church a facelift. We enjoyed our work very much that day and were so glad to be able to bless them with some fresh life in their worship center. Just like us, their environment matters to them; so to add some color and life was fun! (see before/after pics). They were grateful and love it! Sunday evening was a great church service, Jeff got to run sound J and then we all headed to a wonderful steak restaurant. We all enjoyed fresh strawberry shakes (picture) and large Argentinean steaks.

First steak I have had in over 5 years…great way to break the drought! They were excellent. The pastor and his family joined us. You can see Jeff and Roy together (picture) and Roy’s son (little Roy) with the restaurant owner’s new little puppy. And yes, the puppy joined us in the restaurant. He was so cute! We ended the night with some traditional Costa Rican coffee (pic) and tiramisu. Then off to our new hotel for the night.

Today we are helping some stuff at the shelter and the church. We will probably do a bit of souvenir shopping later today or tomorrow before we catch our plane home. So if you expect a souvenir you had better leave a comment! :) Thanks again for praying and following along. If you saw the van we were in and the precarious roads and landslides are were driving along, you would pray endlessly for us during the day :)! All our love!

Jeff & Kimberly

Strawberries and Sinkholes

Hey Everyone,
I am taking a break from cleaning the church's community center where earthquake victim's have been staying since the tragedy. Our morning consisted of taking a tour of the damaged areas the government would allow us to go. We got about 3 miles from the epicenter before we had to turn around and have some telling pictures of the roads and damage.
One of the most interesting moments for me was driving along the very road I saw on the news back home, where the first two little girls where killed. All of this devastation is backdropped by this beautiful countryside with lush green and storms that go in and out at the top of the mountain. It is beautiful. Along with the homes that were damaged was the farming/agriculture. The main concerns seem to be the cows and the strawberries. We stopped by a strawberry farmer hoping to salvage 40% of his crop this harvest. Can you imagine if you income suddenly dropped by 60% for the next 3 months? It's so sad. However, the strawberries were wonderful! And amidst seeing all this our team was not without the comic relief of me falling up to my waist in a small sinkhole (below).











It appeared to be solid until I stepped on it and got sucked in instantly. Honestly, I was a bit scared because I went down so fast, but I climbed out just as fast (thank you, adrenaline). After my heart started beating again, we realized I was just wet and smelly, it could be worse. As I write this I am finally dry, but probably still a bit smelly. Luckily the community center had some fresh socks for me when we arrived! Check out the picture!! Well, I better get back to cleaning, thanks for all your prayers and support. Keep commenting, we love to hear from you! Love, Kimberly

We're Here

Don't have long, in the middle of a work project, which included getting the computer center up and running at the church's community center. Finally online. More to come, but just wanted to let you all know we got here safe and sound. Everything is going well. Tons of pics already to sort through to give you all a quick update.

Jeff

On Our Way

Greetings from lovely Charlotte!

2:45am was certainly a rude awakening. We are sitting at CLT (Charlotte Douglas Airport) after our first leg of the journey. We got about a 2 hour layover here, and most of the gang is actually getting some breakfast. Kimberly and I are sitting in a big terminal, eating some food bars, taking pictures and now as I type Kimberly is asleep on the floor.


Our departure had only one slight issue. We were dropped of at terminal 2 at O'Hare for our US Airways flight only to find that in the small print of our itenerary, that our flight was operated by United, so onto the train to terminal 1. Ah, planes trains and automobiles. This is why we go to the airport early...

Fun observation: a guy on the plan, mind you it's like 6:30 at this point, actually had a Heineken. Good morning. Of coarse as I sit here across from the Carolina Beer Co., I can't say that I wouldn't enjoy an oatmeal stout that's being advertised.


Costa Rica update -

We have been informed that our hotel has changed and we thought it was this place, but after looking where this place is, it seems that it is over an hour away from where we will be serving. Oh well, guess we won't be suffering for Jesus at that "resort". Certainly looked like a fun place with a beautiful view of a nice volcano. Not sure of what our internet access may be. Hopefully this will not be our only post.

Our friend Josh and a buddy of his will be picking us up when we get there. Josh is from the Dominican Republic and has been volunteering at Willow for just over a year now. He was down in his homeland and then traveled over to Costa Rica a few days ago to join us on our trip.

Talk to you soon.

updates

Here's a link to some updates on what's happening down in Costa Rica. You can navigate around the website as well to get a picture of what the church is doing down in that part of the world.

link to photo album

check out photos from my first trip to Costa Rica back in 2003.

Earthquake

You may or may not have heard, that last Thursday (Jan 8th), an 6.1 earthquake rocked Costa Rica just northwest of San Jose. In fact it was very near one of the churches (CCS) we will be visiting on our trip. As we have been discerning how best to utilize our time down there over the last couple of weeks, Glenn our trip leader felt that our time should have a humanitarian aspect to it. Serving in a shelter, feeding the homeless, building houses. As the events of this past week have unfolded, it is becoming clear that these promptings have somewhat prepared us to turn our efforts to helping in earthquake relief.


Here is a snippet of an email from Pastor Roy who is the main person we will be getting direction from as where to serve.

The situation in Fraijanes, Poasito and the other small communities near
the base of the volcano are very affected. In Fraijanes 16 people died.
From CCS alone 14 families lost their homes completely. The
majority of the others have damage of 60 to 70% including Roy 's home.
The Community Center is being used to house families that have lost their homes
(the gym was not that affected but the vocational center has some cracked walls
and the computers are all on the ground many broken). The quake lasted
22seconds. The last quake of significance in Fraijanes was in 1988.
CCS is being sought out by all the authorities and surrounding
communities to lead as people search for the next steps. Roads and
bridges have been affected so normal communication with San Jose is broken (one
long route is available). Continue to Pray for CCS and the network
churches and the communities of the region.

welcome mesage

Hello all! We are so glad that you are here and are able to join us on our trip through this medium. We are also extremely grateful for your support of Kimberly and me as we are serving in this unique way. We wanted to have this as a cool way to keep you updated on all the happenings of our trip. As we have time (and internet access) we will post stories, thoughts, pictures and any news.

-Jeff & Kimberly