**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