Celebrating the Gift of Life: May 2009

Well I have spent mulitple hours trying to figure out how to put a slide show of pictures on my blog and finally it worked but you cannot see the captions under the photos that I had typed in to tell our story. I do think if you double click on a photo as its scrolling through you can see them in a larger print and read the captions. UGH... sometimes this blogging is too hard for me! I will share a few of our favorites here that hopefully will tell our story.

Last week we had the wonderful opportunity to go with the JBU women's basketball team on a mission trip to Costa Rica. At the end of the week I made the statement to Kacey that I thought she'd grown up over the week and she said "me too"! In all honesty, I think we all grew up that week. We had the opportunity to serve God in ways that most of us never had, to live in a place that although clean it was not home! And ultimately to trust God to protect us from germs, drug dealers and crazy traffic. But most of all to see that Gods Love transcends language barriers and human obstacles.

We arrived on Saturday night and Sunday morning we went to a church in Los Guidos, one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Jose. It didn't take long to see the heart of Pastor Gabriel and his love for the people in that neighborhood. He quickly become one of our favorite people!

Above is a picture of Pastor Gabriel with us in one of the homes that we took food to in a place they call "The Hole"

We visited the Hole a second time which was not what was on the agenda but it was certainly on all of our hearts so we asked to go back. In this experience I continued to think about a game we had played with some friends the night before we left. The premise of the game was that you only need to obey the King (which symbolically was the Lord) and there were lots of obstacles and unknowns that would confuse us along the way. That is how it felt on this mission trip.. that we only need to obey our King and there is no boundaries on how we show love to others. God is love and that comes in many forms and fashions. It was a good experience to watch the girls wrestle that thought process out and come back to the fact that we are called to love and to go where God leads us inspite of what others may be expecting of us.

We also had the privilege of visiting an orphange twice while we were there. The first day the children mauled us when we got off of the bus. We had taken a number of crafts to do with them but after our attempt at making bracelets with them we decided to just play. Our beads for the bracelets were gone in a matter of seconds stuffed in all their little pockets. Before the day was done some of the beads came back out and we were able to successfully make a few bracelets for the kids. Kacey made friends with two girls at the orphanage, Abby and Natalie. She was able to play uno with them on both of our visits and continues to pray for them often.

Abby, Kacey and Whitney (Her other friend Natalie was at school on our second visit when this photo was taken. They do half days of school so part go in the morning and the others in the afternoon)

We also folded and stamped 2000 tracts that we passed out in down town San Jose. Something I've certainly never done before. I felt so restricted since I could not speak their language and most the time I did not have a translator with me. One lady in her broken english says "what's this about" which I said the Love of Jesus (although I have NO IDEA what it said on the brochure we just trust those who gave them to us!) and for a moment I thought what is it that I'm really handing out to these people LOL! Breck handed one to a man who read it on the spot and filled out the tear off tab to give back to us. I was so sad I could not speak with him but I did get the opportunity to take his picture with Breck so we can remember to pray for him!

Because this was an athletic mission trip there was also a whole lot of basketball that was played! Each night JBU would play another team around the San Jose area and after each game one of our players would share a portion of what God has taught them to the other team and then Raymond, from SCORE International, would share the gospel. We were very proud of each of the girls who chose to share and know that God will use their stories in ways they may not ever see on this side of Heaven

For fun we went zip lining! We hiked up a mountain range and then rode five different zip lines on the way down. I was so proud of my kids! They did super and often they had to be the first ones down because their guides needed to get to the other side to help all the rest of us get off! We also had 3 dogs that traveled along with us on this day and for those of you that have seen Kacey around dogs you would have been amazed. This was definitely a trip for facing her fears in regards to dogs. They were not only hiking along with us but there were everywhere. In the hole she had to step over and around them!

It was a great trip. The team has a motto

"Golden Eagles united together forever"

I think after this experience they will be. It was a blessing to see them grow together in their faith.

Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than them. Matt 6:26

My prayer for these people all week long was that I hope they know God SEES them. We may come and go but Gods love and care is constant!

Thank you for all your prayers for us while we were there. We felt them and knew we were being prayed for!