HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

To all our loved ones - all our family and friends back home...and those of you we may not know that read our blog. HAPPY THANKSGIVING! We hope you have a very special day.

If you're worried about us missing out, don't worry - looks like we'll have at least two Thanksgiving dinners here in Costa Rica. I'm making pies tonight. The pumpkin smells and looks awesome but the pecan pie...how do you say "flop" in Spanish?!?! Oh well. Since I still have a hankering for a pecan pie I'll try a different recipe tomorrow. I'm struggling to get used to our oven here, plus a different altitude and ingredients that are just different enough to completely destroy my time-tried favorite recipes! (Not to mention the fact that I packed all my cookbooks and recipes in our shipment for Ecuador...which is sitting in a hangar in Colorado waiting to be shipped.)

We have school in the morning and then are heading over to some friends house to watch American football (YIPEE!) and eat and eat some more. I was surprised tonight (and so was Sean!) when I completely fell apart thinking about not being with family or enjoying the usual traditions - I don't like being so far away sometimes. It doesn't help that we've hit the 6 month mark (when it is normal to have another bout with culture shock) during the holiday season!

I keep coming back to something a fellow student spoke about in chapel on Tuesday. GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. Wow. Here we are so far from family, far from what we know, far from good old-fashioned traditions that were a part of who we were. We don't have a car (which is really starting to get annoying!), our bed is killing our backs, our couch could seriously injure you if you sat in the wrong spot. We're struggling to learn a language, being corrected over and over again, we're still learning how many ways we've offended people with the Spanish we do have, we don't understand our church services.... BUT GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. The wonderful thing about where we are in life - in a new country, learning a language, "camping out" for a year - is that it drives us that much closer to God. And we have discovered that in every trial, every situtation GOD'S GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving season? God's grace.

That and the fact that Brooklyn is now potty trained. YES!

ThanksWHATing?

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is this week. Call me crazy (or ignorant) but until we lived here I really never made the connection that Thanksgiving is really just a North American holiday. When we lived in Canada they had Thanksgiving, although it was on a different day. But here it's just another Thursday. We even have school that day - ohhh the humanity... We'll survive somehow. But I'm taking pumpkin pie to school anyway (thanks Mom for bringing down some canned pumpkin). Those of us that are gringos and feel we must stuff ourselves with turkey and ,well, stuffing will be getting together on Saturday to celebrate the big day. My sweet Mom brought down some little ceramic pilgrims so that I could remember that special day and so they have a prominent place on our bookshelf. They don't particularly stand out and they seem like a pretty sorry attempt at creating a fall-like Thanksgiving atmosphere in the tropics ...*sigh*. But I can really relate with the pilgrims that came to the New World to make a new life for themselves in a strange new land ...

Christmas, on the other hand, has already begun. Because there is no Thanksgiving here people started getting out the decorations at the beginning of November. Although there is Christmas stuff everywhere, it is very hard to believe that it isn't still July. We read in the news that it is
1 degree (F) with wind chill back home in Colorado while here it has been in the 80's. I relate Thanksgiving and the beginning of Christmas season with the first day of ski season ... not the beginning of summer! And that is what they call the season we are getting into here in Costa Rica - "summer" as opposed to "winter" which is the rainy season. On bright, sunny days our teachers say "Oh, it's beginning to feel like Christmas!" WHAT?!?

We went ahead and bought a cheap $9 plastic Christmas tree, a string of lights and some ornaments. Let me just say that the tree looks worth about $3. Somehow, that attempt at making it feel more "holiday-ish" only made me feel worse! I'll take a picture of the tree and post it later - I want to wait till it's at least dark and the tree doesn't look quite so ridiculous and pathetic! But, we have a beautiful HUGE poinsetta plant that somebody came by our house selling for about $4. It is beautiful - better than we usually get at Wal-Mart every year and we can plant it outside and have a tree!

Most importantly, we have lots of family coming to see us over the Christmas break. We feel blessed to be here and to be able to share such a different experience with our families. A weird thought is that Brooklyn's idea of Christmas will be very different from ours as she grows up in the mission field in tropical climates! She'll probably have a hard time adjusting to snow and cold at Christmastime when she's older. She'll be 5 the first time she sees real snow and remembers it, when we come home on furlough in 3 years. Wow. But she'll have some awesome experiences that your average, every day kid in the US may never experience. We figure it all balances out. We might miss seeing the snow but Brooklyn won't care at all.

The dog ate my homework

Yesterday when we came home I was looking out in our yard and saw something interesting other than dog scat. Oh yes, upon further inspection it was just as I thought. You see, here in Costa Rica, there are no addresses per se, and thus no mailboxes, well almost none. So any mail we recieve from the electric, water, and phone companies just gets stuck in our gate, and they hope it just stays there and the wind doesn't blow it away, that it doesn't get rained on ect. Well in our case yesterday, add a new one to the list, that your dog doesn't eat your bill. I was able to find out enough from what few remants were left to determine how much we owe, but I do not know when it is due. They sometimes get delivered late. You never know.

Last night Brooklyn just melted mommie and daddy's heart when we were putting her to bed. She told us for the first time in her own words that she loves us. Except to make it even sweeter, it was in Spanish. "Te amo" is the phrase in Spanish that she used. How sweet!!!

American Futbol

We had a chance this afternoon to watch the Denver Broncos play the much hated Raiders. I have not been able to watch much football here in Costa Rica for obvious reasons, we're not in Kansas anymore Toto! But there is a couple here at language school from Denver and they are Bronco's fans as well. So they found out that the Broncos were going to be aired this week down here and invited us over to watch and also eat dinner afterwards. It was a lot of fun just to see football and to be reminded of some of the things of home. The funny thing about watching this afternoon was this, the game was televised by CBS, but here FOX bought the rights and showed it on Spanish FOX. Because of this the commentating was also in Spanish. So in one corner of the TV screen was the CBS logo, the other corner was the FOX logo with the score, and then the commentating was in Spanish. But it was still fun and the Broncos even won. It is funny the things you take for granted like just watching a simple football game in your own language. For those of you that don't like commentators much anyway, I think you would prefer them in your own language anyhow.

On a side note, tommoro begins our last of 5 weeks for this trimester. It is going to go very fast as our schedule is already packed with various things and activities, and then it will be all over. Only one more trimester to go! We can't wait.

Survival of the Dumbest?

Yesterday on our way home from school we went with another MAF couple's to their house to pick up some things real quick. They basically live in a duplex, but it is a little more intimate than that. Their neighbor is a “taxista” or a taxi driver. So what this means to them is that Mr. Taxi man has a lot of other “companeros” or co-workers over at anytime of the day. It was reported to us that Thursday night was one of grand celebration for the taxista and his friends, girls, alcohol, you get the picture. Well, when we arrived yesterday (Friday) around 1:00 in the afternoon, the garage had turned into a repair shop. At our co-workers house they also “share” the garage. Like most garages here it is very nice and clean and even laid in tile. Anyway, all the taxistas were involved in this mechanical endeavor somehow. There were about 5-6 taxi cars in the street, and about that many drivers in the garage. Two of these were underneath the car being worked on while the rest stood around with their arms folded in approval. Then things got interesting. The garage has a slight pitch to it so that water will run out into the street, and you must remember that the floor is nice clean, slick, tile. You know those dinky little jacks that come with your car for changing tires? That is what they were using. All of a sudden, without warning, the jack came shooting out and the car went flying down, yep, on top of the two taxi drivers underneath. Immediately, my coworker and I were doing what we could to lift the front of the car up and get the two guys out. Praise the Lord that they came out just fine and were just slightly banged up. One had a pretty swollen nose, but that may just have been his normal looks. So afterwards, as everyone’s heart rate was slowing and we were all catching our breath by how close that had been, the Cannon’s were off to their house. But not before the Taxi drivers began to jack the car back up without doing anything different to prevent the same thing from happening again. SCARY! Now we know why there are warnings on everything and how to operate it. You cannot teach common sense. Last night we also watched our co-workers kids, 5 and 7 years old, while they went on a much-needed date. Tonight we are going over to have a casual dinner and we (the guys) are going to play flight simulator. But this is no ordinary way of playing a computer game. We run it through my co-worker's computer projector and display it on the wall. So our “screen” becomes about 8 feet by 8 feet. I think we will call this the “missionary wide-screen T.V.”

Tidbits

Tidbits on our surprisingly ordinary life as it stands today:

• Our puppy, Ana, is doing very well. She has a very sweet nature. Brooklyn has learned how to say "NO, Ana, NO!" and they get along much better. We've been making our own "homemade" dogfood and it seems to be working well...not to mention that it is sooo much cheaper. No Ol' Roy here!
• Brooklyn seems to be getting the hang of potty training. We might just be diaper-free by Christmas!!!
• School is going well. We're moving right along through our grammar book. I was encouraged today when I read an entire news article in Spanish and understood it all. Maybe we are getting somewhere! Just for fun, I bought a book (for ages 8-10) in Spanish and have been able to understand it. It is very rewarding to learn a new language. VERY. "Vale la pena." - "It's worth the pain!"
• Our househelper, Isabel, is busy as ever. She is looking forward to going to Mexico in 5-6 months or around the same time that we head off for Ecuador. Until then, (because she didn't have enough to do looking after us) she is taking on a soup kitchen for kids in a poverty-stricken area of the San Jose area. She will continue working for us so that she can feed herself and her own kids. I admire Isabel so much. She has so little but is always looking for ways to give what she does have to those that need it even more than she does. I have learned so much from this special lady and praise God everyday for providing such a wonderful person to help us adjust to this new culture, keep our tile floors shiny, help us with homework, feed us tasty, Costa Rican food, and allow us to practice our bad Spanish at any moment of the day.
• Sean is at the school right now installing the NEW SOUND SYSTEM in the chapel. This is a huge praise. The sound system was ordered from a company in the US, shipped to Texas, then driven to Mississippi, and from there, hand-carried to Costa Rica. And it all arrived in one piece without problems...well, except for the extra soundboard that was sent along with it. We'll have to contact the company and see what can be done about that! Anyway, PRAISE THE LORD. Now just pray that Sean and his buddy are able to get the thing installed!

What do we know?

Today during dinner Brooklyn noticed a moth that was flying around the outside of the dining room window. She was very fascinated with it and so we decided to use it as an opportunity to teach her a new animal name.

"That's an insect." says Dad.
"That's a moth, Brooklyn." says Mom.
"A moth is a kind of insect," we explain. "Can you say moth, Brooklyn?"
Brooklyn looked at us both and then back at the moth. "No, dat's a ducky."
Says Dad, "Yes, it flies like a ducky or a birdie but it is a moth."
With wide, knowing eyes and a rather superior tone, "NO, dat's a ducky."

End of discussion.