Lost in Translation

I kept forgetting to take a picture of James, but this week I remembered. He's become a great friend, as he usually spends Sunday afternoon with us, and I have a Bible study with him on Thursdays. We laughed about the picture . . . Colombian coffee and American milk (okay, it sounds better in Spanish, but you get the idea). I'm pretty excited about our new prayer update site. If you want to pray for us intelligently on a weekly basis, check it out!

James and Jon

Yep, Holly has joined the ranks of the bloggers. You can check out her beautiful site at Boyd Bear Tracks.

We have two days of vacation this week, so I'm working on redesigning our website. I just added a new prayer update site. You can visit it now at Prayer Update.

Lancaster Garden

We're in Semana Santa ("Holy Week") here. During this week half of San Jose leave for the beach and the other half get together with relatives. We had classes Monday through Wednesday but have the rest of the week off.

Our two paseos last weekend were excellent. Costa Rica truly is a tierra bendita ("blessed land"). The volcano we saw was interesting, although the botanical garden was even more incredible. Picture about fifty acres of every conceivable plantlife . . . a bamboo forest, leaves the size of Lucas, drop-dead gorgeous flowers of every color. I always praise God when I see his creation!

We also visited a nice restaurant with our group. Costa Ricans know how to cook!

The kids have still been sick, but we're praying that things are getting better.

Tomorrow we go on our first paseo (outing) outside of the San Jose area since we arrived in Costa Rica. We're gong to visit a volcano and see some other tourist sites with a group of 10 other people from the language school. Then on Sunday our church is going on an all-day paseo. There'll be food, games (soccer of course), an evangelistic message, swimming, etc. I think that the church often does baptisms on their paseos as well.

Speaking of which, it looks like I'll get the privilege of baptizing James in the near future. He said that he would be blessed to have me baptize him, and of course I would be very blessed to do so.

If you've been praying for James, thank you! He's doing very well in his walk with God. We've started memorizing some verses together during our weekly discipleship time. He just finished memorizing the books of the NT. Please pray for his work. He's designed a magazine that will serve as a restaurant guide for San Jose, and now he's busy selling advertising space in the magazine. As you can imagine, this is a ton of work, and we're praying that it comes out very well for him.

The Kids with "Stockings"

I notice that it's been a while since I posted anything to our blog. This last week was pretty busy, especially for Holly. She had a one-hour Bible lesson and a two-hour presentation on Colombia. I taught our grammar class on Friday, leading a discussion of the preposition "a" in Spanish. Hmmm . . . it's amazing that you need an hour lecture just to begin to grapple with the uses of a one-letter preposition.

We bought a small rabbit for the kids yesterday. He's grey and white. Maybe I'll upload a picture in the near future. Holly asked Lucas what we should call him. He instantly answered, "Stockings." I'm constantly amazed at his ability to communicate.

My discipleship time with James this week was excellent. I've been very pleased with his progress and desire to learn the Word and apply it in his life. What a blessing!

It was a blessing to talk to our new senior pastor at Campus Baptist yesterday--Pastor Will Hatfield. I praise God leading Will to the position. I've been praying more for our church now than I did when I was in the U.S.

Not much on the docket for today. Maybe we'll take a trip into San Jose to a Christian bookstore. I really need to get a new stash of tracts. I ran out of them a week or two ago.

I shared the word "precoz" today with my Spanish class in reference to Lucas. Can you guess what it means? Yep, precocious. That little guy can be pretty funny. His newest line when I'm leaving is, "Daddy, be a good boy and play nice with James." He also enjoys talking about his Bible story each night (when he's not so tired that he can't function). He often has an extended commentary on whatever topic we may be reading about. I think that he's been a little frustrated by his lack of ability in Spanish, but today he touched my hand smoothly and said, "suave," then he hit me (playfully) and said "duro!"

Thanks for your prayers. My discipleship time with James today was another huge blessing. We talked about assurance of salvation and eternal security, and he understood it very well.