Devin's First Sleep-over

We enjoyed a very special time with our national church president's family this past weekend. Two weeks ago we moved from the small apartment where we had lived for the past year and a half into a much more adequate house. We thought that it would be nice to invite the Meneses family to spend a night with us in our new place. It is quite common for us to visit with them at their home in Paraiso, but rarely has it worked out for them to visit us. So this past Friday I picked up their family after the boys got out of school and they spent Friday night and Saturday morning with us. Everyone had a great time, especially the boys! It was the first time that Devin had friends come and spend the night with him.

The Dust is Settling

The dust is beginning to settle, life is slowly getting back to "normal," and it's time to get back to blogging. The last three weeks have been BUSY, BUSY, BUSY! Get the picture? We were privileged to have Br. Lee Rickenbach, our regional director, with us from May 29 through June 1. It was a short visit but a profitable one as we sat down for a number of hours and discussed, prayed about, and planned the future of both the work in Costa Rica as well as our personal ministry. Br. Rickenbach is such an amazing listener, and he is so understanding and wise when it comes to giving advice and direction.

The day that I dropped Br. Rickenbach off was also the day that I picked up the group from Pennsylvania (see our previous post). They got here nearly five hours later than scheduled due to a canceled flight out of Washington, D.C. Needless to say they were all very tired upon arrival, but they were still up bright and early the following day, ready to hit the ground running!

Our first destination was the Arenal Volcano, about a four-hour drive from San Jose. Arenal is one of the most beautiful and most active volcanoes in the country. We checked in at an amazing resort that sat at the base of the volcano and spent two days there. God was good enough to move the clouds and allow us to see some lava flowing from the peak of the volcano that night, something that many visitors miss out on. We went ziplining the second day of our stay. For those of you who have never been on a zipline, you basically hang by a little pulley to a cable and go flying across a canyon. We rode 8 cables, some of which were 600 feet above the rainforest floor and close to 2,000 feet long. It was raining when we went, and at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour you get quite an experience! Everyone enjoyed themselves though, even the girls.

Our groups had a whole unit of rooms pretty much to ourselves.


The landscaping at the resort was simply gorgeous!

We saw a lot of wildlife, including this baby iguana.

This picture was taken from the porch of our unit. We only saw the very top of the volcano once or twice because of the clouds, but it is a perfect cone. Notice that the right side of it is burned bare. This volcano spews lava almost constantly.

This was my first time to go ziplining and boy was it a blast! It was raining steadily, which made the rides even faster.

I'll be posting more about the rest of the group's trip over the next little while so keep checking back! Also, my brother Benjamin is continuing to update the groups blog (click here to visit it). In closing, I would like to give a great big "Thank You!" to the group for their excellent attitudes and participation. We had a lot of fun, but we also ministered and worked a lot. They always put themselves wholeheartedly into everything that they did and never complained. The young people even seemed to enjoy the various national foods that they were served. Great job guys!