The last month and half has been pretty packed with various activities.
In the second week of August I (Douglas) had the privilege of traveling to Washington DC to teach in the first ever Discipleship Training School focused specifically on the deaf community in the US. The US deaf community as a whole is only about 1% Christian and most deaf children born to believing parents never come to Jesus. The whole experience was a real adventure and a huge challenge. Many of my basic teaching methods had to change completely. I am used to putting up a powerpoint and then continuing to talk while the students take notes. But the deaf students, as soon as the powerpoint is up, take their eyes off the translator and all communication has to stop I spent a lot of time standing there in silence waiting for them to finish before communication could continue. There was a beautiful park near the base and one afternoon while taking a walk I was struck by the beautiful sounds of the wind in the trees. Then I was equally struck that my students could not hear any of it. How much there must be about God and creation that I cannot yet even imagine! ( I also got to go to New York for a day. it was my first time there and we had a great time,)A couple of weeks later I was blessed to be able to travel to Tijuana, Mexico for an international YWAM gathering. 750 missionaries from over 50 nations gathered to talk about what God is doing around the world and to get extra training in their areas of ministry. It was an inspirational time and a great opportunity to network with others who share our passion for unreached people groups. However, when it was all done it was so good to come home again to my family after a couple of weeks on the road
As soon as I got back from Mexico Karen and I celebrated our tenth anniversary. It has been a crazy last ten years, most of it spent outside the US working in missions here in Costa Rica. We were able to spend a couple of wonderful days on the coast and got extremely sunburned. You would think that after almost 7 years in central America I would learn but apparently not. 
In the midst of our other activities we have been steadily getting ready to kickoff yet another Bible school which we celebrated last Saturday. This time we have a majority of Spanish speakers , and all of our students have done their discipleship training school here with us in Costa Rica. We are currently in the middle of week 2 studying the Inductive Bible study methods and the book of Acts. They are a great group, very interactive with lots of questions. I taught last week, this week, and a part of the next week so you can pray for our family! We will fill you in on more details as the school progresses.
As you may remember Karen has been transitioning out of the personnel department and is now our community life coordinator so she was able to plan and run our fall quarter kick off. Along with the Bible School we also have 16 new DTS students from around the globe who will be with us here for the next 5 1/2 months.
On Sunday we gathered all the YWAM kids and a couple of visitors from a DTS outreach to celebrate Gabriel's 9th birthday. A few of you may remember that when Gabriel was just 9 months old we first came to Costa Rica to do our own DTS. He learned to walk here in Costa Rica, traveled with us all through Central America and has been such a source of joy and life to us along the way. Gabriel was very excited to receive his first pocketknife for his birthday and we are anticipating the next trip to the ER. 
Looking forward over the next few weeks most of our time is going to be taken up with the Bible school and getting ready for Karen's Mom to come for a three month visit. Then toward the end of Oct. we also have been invited to teach for a week at a new base in Siguatepeque, Honduras. I will be teaching Inductive Bible study methods and Karen will be teaching on personal giftings and God's call on your life. The base is pretty small and is only a couple of years old. They have asked if we would be able to cover the cost of our flight to Honduras which will cost about $300 a piece. We would like to ask you to pray about helping us to be able to bless this base with a donation towards our travel costs. We are going to be setting up a separate account just for this type of ministry travel. There are many bases here in Central America and around the globe that are needing teachers to come for a week but they have very limited resources. We would love to be able to bless them and if you would like to participate in this part of our ministry please write us and we will make sure your donation gets set aside.
Many blessings and thank you for your prayers and gifts as we move forward in the ministry that God has called us to.
Douglas, Karen, Gabriel and Zachariah
P.S. Also to let you all know our lap top died on us a few weeks back. We had some money we were setting aside to help buy a new one but as is usual when one thing happens others are usually close to follow. Last week Karen was in a very minor fender bender and the money we were planning to use for a new lap top went to pay for repairs on the other drivers brand new truck. och! so we are also looking for help to purchase a new but cheap lap top. Karen's Dad will also be coming to visit the first week of Dec. and we would like to have him bring one to us.
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