Happy Holidays from the Johnston family! We hope your
Christmas season has been blessed!
The last couple months since we
last wrote have flown by. We finished up our time in Portland, Oregon right at
the beginning of November and started our prolonged journey home. We spent
about 10 days in Texas, three of them at a leader’s conference with YWAM in
Tyler and then a week with my family in Fort Worth. It was good to catch up
with my brother and sister-in-law and their kids. We have not lived in the same
area for over a decade now and we really treasure these times together. From
Texas we headed to the Bay Area in California to visit my family on my dad’s
side and to spend some time with a couple of supporters and friends that we
have there.
We flew out of
San Francisco on Thanksgiving and arrived safely back in Costa Rica the next
day. Our reentry was a bit rough. Costa Rica is very humid and cool in the
mountains where we live. It’s the perfect environment for mold and we returned
to find out house full of it. While we were in the US we imagined arriving home
and settling in to relax, finally back in our own place. So as you can imagine
it was pretty rough to find the place almost unlivable. We had to wash
literally every item of clothing and bedding in the house and it took several
weeks for us to get it back to “normal.”
Meanwhile, over
the last few months I have had a number of invitations to teach on World Missions
at several of the different YWAM bases in Central America. Unfortunately I had
to turn down a couple of invitations but I was also able to postpone a couple
until we got back. So, in the craziness of a mold filled house, I got to teach,
first a week on the books of Kings and Ester in the Bible School, followed by
two weeks on World Missions, one week in Panama and the other in Nicoya, the northwest
corner of Costa Rica.
The Panama trip was the most
eventful by far. Zachariah and I got all the way to the border only to find
that I have grabbed Karen’s passport instead of my own. I don’t think my family
will ever let me forget it either. As we boarded the bus to head back to San
Jose Riah looks at me and said,” Daddy, we need a miracle.” Feeling very stupid
by this point I replied, “I don’t think there’s any miracle here, just daddy’s
stupidity.” Less than 5 minutes later I got a call from Karen letting me know
that a friend who lives close to the border of Panama was in
San Jose and was bringing the passport to us. Riah looked at me and said
something I will never forget, “See Daddy, you just need more faith!” I don’t
think I have ever felt so humbled. We stayed the night with our friend and his
team of fellow YWAMers who are pioneering a new work on the Caribbean coast and
the next day we headed back to Panama. It ended up being an excellent week of
teaching. I have been working on developing a World Mission curriculum but this
was my first opportunity to teach it and I was very glad to have the
opportunity.
After returning from Panama I
had one down day and then headed out again for Nicoya. I was able to teach the
same material and make some improvements. Karen and the boys joined me on
Thursday for a couple days and then we all headed back to San Jose together on
Saturday. We took a detour and hit a beach on the way home.
All in all it was a great three weeks of teaching although it was nice to finally
get home and settle in for Christmas.
As has become somewhat of a tradition we had fun again
this year decorating Christmas cookies and passing them out to our neighbors.
Baking is pretty rare here and Costa Ricans love American baked deserts so they
were a real hit.
Looking
forward to this next year we have a number of exciting events coming up soon in
the next couple months. Part of our vision is to be able to provide ongoing
pastoral care to our missionaries serving unreached peoples around the globe.
There is an international Member Care ministry within YWAM that provides
trainings around the globe for individuals involved in pastoral care
to missionaries and they are offering a 4 week training in Virginia/Florida
from the 15th of January through the 10th of February.
Karen will be attending on her own and I will be staying here in Costa Rica
with the boys. We are excited for her to be able to get some professional
training in this area. It will enable us to minister at a new level. However, it is also long time to be apart, so
your prayers are appreciated. Financially we have been able to put together
enough funds (and mileage) to buy the plane tickets but we still need about
$800 to cover the cost of the training.
In the next couple weeks we will be sending out an exciting 2018 financial update where we will share about God's faithfulness and also our needs for the upcoming year.
Many Christmas and may God bless your New Year!
Douglas,
Karen, Gabriel, and Zachariah
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