3 months in Photos

Hello every one and a Happy New Year! When I started this blog it said Merry Christmas and here I am finally sitting down to finish it almost a month later. I hope you all had a great holiday season ours was wonderful as we got to share it with my parents who were here for a nice long visit.


 

We know that we have a lot to catch you up on as it has been about three or four months since our last post so I figured the best way to do that is through pictures. So here is a little picture diary reviewing all the wonderful things God has done for us over the last few months.

The biggest blessing was that my mom came and home schooled the boys from the beginning of  October through the middle of December. Then my Dad joined her and they stayed another month to celebrate the holidays with us. the boys loved having Grandma as their teacher. We  were told many times she is a lot more fun than Mom and Dad.






Also in October I got to go to Honduras and teach in a DTS at the YWAM base there. It was such an amazing experience especially since I taught in Spanish the whole week. It was a great challenge and I believe it went well.







 Then just a few short weeks later I also got to teach in the DTS at our base in San Jose. It is so fun that God is opening the door for me to teach. I teach on giftings and Gods call in peoples life and I love it. I am hopping for more opportunities to teach this coming year.

In November Douglas' parents came for a week so Douglas' dad could teach in the BCC. It was so great to have them with us. We got to go on a few fun outings with them the weekends they were here.



The boys loved seeing all the animals at the La Paz Waterfall Gardens.


We also went Hiking in the rain with the BCC students it felt just
 like we were hiking in Oregon.

Just  one week after Douglas' parents left we had Pastor Peter from Country Side Community Church come. He also came to teach in the BCC and to bless us. It was such a pleasure to have him here with us.



He brought us an amazing care suitcase from our family at Countryside. It was so much fun to open, just like Christmas. Thank you to every one who donated to that and a special thanks to those that donated towards a new computer for us. Our old one was pretty old and the new one is such a blessing. It was amazing how everything that was sent was just what we needed.

As has become tradition I was in charge of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the YWAM San Jose family and there guests . This year we had around 130 people which is about the same as last year. It was a lot of work but I had great help including my mom and even Peter pitched in to carve turkeys.

not sure what is up with the matching shirts but it makes a great photo.

One of the great things about having visitors is
that we take time out to show them the beautiful things that are here in Costa Rica. This is us at Volcan Irazu just out side of San Jose. We took Peter to see it and when we first got there it was completely clouded in so we waited in the car and praise God it cleared up and was beautiful. Cold but beautiful.

Every year at the beginning of December we have a National retreat for the three YWAM bases in Costa Rica. It is held at the base in Guanacaste CR. The boys always have a blast with all the other YWAM kids. We spend one day at the beach the kids get to ride horses and we women sit around and do our nails:) Oh yea and they have huge bugs,

We even took the dog!

 On December 13th Douglas graduated his 6th Biblical Core Course (BCC). As always it was a great time of celebration.

 After the School ended we were in desperate need of some time off and time to hang out with my Parents so we headed off to Panama to do some snorkeling and we even got to see Dolphins. But the best part of the trip was that Gabriel got Baptized! 

The day after we returned from Panama I hosted the Christmas dinner at the YWAM base. I made a traditional Costa Rican dish called Chifrijo for about 80 people. I was super nervous to make a traditional dish but it came off well and every one seemed to enjoy it.


We had a great Christmas and New Year but unfortunately I took no pictures with my camera they are all on my parents camera. : (  I will have to get those from them.

I have to say thanks to my dad for all the dishes he did the sink was empty the whole time he was here.









To start out the new year Douglas got to go to San Fran to officiate the wedding of a young couple from the base here in CR. It was a super short trip but he had a great time seeing family and hanging out with a bunch of friends that all gathered for the wedding. I was hoping to go too but tickets were over $800.00.












That makes 3 trips to the states in the last 6 months for Douglas and none for me or the boys (not that I'm counting :) so we are talking of a trip this summer. We will keep you updated and ask you to pray for provision for a trip.



The last two weeks we kicked off the new year at the base with a bang. I put together a small staff bar-b-q while Douglas was in Cali. my parents helped out a lot.  We were sad to say good buy to mom and dad a day after Douglas returned. Our final event was the quarter kick off dinner on Saturday. Now we are looking forward to getting into a new routine for the year.  Next week we will start back with home school and we are hoping to get the boys into Karate classes.

   

Fall highlights

Time is flying and all the Christmas decorations are already in the stores here in Costa Rica. Actually they have been up since the end of August. I love Christmas but there is still so much of the year to experience before we get there!!!

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.

New Home, New Season

¡Buenos dias a todos! We hope that you all are enjoying your summer. We have been very busy in these last few weeks and we would love to share with you all.

     Our last update we wrote that we had finally found a home near the YWAM base. We started moving in right at the start of July and celebrated Zachariah's 7th birthday on the 4th of July at our new place. Karen found a fireworks stand and we celebrated his birthday in patriotic style. We have had to be very creative with the storage in the new place but things are starting to come together. We found that we have a lumber distributor just down the road and we have been taking advantage of it to build some new furniture. We have a ways to go yet but our new place is starting to feel like home. The best part by far has been the convenience of being so close to the base. We have been walking some mornings and the ability to come home at any time has been great for home schooling. We have already been able to have several people over and we are finally able to use our home as we have dreamed of.

 Along with our new home we finally bit the bullet and got a dog. The boys have been asking for one since forever and our new home had just enough room. Her name is Sparky and she is from a local rescue shelter. Right now we are working on her not doing her business in the house. Some days are better than others.

Moving on to ministry stuff, those of you who have been with us for a while know that Karen and I have a heart to see Latinos serving with unreached peoples. Our first step towards making this dream a reality was the Bible school that we started thee years ago. This last year we have seen a couple of major breakthroughs. Last year in August we met with leaders from every nation in Central America, minus Belize, and together we laid a foundation for a cooperative training program utilizing YWAM facilities throughout Central America. We were able to meet again in mid June and are planning another meeting for March, possibly in Turkey, a gateway nation to the part of the world were we would like to focus our energies. We cant provide a lot of detail due to security concerns but things are moving forward.

Back at the YWAM base, I (Douglas) have been working hard coordinating our Training department, overseeing our 4 annual Discipleship Training School (DTS) as well as our several second level schools. Right now our April DTS is serving in Israel, the July school is in their 3 month lecture phase and is preparing to head to Romania, and we are getting ready for the next school that starts in September. Also our School of Worship in currently ministering in churches in Germany and we have the Bible school and a School of Christian Worldview that both start in September. Way too much work for just me which is why I am currently assembling a training team to help spread out the load!

Preaching on missions in a local church

Karen has had some exciting changes in her job here at the base. She has been handling the personnel department, processing new incoming missionaries as well as placing our current missionaries into their areas so that the base community can function well. She as been wanting to transition out of this for some time and we are finally starting to see it happen. The personnel job is being taken bit by bit by a couple of others and Karen is moving into the Community Life coordinator. We are a super diverse multinational missionary community with people working in a half dozen different schools or ministries and Karen's job is to help ensure that we maintain that sense of family, working together with the same common goals and values.

A cool part of all that has been happening is that Karen and I have started receiving invitations to teach. I am headed to Washington DC on Saturday to teach in a DTS for deaf students and we are both heading to Honduras in October to teach in a new YWAM facility that was planted just two years ago.

We are super excited for the new adventures that God has been bringing in the new season and it is wonderful to be able to share it with you all. We very much value your prayers and support.

Blessings in Christ,

Douglas, Karen, Gabriel and Zachariah.

Exciting New!!! We are moving!

We have a lot to catch everyone up on but the most exciting is that we are finally moving closer to the YWAM base!  As many of you know we have been thinking of selling our house and trying to buy closer to the base. But over the last year as we have tried to sell our house and looked at options to buy we continually hit road blocks.  At the beginning of last week Douglas and I took some time to ask the Lord what he wanted for us and we both felt a confirmation that we should not continue to try and sell at this point but rent out our house and rent another close to the base. Last Friday we went to drive by a house I found on-line and ended up looking at the house and deciding to rent it. We signed the contract and got the keys two days ago. We are so excited and now are trusting the Lord to bring the perfect people to rent our house. We would like to rent to Christians and have a family from our church that have shown interest. The house we rented is super close to the base, less than a mile. We can actually walk if we want to. Below are a few pictures of the new place. It is not any bigger than our house now but it does have more bathrooms. yea!

Welcome!

     Living room, small but tons of light.















Our Kitchen? we might need to add a few cupboards or something but we'll make it work.













 Laundry room













                                                                                                                                     Look a bathroom in our bedroom. yea!
                                  

 We are so very excited but we could really use your prayers as we pack and get ready to move. Also for a renter for our house as we have already had to pay our first months rent and deposit. We are hoping to rent our house for just a $100 less per month than what we are going to have to pay. When we first started looking on line for rentals it was looking like we were going to have to pay about $300 to $400 more per month but God helped us find this place for much less. Praise be to Him!

We will keep you up dated and write soon about all the changes taking place at the base. Also for those of you who I have on Facebook I added pictures of my trip in Central America if you want to check them out.

Blessings,
Karen, Douglas and the boys

And we're back!!!

Plantains and coconuts at the local market

     Its been a while but we are finally getting settled back in to life here in Costa Rica! Our trip to the States was an amazing time and it was really hard to leave you all, but it is good to be where God has called us. The time has flown and a month has gone by since we left. One of the things that we have felt more and more strongly is that we are suppose to start working hard to move closer to the YWAM base so we can more easily do ministry and home-school the boys. So even though is good to be home it has been complicated as we don’t feel that we ought to unpack everything and get comfortable. Please be praying that God will open the doors for us to move quickly.

   

    Our arrival in Costa Rica started with a bang. I got a little behind last year and filed to renew our residency late with the result that Karen and my new ID cards arrived 3 days after we had left the country and we had not even applied for the boys. The last couple weeks we have been doing a lot of running around and standing in line after line in office after office to get everything straight. I got my new card a couple of weeks ago, Karen just received her's today and the boys will be ready next week. Praise God that it all has worked out. Lesson learned. The hard way. Is there any other way? : )

Riah with a Mango as big as his head.

    Meanwhile on the YWAM Base things have been changing quickly.  We are being mentored by a larger base from Montana that is helping us in the process of managing and directing the growth that God has sent to our missionary community. We are now a group of around 50 missionaries and God is bringing even more every day.  One major change is that Karen is going to be moving into more of a pastoral role and moving out of some of the logistics. It’s a difficult change since it means giving up some responsibilities that she has carried for the last few years. But it also means she will have more time to devote to discipling the long term staff which is her passion. My role is changing a bit as well. I have been officially in charge of the training department at the base overseeing the Discipleship Training Schools and all the other schools that we run. But it has only really been in the last month that this has really come into focus. I now have an office just for the training team.Yeh!! But more than that I have been given the freedom to actually start to lead in this area. I am very excited for the new schools that we are going to get to pioneer and all the students that we will get to interact with.

   In addition to all the things happening in our lives we want too to give a praise report for the things that God has been doing here in Costa Rica through the ministry of the Base. Some of you may remember us mentioning the Costa Rica Bible project. It is a project on a national level here in Costa Rica with the goal of placing a bible in every home in the nation. It has been going on for a couple of years now and in the last few weeks we have had several international teams arrive to help. They gave a report a week ago Friday and these are some of the things that God has been doing: 

In three weeks they gave Bibles to 3600 families. There were people that placed their trust in Christ during that time as well as several healings including one blind man that received his sight again. In one town they focused on several pastors that had been divided for years over minor doctrinal issues and some personal things.These pastors finally were able to lay it all down and met to pray together for the first time in years. Together these pastors who are from one of the poorest parts of Costa Rica raised a thousand dollars so that they and their churches could begin to give Bibles to their own community. God is doing great things!!!

     Karen and I wanted to finish by first thanking you all for a wonderful time in the States. It was hard to leave you all and we can't wait to see you again. Also, as we look at this next 12 months and our desire to move closer to the YWAM Base we realize that this will mean some significant extra cost either in the form of a mortgage or rent. We believe that this is the direction God is leading but we will need the help of others to do it. We would ask you to prayerfully consider supporting our family on a regular basis. If you would like more information about how to support us just click on the Make a Donation tab above or just click here.

May God bless you all richly,

Douglas, Karen Gabriel and Zachariah

Countryside Community Church

We had a great time at Countryside Community Church last night. It was wonderful to see so many old friends and to meet so many new ones. We felt very loved and honored by all of you. We will be at Countryside again on Easter, not sure which service and on the 7th of April right before we head back to Costa Rica on Monday the 8th.


Blessings,

Douglas, Karen, Gabriel and Zachariah