Octubre las actividades

 

   As the month of Oct came to a close I thought of all that happened since my last post. I will start with our weekend at the Arinal Volcano. It was our first weekend away with the other students. There is something planned about every other weekend but this is the first we have participated for various reasons. We began our 4 hour bus ride and after about 2-1/2 hours stopped to eat our sack lunches at a rest stop filled with Iguanas. Most of them were full grown and freely roaming the area. For those of you that are not familiar with them, I would compare them to a cross between a lizard and a dinosaur. 

      We then loaded back up and enjoyed a great time there from Saturday mid afternoon until Monday after lunch. The volcano has now been inactive now for (it depends on who you ask) somewhere between a couple of months and 2 years. Of course the local shops say that it is still active, you just need to hang around a while to see it "blow" Ha! I guess it is not a lot different than our tourist spots in the States. 

   Our next adventure was when Marcy, Janae and I joined a few other students to climb "Tres Cruz Mountain". We started out an elevation of 4200 ft and ended up at 6800, so just over 1500' increase. It was about a 1-3/4 mile hike up so a fairly good grade. The descent was another story. We went back down about 1300 of that elevation in 2000'of distance. 

So a little less than a 45° drop. That proved interesting on a slightly slippery grass covered hill with a barb wire fence at the bottom and a river on the other side of the fence. Everyone survived but the guide mentioned that maybe she should find an alternative route for coming back down. There was a great view from the top though. It was well worth the couple of scratches that we got.

My last adventure that I had was just this past Saturday when I put my bike to use a little more than I had yet. I had heard of a town called Cartago that was supposed to be a nice place to visit so I took off right after getting the produce at the ferria. It really was a nice ride. About 25 miles one way and mostly uphill, it was about 5000 ft elevation with a high point along the way of 5,300 ft. It felt good to get out and ride some distance again. All but the first 2 miles was ridden on the Pan American Highway. It runs from Argentina to Alaska and in the US is referred to I-5. I will need to take my camera along the next time as it also had some  fantastic views of God's workmanship. 

    School continues to go good and as we go into the community, it feels like we can continue to use it more and more. I am sure that we sound like a toddler speaking but I guess that is better than not at all at this point. Interesting to see how people react to our attempt to speak Spanish. Some are very helpful at correcting you very politely, others will just ignore you. Then some will let you struggle and drag on for 5 or ten minutes trying to understand and finally say "I do speak English if that helps at all" :) . One last thing was a culture experience that I had this past weekend at a local "Big Lots" sort of store. It was very busy and crowded and as I waited my place in line with maybe 8-10 people behind me, I notice that the three ladies in front of me were receiving items from other people that would just walk up between the lines. After this happened maybe 5-6 times I realized that along with the item, they would be handing them cash to pay for it. Ha! It didn't seem to bother anyone behind me so I figured it was just part of the way things happen here. Then, just as it was my turn to start putting my items on the belt, another person showed up on the far end of my checkout  lane with a full cart and begin to unload their items and the cashier started to ring them up in reverse, and the customer had a bunch of plastic bags that she laid on top of my items and proceeded to bag her things up. :). I wish I would have had a video of that. Again, it didn't seem to bother anyone behind me so I just waited until they were done, and then I ask the cashier "más?" her reply of "no más" was good enough for me to begin my things. It really was quite comical when you think about it. 

         We continue to plug away at learning the Spanish language and culture. Nina, Janae, and Marcy are still surviving, as are their teachers. We have been very blessed with a couple of care packages in the mail from family and friends and that is really special to us. Last week we had a full 30 hours straight of no rain which seemed so strange. Then the next day it really made up for it with a downpour like no other. With the midpoint of this trimester behind us now, all 5 of us can't hardly believe how fast the time is going by.Thanks again for the prayers as we continue to follow where Him. Mike, for the family

 

La madurez ez un proceso (maturity is a process)

(More on the title later)

    Since my last post I was able to find another student that had a bike that he was no longer riding because it was in need of some work. So I did end up buying that bike and getting it back into riding shape. It still has a few quirks but is very ridable.

Along with the bike purchase we had to do some remodeling on our apartment so we turned part of our bedroom into a garage for the bike. It really is handy though because now I don't even need to get out of bed to comb my hair, I can just roll over and use the mirror on the bike so it has worked out great.

    Speaking of combing my hair, which is really not an issue anymore any way because........... I had another "first" here in Costa Rica a few weeks ago. Getting my hair cut. That was interesting to say the least. I had practiced saying "take a little off", "just a trim". I had thought of telling him to just call Laura and she would tell him exactly how it is done. But since the haircut only cost $4.00 and the phone call would have cost $10.00.......... Anyway, I told him what I had practiced and he looked at me for a bit and said "si". Well it was about the time that the first pile of greyish red hair hit my lap that I realized the communication had broken down somewhere and he heard me say, "just leave a little on top". Basically shaving it would be a good description of what happened. HA!. Well Marcy was setting there witnessing the whole thing and after a while said "Moms not going to like this at all". The next excitement came when he was ready to shave my neck with a straight razor. Just as my nervousness left me as I had convinced myself that "he had done this hundreds of times before", Marcy decided she wanted to see what he was doing and "sprang" from her seat and ran over to stand right beside him to watch. Well "stand" and "Marcy" don't normally go in the same sentence together, but it all ended uneventful which I was very glad for. I always figure that a bad haircut and a bad lawn mowing job are pretty temporary and both grow back eventually.

       Oct 2nd was World Communion Sunday and since Costa Rica falls under the "world" part of that, we also participated in communion here just as our home congregation did at Shore Mennonite in Shipshewana IN. Pastor Marvin here was preaching on his series from Hebrews chapter 6 and the only note I took was "la madurez es un proceso" (Hence the title of this post), I am not sure why I had taken that one note but I must have thought it was a statement worth writing down. Now today, two weeks later, I am listening to the sermon from Pastor Carl form that same Sunday at Shore and he is preaching from his series in Galatians chapter 4 and he mentions "our Christian maturity is a process". Now on the same Sunday , two different pastors preaching from two different countries thousands of miles away, in two different languages and then saying the same sentence in the sermons???? I take that to heart and ask "God, what are you trying to say to Mike Unternahrer through that sentence?" Knowing that my Christian maturity has been a process and will continue to be a process, I can only hope to grow as much over the next 35+ years as I have during the past 35+ years. Relating that to learning a new language, why did I think and expect to learn Spanish without the  pain, the effort, the work, the setbacks, the struggles, the tears, and very little patience with  myself when it is a process? All processes have these common components in them, Marriages, faith walks, new jobs, raising children, and even language learning. MATURITY IS A PROCESS.

       Going back to our first week here, during orientation, it was mentioned that it is very likely for some of us that our language learning is quite possibly only a small part of the reason that God brought us to Costa Rica, and He may in fact have much more to teach us here than just a new language. I have seen that to come true in me and the Spanish Language is such a bonus to all that I am learning. I am forever grateful for God's servants Pastor Marvin and Pastor Carl and how He has used them to continue to grow me spiritually. 

   

  

Pruebas y Exámenes (test and exams)

So about 1/3 third of the way through our first trimester here in Costa Rica has left us feeling many things. Challenging, exhausting, chaotic, frustration, homesick, stretched, as well as comfortable, prayed for, grateful, enjoyment, amazed, relieved, inspired. Those are just a few that come to mind right now. In one of our classes we needed to come up with different adjectives that we need to learn the Spanish word for. I then thought I would ask everyone in our household to think of what they have felt since being here. It was interesting to see all the feelings we have had, positive and negative alike. Everyone was in agreement though that the positive has far outweighed the others.

   We are all still getting lots of exercise with walking. The higher elevation (4000’+) and the very hilly terrain is much different than walking around our block back in LaGrange County. The beautiful scenery makes it all worth it though. We no longer get to experience the sunrises from the center of the city but the mountains are still very visible in the background no matter where you are. God’s beauty is all around us, if we just stop to see it. 

    Some changes coming up with our family are that we have been given an opportunity to stay here in Costa Rica for another trimmest of language classes and then we have decided to take that opportunity. That session of classes ends the end of April so we will then be in the DR and ready for school by the first part of May. Although that was not our original plan, we were open to it anyway and are now looking forward to that happening. Along with that change, Nina will probably stay here in the apartment with Sondra, our empleada, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning while Karen and I are in class. She will be attending the regular classes in the school on Tuesday and Thursday.

   Keep us in your prayers, as I know you have been. We have felt that so much since we are here. One thing that they told us in orientation here was that quite possibly language was only a small part or reason that God has brought us here, and to be open to allowing him to do whatever he has in store for us. We have all talked many times of the different experiences that we have had and continue to have here. Thanks for being part of that with us.