We've had another eventful week getting to know Roblealto! We spent Monday discussing the upcoming year and the department goals with Pamela, our boss, and Steve who is an LAM missionary and was our initial contact in getting us here. We were excited and overwhelmed by the high goals for the year including having 15 volunteer groups in 2010, raising money for several big projects such as the new daycare center, and increasing the number of international child sponsors. Mark and I have spent the week informally bouncing ideas off of each other about how we can be of help. But we have also spent a lot of time praying because we know only God can help us reach these goals!
We spent Tuesday and Wednesday with Lizzy and Nelly who are in charge of all the correspondence that goes out to the sponsors. We especially loved going to 2 of the centers with Nelly so she could take pictures. She sends a photo of the child along with a yearly progress report for their birthdays to each of the sponsors. We learned that a major organization dropped their partnership with Roblealto and pulled all of their sponsors to go to work in Nicaragua about 4 years ago. This was obviously difficult for Roblealto. They want all of their children to be sponsored, but that is no longer the case. We've realized that North Americans don't know what great needs Costa Rica has. It has also been interesting to learn that many of the children Roblealto serves are in fact Nicaraguan immigrants. These families experience terrible poverty and Roblealto has a wonderful ministry to them.
Mark and I have started to research contacts who may be interested in coming to Roblealto on a missions trip. If you know of a group that may be interested, please let us know! This will be one of our first major jobs. We continue tweaking the website, as well. We haven't had as many elaborate excursions recently, but we enjoyed going into San Jose to their little zoo this morning. It's kind of like Como Zoo and we laughed that they have deer on exhibit - the same kind my parents regularly have in their backyard! We saw a strange phenomenon while we were there - a rainbow entirely around the sun. There's a picture here, but it doesn't quite do it justice. It was pretty amazing!
We are thinking of you all often and miss you. Emily especially gets bad bouts of homesickness, but it helps so much to have skype and facebook! Much love from Costa Rica!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Trying out the bus system
On Friday morning, we went out to our car to head to the Central Offices for our meetings to find that our Corolla wouldn't start. We hadn't had any problems with it, so we had no idea what was going on, but the ignition didn't even make a clicking sound. We had three big meetings so we had to get into the city. Luckily, our landlord called a friend who has a taxi service and we were able to make it to our appointments. We had a busy day of learning about the psychology, social work and Christian Education departments at Roblealto (again, all in Spanish!) and then Lizzy and Pamela (part of our International Team) showed us how to take the bus home. We have a bus that comes right to the restaurant by our house and we saw how easy it would be to take the bus right into the main part of San Jose and not have to deal with the crazy driving!
Our landlord's friend is also a mechanic so he's looking over our car right now and luckily there was just an easily-fixed problem with the battery. We plan to go tonight to a concert at Pamela and Lizzy's church. We visited there last week and it was a great experience. This is a mega-church right in the middle of the neighborhoods that are served by the daycare centers. The Sunday morning service was like attending an intense worship concert - so much energy! It was incredibly Christ-focused and we really enjoyed the worship. It helped that the pastor speaks very clear Spanish so we could understand the sermon!
On Wednesday we enjoyed a tour of the hog farm at Roblealto. The whole farm provides for about 15% of Roblealto's operating costs, primarily through the chicken farm, but it was fun to learn about the pig and cow operations as well. We, of course, had many photo ops, too :) Fun for city kids like us. We continue typing up reports on each part of Roblealto as we learn. These reports will be used as information cards for tours given to volunteer groups that come to Roblealto. We have a few more meetings to go this coming week. It is overwhelming, a blessing, moving, impactful and encouraging to learn all about this great organization. We are thankful to get such a great overview on all the parts and to see what God is doing at Roblealto! Check out the website (www.roblealto.org) for more information!
Our landlord's friend is also a mechanic so he's looking over our car right now and luckily there was just an easily-fixed problem with the battery. We plan to go tonight to a concert at Pamela and Lizzy's church. We visited there last week and it was a great experience. This is a mega-church right in the middle of the neighborhoods that are served by the daycare centers. The Sunday morning service was like attending an intense worship concert - so much energy! It was incredibly Christ-focused and we really enjoyed the worship. It helped that the pastor speaks very clear Spanish so we could understand the sermon!
On Wednesday we enjoyed a tour of the hog farm at Roblealto. The whole farm provides for about 15% of Roblealto's operating costs, primarily through the chicken farm, but it was fun to learn about the pig and cow operations as well. We, of course, had many photo ops, too :) Fun for city kids like us. We continue typing up reports on each part of Roblealto as we learn. These reports will be used as information cards for tours given to volunteer groups that come to Roblealto. We have a few more meetings to go this coming week. It is overwhelming, a blessing, moving, impactful and encouraging to learn all about this great organization. We are thankful to get such a great overview on all the parts and to see what God is doing at Roblealto! Check out the website (www.roblealto.org) for more information!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Happy Costa Rican Independence!
Today is Costa Rica's Independence Day! It is a national holiday, so we didn't have any specific work at Roblealto, but we did go up to San Jose de la Montana to see the parade. The students at the Bible Home have a marching band - drums, xylophones, flags and cymbals. They have been practicing for weeks (we've heard them) preparing for this big day! At 7:30 this morning they marched down the hill to the town and joined 5 other schools in the desfile (parade). Roblealto had a beautiful float and the kindergarteners wore historical clothing representing all of the country's provinces. It was so impressive to see the kids all dressed up and playing their instruments so beautifully - we were really proud of them! Many of the children's parents come to watch them. We were told that sometimes the parents cry with pride. They can't believe their kids who have had such difficult lives have such talent!
We continue our tour and introduction of the various parts of Roblealto. Yesterday we met with the director at the Bible Home to talk about its history and why kids are entered into the program. We learned that while these children live in extreme poverty and suffer the risks that come with that, they also have high-risk homes. It is not safe for them to live with their families, so they come to live at the Bible Home. There are 83 kids there now, mostly ages 9-12. While they get love and help from the Bible Home, their families are also receiving services. Sadly, there is never enough room for the amount of children that need the Bible Home. One of our prayers is that the Bible Home will continue to grow and add more houses so that more kids can be helped. A ninth house is currently being built to house 10 more kids.
Our first big project since coming here has been working on a new website. Mark has spent HOURS working on it and it has just been launched today on Independence Day! Please check it out. We are so excited to act as reporters and write articles about what is going on at Roblealto. The link is: www.roblealto.org
Enjoy!
We continue our tour and introduction of the various parts of Roblealto. Yesterday we met with the director at the Bible Home to talk about its history and why kids are entered into the program. We learned that while these children live in extreme poverty and suffer the risks that come with that, they also have high-risk homes. It is not safe for them to live with their families, so they come to live at the Bible Home. There are 83 kids there now, mostly ages 9-12. While they get love and help from the Bible Home, their families are also receiving services. Sadly, there is never enough room for the amount of children that need the Bible Home. One of our prayers is that the Bible Home will continue to grow and add more houses so that more kids can be helped. A ninth house is currently being built to house 10 more kids.
Our first big project since coming here has been working on a new website. Mark has spent HOURS working on it and it has just been launched today on Independence Day! Please check it out. We are so excited to act as reporters and write articles about what is going on at Roblealto. The link is: www.roblealto.org
Enjoy!
Friday, September 11, 2009
El 15 de Setiembre Daycare Center
We continue to get more involved at Roblealto. We spent the beginning of the week furnishing our office in the mountains at the Bible Homes. Mark spent many hours working on the details of Roblealto's new website. He's had a lot of fun learning how to manage a website and making it user-friendly and informative. We were really happy to hear that our bosses love the website and want to get it up and running as soon as possible. The plan is to launch it on the 15th of September, which is Costa Rica's Independence Day! We will send an email with the link so you can check it out once it's up!
Wednesday we met with Pamela, our boss, to discuss the next couple of weeks. She has set up visits for us to all 3 daycares and the Bible Home/school. We will also be talking with all the major department heads to learn as much as we can about the many facets of Roblealto. After each visit/meeting, we are typing up a informational report that will be used by Roblealto staff when giving tours of the various facilities - luckily they are in English. And luckily we have Lizzy who is doing the visits with us and is bilingual! Emily also presented (in Spanish!) the evaluation comments from last week's volunteer group. We had a good initial conversation about some of our ideas for continuing to develop the volunteer experience.
Yesterday, we went on our first visit to one of the daycare centers. It was fun to see this part of Roblealto! We really enjoyed meeting Dona Elba who is the director and has worked there since it opened 38 years ago. She has seen a lot of changes including growing from 30 kids to 140 and, at the same time, watching the neighborhood around them deteriorate. We had the honor of talking to one of the teachers who has been there 15 years. She discussed the difficulty of working in that neighborhood where the children see prostitution, drugs, abuse, and violence on a regular basis. She said to us, "For the students, it's not a movie, it's life." It's hard to imagine what difficult lives the children have, but it was so wonderful to see Roblealto at work. As Dona Elba said, Roblealto is the only good thing in the community. We loved chatting with the children and playing with them a bit on the playground. They are so warm and welcoming - just regular loving kids! This is only because of the changes that God brings about in their lives.
Today we visit another daycare center. Continue to pray for the ministry of Roblealto and the 650 children that they serve. God is certainly at work here!
Wednesday we met with Pamela, our boss, to discuss the next couple of weeks. She has set up visits for us to all 3 daycares and the Bible Home/school. We will also be talking with all the major department heads to learn as much as we can about the many facets of Roblealto. After each visit/meeting, we are typing up a informational report that will be used by Roblealto staff when giving tours of the various facilities - luckily they are in English. And luckily we have Lizzy who is doing the visits with us and is bilingual! Emily also presented (in Spanish!) the evaluation comments from last week's volunteer group. We had a good initial conversation about some of our ideas for continuing to develop the volunteer experience.
Yesterday, we went on our first visit to one of the daycare centers. It was fun to see this part of Roblealto! We really enjoyed meeting Dona Elba who is the director and has worked there since it opened 38 years ago. She has seen a lot of changes including growing from 30 kids to 140 and, at the same time, watching the neighborhood around them deteriorate. We had the honor of talking to one of the teachers who has been there 15 years. She discussed the difficulty of working in that neighborhood where the children see prostitution, drugs, abuse, and violence on a regular basis. She said to us, "For the students, it's not a movie, it's life." It's hard to imagine what difficult lives the children have, but it was so wonderful to see Roblealto at work. As Dona Elba said, Roblealto is the only good thing in the community. We loved chatting with the children and playing with them a bit on the playground. They are so warm and welcoming - just regular loving kids! This is only because of the changes that God brings about in their lives.
Today we visit another daycare center. Continue to pray for the ministry of Roblealto and the 650 children that they serve. God is certainly at work here!
Sunday, September 6, 2009
First Week at Roblealto!
We just wrapped up a great first week at the Bible Home at Roblealto. The Bible Home is up in the mountains where the volunteers come to hang out with the kids and work on the construction/maintenance projects. There are 10 homes, a school, a cafeteria and office, and several other buildings. There are only 2 guys that run the maintenance for the whole campus, so you can understand why the volunteer teams that come through are so important. Everyone appreciates them so much!
This past week the Washington team did a great job and we really enjoyed getting to know them. On Thursday, Steve (a missionary who has been here for over 3 years) took us on a tour to learn about the chicken farm side of Roblealto. We couldn't actually go into the chicken farm because of health standards, but there is a new building being built which we toured and Steve explained the process to us from egg to sale. The granja (farm) provides 80% of the chickens for all of Costa Rica AND Nicaragua. They hatch 150,000 chicks every week! Some chicks are broilers (they're sold to get fat and then be eaten) and some are layers (sold to provide eggs). It was fascinating to learn what a science the process is. They hatch the chicks twice a week and know to the minute when the chicks will hatch. They then move the hours-old chicks to their "homes," mostly by truck. In the afternoon, Steve brought some baby chicks by for us to hold and play with - a couple of the Bible Home kids were around too and couldn't get enough of the little fluff balls.
We haven't had a chance to get to know many of the kids yet. We hope to be more in the homes soon, but we did befriend a little guy named Sergio. He typically follows Juancito (one of the maintenance guys) around. We were helping Juancito so Sergio jumped in to help us. Mark was really great at working with him. It was one of those situations where without his "help" Mark could have been done in half the time. But Roblealto is all about the KIDS so Mark chatted with him and Sergio tried out his English words. Mark modeled how to mud the bathroom and Sergio helped and eventually they finished. This guy has a special place in our hearts already. We look forward to getting to know more of the kids. We were so happy that on Friday when we left we could say "Hasta lunes" (see you on Monday). It's fun to say that we are here for a whole year and to know we'll really get to know many of the people at Roblealto.
This morning we'll be going to Mike and Kathy's house church. They've asked Mark to preach there at the end of September which he is excited to do. They also have a library full of thousands of English books that have been donated to them over the years. Since I (Emily) am on my last book that I brought, I'm excited to check out some new ones! Finding books here was one of my concerns, so this library is a God-send! We're thinking of you all this Sunday morning. For those of you at Ridgewood, we have to say it's such an honor to come from your church. Ridgewood has had such an impact at Roblealto and everyone gets a huge smile when we mention you. Much love to all of you!
This past week the Washington team did a great job and we really enjoyed getting to know them. On Thursday, Steve (a missionary who has been here for over 3 years) took us on a tour to learn about the chicken farm side of Roblealto. We couldn't actually go into the chicken farm because of health standards, but there is a new building being built which we toured and Steve explained the process to us from egg to sale. The granja (farm) provides 80% of the chickens for all of Costa Rica AND Nicaragua. They hatch 150,000 chicks every week! Some chicks are broilers (they're sold to get fat and then be eaten) and some are layers (sold to provide eggs). It was fascinating to learn what a science the process is. They hatch the chicks twice a week and know to the minute when the chicks will hatch. They then move the hours-old chicks to their "homes," mostly by truck. In the afternoon, Steve brought some baby chicks by for us to hold and play with - a couple of the Bible Home kids were around too and couldn't get enough of the little fluff balls.
We haven't had a chance to get to know many of the kids yet. We hope to be more in the homes soon, but we did befriend a little guy named Sergio. He typically follows Juancito (one of the maintenance guys) around. We were helping Juancito so Sergio jumped in to help us. Mark was really great at working with him. It was one of those situations where without his "help" Mark could have been done in half the time. But Roblealto is all about the KIDS so Mark chatted with him and Sergio tried out his English words. Mark modeled how to mud the bathroom and Sergio helped and eventually they finished. This guy has a special place in our hearts already. We look forward to getting to know more of the kids. We were so happy that on Friday when we left we could say "Hasta lunes" (see you on Monday). It's fun to say that we are here for a whole year and to know we'll really get to know many of the people at Roblealto.
This morning we'll be going to Mike and Kathy's house church. They've asked Mark to preach there at the end of September which he is excited to do. They also have a library full of thousands of English books that have been donated to them over the years. Since I (Emily) am on my last book that I brought, I'm excited to check out some new ones! Finding books here was one of my concerns, so this library is a God-send! We're thinking of you all this Sunday morning. For those of you at Ridgewood, we have to say it's such an honor to come from your church. Ridgewood has had such an impact at Roblealto and everyone gets a huge smile when we mention you. Much love to all of you!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Starting at Roblealto
Hi everyone!
We have finally started our work at Roblealto this week. We are 3 days into it and have already learned a lot. We were so excited to begin what we came here to do!
There is a small team of college students from Washington that is at Roblealto this week as volunteers so it's been good for us to see what it looks like to have a volunteer group. This is the last team that comes until February when Ridgewood will be coming, so it was key that we are there this week to see how it looks. We were able to jump right in! Unfortunately, Pamela (our boss in the International Department) injured her foot and is out this week, but Steve (who was our initial contact at Roblealto) has taken over and helped with the organization and support of this team. We have so much to learn about Roblealto over the next several weeks, but this week we get to be around the homes and help with the projects - painting, organizing the free clothes store... one of the girls on the Washington team is an artist and is painting a beautiful mural for the school. We've gotten to use a little bit of Spanish with a few kids and the Roblealto staff, but are mostly hanging out with the volunteers and learning as they do.
We are excited about our new office space that Steve prepared for us. It's a beautiful room, but lacks furniture so one of the first things we'll be doing is rounding up some furniture. We got an old table and sanded it down and painted it today so we have a conference table for when we all sit down as an International Dept. team to talk about our goals and roles. Mark and I have a lot of ideas of what we hope to be involved in, but our roles are sure to develop and change over the year. Mark has been working on Roblealto's new website and is planning to launch it in the next week or so. One of our jobs will be acting as reporters for what is happening at Roblealto to go on the website so that you all can keep up to date with the organization. We'll be sure to let you know when the site is active!
Please continue praying for our Spanish as we are now really needing to use it! There are a lot of new construction terms that we haven't learned in school, obviously! Pray also for us as we learn about Roblealto and experience the many parts of the organization - there will be a huge learning curve coming! Thanks for all your prayers and continued support. We can't believe we've been here over a month and we are doing well. God is good!
We have finally started our work at Roblealto this week. We are 3 days into it and have already learned a lot. We were so excited to begin what we came here to do!
There is a small team of college students from Washington that is at Roblealto this week as volunteers so it's been good for us to see what it looks like to have a volunteer group. This is the last team that comes until February when Ridgewood will be coming, so it was key that we are there this week to see how it looks. We were able to jump right in! Unfortunately, Pamela (our boss in the International Department) injured her foot and is out this week, but Steve (who was our initial contact at Roblealto) has taken over and helped with the organization and support of this team. We have so much to learn about Roblealto over the next several weeks, but this week we get to be around the homes and help with the projects - painting, organizing the free clothes store... one of the girls on the Washington team is an artist and is painting a beautiful mural for the school. We've gotten to use a little bit of Spanish with a few kids and the Roblealto staff, but are mostly hanging out with the volunteers and learning as they do.
We are excited about our new office space that Steve prepared for us. It's a beautiful room, but lacks furniture so one of the first things we'll be doing is rounding up some furniture. We got an old table and sanded it down and painted it today so we have a conference table for when we all sit down as an International Dept. team to talk about our goals and roles. Mark and I have a lot of ideas of what we hope to be involved in, but our roles are sure to develop and change over the year. Mark has been working on Roblealto's new website and is planning to launch it in the next week or so. One of our jobs will be acting as reporters for what is happening at Roblealto to go on the website so that you all can keep up to date with the organization. We'll be sure to let you know when the site is active!
Please continue praying for our Spanish as we are now really needing to use it! There are a lot of new construction terms that we haven't learned in school, obviously! Pray also for us as we learn about Roblealto and experience the many parts of the organization - there will be a huge learning curve coming! Thanks for all your prayers and continued support. We can't believe we've been here over a month and we are doing well. God is good!
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