Our First Run for the Border!!

One of the interesting parts of our life in Costa Rica is that we are required to leave the country every 90 days to have our visas restamped. Because we must be gone for 72 hours this is a chance to explore other nearby countries. We could not believe that our first three month period is already up!
So last Friday we boarded a bus in San Jose to travel east over the mountains to the Caribbean side and on down into Panama. This was the first time we had seen the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was beautiful -- broad flat plains filled with banana plantations, rushing rivers from the mountains and many little towns along the coast. Five and a half hours later we arrived at the Panamanian boarder where we faced a series of memorable challenges in order to be allowed to enter Panama. This could have been a reality show! It was an adventure that included one bus, one taxi and two boat rides to get to our hotel. The methods of transportation are one story, but the experience at the border was another. Let me describe in detail. The bus pulled up into a small border town called Sixaola where we exited the bus and began to look for the border crossing. All we could see were food stands and clothing stores, but eventually we followed some Europeans who had done this trip before. We climbed a staircase and checked in at the Costa Rican side first to be "stamped out". Then we followed the crowd across the river between the two countries, which is spanned by an old wooden bridge with missing slats. Below was a raging river reported to be filled with crocodiles. Successfully crossing the bridge is step two of the border process!
Following this test of strength and skill we entered a street lined with offices where we needed to complete the next steps: buying our return bus ticket (necessary in order to show we intend to leave Panama), buying our tourist visas, and finally being processed by immigration. But, without any signs to guide us, and since the offices are not in any obvious order, this next test before entering Panama was one of wit and endurance (it was 95 degrees in the shade). But, thanks to God, Emily's abilities with the language, and locals who were happy to guide us through (asking for a small tip, of course), we finally got into our taxi and headed to the port town of Almirante where we caught a water taxi to the Bocas Del Toro islands to stay for the next three days.
What a beautiful place! Because it is low season for tourism the hotel and other activities were inexpensive and uncrowded. We enjoyed a peaceful little hotel, time by the water reading and relaxing, snorkeling (Mark's first time) and walking along the beach. We were slightly afraid of the crabs that were EVERYWHERE. In the nighttime the big blue ones came out and you could just hear them skuttling all over the place. Tough to see them on a mostly dark island.
It was a nice break break from a busy couple of months on the job with Roblealto's International Department. In our first quarter Emily worked hard on numerous reports and translations for Roblealto, including a promotional mailing to Roblealto child sponsors inviting them to come visit their sponsored child. Mark has focused on fine-tuning the website and contacting all the churches that support Roblealto financially by way of phone call and an e-flier. The goal is to invite these churches to consider bringing a mission trip. These tasks along with many others have made for challenging but exciting days.
Those projects having been accomplished we look forward to another productive two months before Christmas. Only two months away!

Happy Day of Cultures!

After Emily recovered from a lovely bit of flu, we jumped right into work this week. We continue to work on promotions that will go out to supporters of Roblealto. We also got a tour of the Arco Iris house at the temporary shelter which will be rebuilt this summer by several volunteer groups including Ridgewood. This house is 40 years old, is rotting and smelly, is too small and poorly laid out for the new laws such as space needed for disabled children, etc. So it will be a major project and one of our jobs is to write the project proposal that will go out to churches and foundations to help raise the funds! We also are working on getting information to contact churches that are supporting Roblealto so we can invite them to come visit this year on a missions trips. We came into the office today even though it's a holiday (Day of Cultures, here, a little more politically correct than Columbus Day!) We're hoping to get in touch with some churches, though they may be closed today as well!

We continue taking little day trips on Saturdays, most recently to the rainforest about 30 minutes from our house and to the Orosi Valley to see the ruins of the oldest church in Costa Rica. We went to our favorite Spanish-speaking church on Sunday, Cuidad de Dios. We LOVE worship there - it is incredibly energetic. Click on the following link to see! video The youth group does choreographed dancing during the songs - it's just so much fun! And the preaching is very good - it's good practice in Spanish for us as well! We like hanging out with Lizzy and Pame who are part of our department and all of their friends.

We appreciate all of your prayers. Please continue praying! We started with our tutor this week, which will be a big help as we continue to learn the language. Please pray for the 15 volunteer groups we would like to have for 2010 and, of course, the funding that needs to come in for all those projects! We miss Minnesota very much, though not the snow that you all got this week! Much love!

Go Vikings!

We are watching the Vikings right now on ESPN - hooray for satellite cable! It's making me a little homesick to see the Metrodome, but we are enjoying ourselves. We stayed home from work today because I (Emily) had a touch of the flu. But after a day and a half of feeling horrible, I'm feeling better now. I'll still stay home tomorrow just to be sure. Right now a lot of our work is on the computer, so Mark was able to work from home. He continues to work hard on updating and improving the website. We wrote a recent article about the kids' participation in National Egg Day on Friday that's on the front page if you want to check it out! www.roblealto.org

We spent last week continuing to create promotional materials to encourage groups to come down in 2010. We are working all our contacts and researching churches that may be interested. We're going to try all angles - the worst someone can say is no! Pamela, our boss, also trained us in on the process of having volunteer groups. There is a lot that goes into the preparations! We spend part of the week at the Central Office with our International Department team and the rest of the week at the Bible Home which has a super-nice new computer for us to use! One answer to prayer is that we found a wonderful tutor. She is the wife of one of the Roblealto staff and will work individually with each of us 4 hours a week. We found that because our team speaks such excellent English, we tend to speak to them in English and weren't practicing our Spanish like we should. This will be a huge help to keep learning and practicing. We definitely want to make sure we can speak Spanish by the time we leave.