Our first visitors

Hi everyone!
We just had our first visitors and enjoyed hosting in our house in Costa Rica. Emily's friend from her school last year, Janna, came with a friend for 3 days. They are both teaching in Panama and so they took the bus up to visit (a 10 hour bus ride plus 4 hours at the border - oof!) We had fun taking them to a great restaurant that overlooked San Jose, going to a soccer game, visiting the Poas volcano, and going to one of our favorite places -La Paz - where we played again with the toucans. We really enjoyed showing off our new country and comparing living in Costa Rica to living in Panama!

Things in the office continue to go well. We have 11 volunteer groups coming next year so far. This is a huge answer to prayer! We started with 5 groups with a goal of 15 so we are almost there! Mark made many phone calls to churches who are long-time supporters of Roblealto and this strategy seemed to have really worked!

We also enjoyed going to the dedication service for the newest house at the temporary shelter. The Ridgewood team helped build this house so it was exciting to be part of the dedication. There was a lot of prayers and gratitude for the ways God has provided for Roblealto and rejoicing at 10 more kids will be able to receive services at the Bible Home!

Today we went with a few of our co-workers to the Los Guido neighborhood in San Jose. This is an extremely poor neighborhood south of San Jose where many of our children live. It was very difficult to see how over 200,000 people are living as squaters. Many are immigrants from Nicaragua or Columbia. Problems include poor sanitation and nutrition, drugs, prostitution, lack of education, and extreme poverty. Roblealto is definitely a bright light to this community and was given land 7 years ago right in the middle of the neighborhood to build another day care center. This center is SO necessary for the community, but as you can imagine, Roblealto needs to raise a lot of money for this project. We have joined them in praying for this new center to be built soon because of the hope and possibility it would bring to the community. Please join us in praying for the Los Guido Day Care Center! Thank you!