Home from La Ceiba

Above: A typical street in La Caiba, Honduras

On Tuesday night, Mike and I returned from our scouting trip to our new home. We had a great time learning more about the city and its needs, meeting people, seeing the sights, and dreaming about the future of our church planting ministry.

We’ll have more details in the days to come, but for now here is a brief list of what we were able to see and do in three days.

We visited/toured the following potential ministry sights:
- A local agricultural university
- A publicly run nursing home
- A small private hospital
- The large public hospital
- A school for our teammates daughter
- Multiple houses for rent
- A hotel for short-term teams
- An immigration attorney
- A boys orphanage
- Multiple neighborhoods
- A poor village

We were very encouraged by all the opportunities for ministry, but it was also daunting to see such a great amount of need in such a small city.

Stay posted for more details about our future home.

Honduras Scouting Trip

Above: A view of La Ceiba from the town landfill.

As you are reading this, I (Sean) am (hopefully) on a plane headed to La Ceiba, Honduras, via San Salvador and San Pedro Sula. Mike and I will be arriving in La Ceiba around noon Saturday and meeting up with our team leader in to check out the city and begin to lay the groundwork for our future ministry. We are essentially starting our church planting work from scratch, so this is an important planning trip. Some of the things we hope to do while we are there include: housing search for our two families and future interns, setting up schooling for our teammates daughter, meeting with immigration attorneys, touring the hospitals, checking out the neighborhoods and possible ministry sites, meeting with past and current ministries, and much more.

Spanish Word – Lluvia

From time to time, as we learn some Spanish, we’ll try to help you learn some as well.

Above: The family ready for a day out in the rain.

Rain (pronounced “you-via”). No other alternate translations, simple rain. In Costa Rica, and most of Central America, there are basically two seasons, the rainy season, and the not rainy season. We arrived here in the not rainy season and didn’t see any rain for a few months. Then a few weeks ago it started raining every afternoon. Although the rainy season isn’t here in full, we have had a few good tastes. The lesson we’ve learned is never leave home without an umbrella or jacket. Some interesting tidbits about the rainy season in Costa Rica:

- Despite the fact that the Tico’s are used to the rain, no one seems to want to go out in it.

- When people do go out in the rain, they almost exclusively use umbrellas, not rain jackets. Rain jackets seem to be a strictly gringo thing.

- There are taxi’s all over the place in San Jose, we’ve never waited more than 5 minutes for a cab, but when it rains there are none to be found. We were stuck out in the rain the other day and asked someone to call us a cab, but he said there were none available, they were all in use. So we put a trash bag over Lucy’s head and walked home.

- Amazingly, the rain can seem to come and go in an instant. It will be very hot and clear in the morning, then pouring in the afternoon, and clear and cool again at night.

The boy scout motto prevails here when going out, always be prepared!

San Jose Zoo

Above: Lindsey and Lucy in front of the jaguar exhibit.

A while back, we headed out the check out the zoo in San Jose. We arrived early (read first ones there, we punctual gringos) and had the zoo to ourselves for a while. We checked out the monkeys, iguanas, sloth, birds, lions, cats, toucans, parrots, peacocks, snakes, turtles, alligators, and too much more to name. Our favorites were the monkeys, which we made a point to see twice. It was great fun to check out new animals and have such close interaction with the nature of our new country.

Above: Sean and Lucy checking out the monkeys.

House Tour – Bathroom

Part 3 in a series on our apartment in San Jose.

Above: Our bathroom with Lucy’s “tub” in the middle of the shower.

Our only bath room lies just off our bedroom. It is all pink tile, no shelving, and open windows like the rest of the house. Some interesting features include:

- Obviously the tupper-ware tub (pictured below in use).

- A hot water shower. Almost all showers in Costa Rica don’t have hot water, but instead have “widow-makers.” A “widow-maker” is a little heater that sits on top of the shower head and heats up the water right before it comes out. It works sparingly, and as you can tell by the name, isn’t the safest contraception in the world. Our landlord added a water heater to our apartment, which we love and use continually.

- Oddly, the bathroom came without a mirror, medicine cabinet, towel rack, or any shelves to speak of, so we’ve had to make do.

(Funny story about the shelves. One night, after some neighbors had had some things stolen off their deck, we heard a massive crashing in the middle of the night. Assuming the worst (someone breaking through our window), I jumped up and ran yelling like a mad man into the living room and then straight into Lucy’s room, ready to clobber with my bare hands any possible intruder. Fortunately, no one was there. After our nerves finally settled down, we searched the house for what could have made such a terrible crashing, and found it was our make-shift shelf in the bathroom. That red, blue, and green canvas thing in the picture is our shelf. It was filled with soap, razors, lotion, medicine, etc., and when it broke off the hook, everything came crashing down on the tile, making the horrible and terrifying racket. Not to worry, we have reinstalled the shelves with reinforced hooks and have assured ourselves that it will never happen again.)

Lucy seems to enjoy her baths, of course she probably has no idea what she is missing. We have tried to shower with her once or twice (which is how Tico’s bathe their children), but she doesn’t seem to like it very much. For now this is the best solution, as long as she doesn’t grow any more!

Hermosa Lizards

Above: A giant lizard on the beach at Playa Hermosa (not our photo).

One thing we didn’t plan on for our beach trip last weekend was the abundance of jungle wildlife. We encountered crabs (on the beach and in the pool), frogs, birds, a cat, a dog, bugs, hundreds of cutter ants, and geckos; but most of all lizards!

When we arrived at the beach, we checked in and headed next door to eat a much needed lunch. As we waited for our meal, I heard this loud scratching behind Lindsey. We turned around and not five feet away was a lizard (like the one above) climbing up the side of the wooden canopy! He clambered his way up onto the roof where he sunbathed for the rest of our lunch.

That afternoon, as we were hanging out by the pool, we heard some more scratching and clawing and saw this lizard climbing up a tree.

We managed to get this picture from far away. If you can’t tell, he has a red head and a bright green body.

The next day, after we avoided some small, sun-bathing lizards as we walked to the local tienda, we arrived back to our room to spot this little fella on Lindsey’s pillow.

We quickly caught him and released him back into the wild. That night, we spotted 3 or 4 geckos hanging around the porch light eating bugs!

What a trip to the Costa Rican jungles.

Playa Hermosa

This weekend was a national holiday in Costa Rica, so we took advantage and headed to the beach.

Above: Lindsey and Lucy in our hotel pool with the ocean in the background.

Friday morning, we headed to central San Jose and hopped a bus to Jaco beach. 3 hours later, we arrived in Jaco and caught a cab to Playa Hermosa, a small, secluded beach 10 minutes away. The beach had about 10 small hotels, some restaurants, about 25 locals, and that is it. It was very secluded, except for the dozens of surfers who come for the famous Playa Hermosa waves.

We pretty much spent the whole trip either on the beach, in the pool, eating, and sleeping. The ocean was especially fun because of the huge waves and strong current. We all slept great as the only noise at night was the crashing surf. It was a great relaxing weekend and fun time alone with our family.

More Sunsets

Yet another set of sunset pictures from our porch.

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More sunsets from our front door. On this night we caught the sun right as it was about to set over the mountain.

House Tour – Office

Part 2 in a series on our apartment in San Jose.

Above: Our office, as seen from the doorway in our bedroom.

When we first saw pictures of our apartment, there was an odd room off our bedroom that no one quite knew what to do with. Too small to be a bed room, yet too big to be a closet, and our landlord suggested we use it as a TV room (?)

After searching for weeks for a desk, which we found at PriceMart (think Sam’s Club), we finally started to use our room as the office. As you can see, it consist of a desk, a chair, and a bunch of wires.

- In the foreground on the left are two lonely shelves, one for books and the other for random stuff (like the top of your dresser.)
- As you can see, we’ve put some of our 12 suitcases to work for storage.
- The printer/copier comes in handy for reimbursements with our mission agency and scanning receipts for insurance, which we have done a lot of lately with Lindsey’s pregnancy check-ups.

Below: This is the only decoration we have in the room, my proudly displayed “certifica.” Never in my life have I made a dean’s list or graduated “cum laude” from anything, and alas, this graduation was no different from all the others. Though I was the top student in my class (a class of the four worst Spanish speakers in the entire school), I still only mustered a B+ in grammar. And yet despite my apparent mediocrity in beginners-level Spanish, I will always be able to point out to my detractors that I did in fact complete 60 hours of class, and did it with a perfect record of attendance!

Spanish Word – En Serio?

From time to time, as we learn some Spanish, we’ll try to help you learn some as well.

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Above: Lucy loving her rain jacket, indoors none the less.

“En serio?” This is a question loosely translated in the lingo of a US high schooler, “seriously?” Other translations might be “really?” or “are you serious?” We hear it a lot when we tell Tico’s here about our strange customs in the US (most recently, hiding plastics eggs in the park, “en serio?”)

How does this relate to the picture? Well the other day it was drizzling when we went to the park with Lucy, so we put on her jacket and her hood. When we got to the park it stopped raining, but she screamed when we tried to take off her hood. She wore it all the way home in the bright sun, and then wore it all over the house during her snack, causing us to look at her and laugh: en serio?