Time with Family

We pray that this latest news finds you, doing very well and that you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year with family and friends. We enjoyed the holiday season back in the states with our family. While we were home we were able to spend time with both of our families in Georgia and North Carolina. Our son, Jeremiah, flew to Georgia to be with us for Christmas and while he was with us he found out that he got a job promotion and is moving to Montana. We are so excited for him and for this latest adventure that God is taking him on.

After our time in Georgia we traveled to North Carolina where we were able to spend time with John's side of the family. While we were there John's dad had an operation to remove an aneurysm and we are happy to say that he did really well and is recovering nicely. However, we ask you to continue to keep him in your prayers as he may still need a few more surgeries for different issues.

Change is in the Air

You may recall from our last newsletter that we asked you to pray with us concerning where we were to move to. We had it narrowed down to two places but it seemed that we were unable to get breakthrough as to which one of these areas He was calling us to. These two areas were so different from each other and both held great ministry opportunities for us. So, as you can imagine, we struggled with which place to go, We had been seeking God for direction but it just seemed that we could not get a clear answer. What do you do when you can't seem to find the direction that you are so desperately looking for? For us the answer always seems to come in fasting and prayer so that is what we decided to do and after 2 days we had our answer. But, sometimes for us the answer doesn't seem to be enough so we asked God to give us confirmation and He really confirmed for us over and over again that being closer to Liberia in the providence of Guancaste is where He was directing us. (So glad
that He his such a loving Father and doesn't get frustrated with us when we hear from Him but yet still ask for confirmation.)

Now that we had our location, the next step was to start looking on the internet for places. We were trying to find a fully furnished apartment. Apartments here usually come completely unfurnished and when we say unfurnished we mean without kitchen appliances and without the kitchen cabinets. We also wanted an American size stove not the normal small "Tico" stove that most people use here. Yes, we know that this was being picky, but in order to be able to properly bake we need a normal size stove (well normal size to us). We were definitely not having much luck finding anything that matched that criteria. The next step was to take the 4 hour drive to Liberia and start looking at potential places. So, when we returned to Costa Rica in January that is what we did. We found a few places online that we thought were potential places, but they were expensive and did not have my, Cindy, dream stove. Also, the furnishings in them were so bad that we would of had to replace them with new things anyway. So we prayed and asked God to help us find the perfect place that He had already had picked out for us. During this prayer time He directed us to look closer to the beach, Both John and I were like "now how is that going to work God, because everything that we have seen so far closer to the beach has been even more expensive?" Again He said look closer to the beach. So we said ok and started looking that way. The first place we saw had my dream stove, unfortunately it was way out of our price range, but for about half the price we could rent one that was completely unfurnished. If this was going to work we would need to check on the cost of appliances, furniture, dishes etc " WOW" is all we can say, to furnish this apartment with only the bare essentials would be over $5000. Not only that we find out that the owner wanted to charge $100 more a month then the original price. Ok so this one was off the list. Next was an apartment that did have the kitchen appliances but no other furniture. We thought that this could be a good compromise, but then found out that there is barely anyone living there and that the 2 pools that were in the complex didn't have any water in them. Humm... is that a sign that this place doesn't have any water. Think it is time to cross this one off the list. The search just seemed to be getting harder. We would find other places to rent but no one would call or email us back. Ugh!!! Well to make a long story short God came through in the end. On the day we were living LIberia we needed up finding our new home. This place was so big compared to everything else we saw and it came completely furnished and yes it even had the stove that we were wanting. We are super excited and will move into our new place March 1st.

Please continue to pray for us as we move to this new location. We will be showing the love of Jesus to the people working on the streets by bringing them homemade baked goods (the reason why the stove was so important) and we will also be going into the poorer pueblos (towns) where we will be doing some preventive ministry.

WIth God ALL things are possible. Matt 19:26.

Lots of love and Blessings,
John & Cindy