We started the month by traveling to Nicaragua to renew our visas, then a few days after we returned to Costa Rica, we hosted our very first team and finally the month ended up with our son, Jeremiah, coming for a visit. We were able to visit a lot of different areas during the month and are now exploring further where our future home will be.
So grab a cup of coffee and sit back and  read our latest news.
Lots of Love,
John & Cindy
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Our visit to Nicaragua
On the first of October we traveled by Tica Bus (very similar to Grey Hound) and went to Nicaragua to renew our visas. We choose to go to the same place that we went before because we knew that we could stay in a good hotel and still walk to everything. This time around our Spanish was much better and we found we had very few problems getting around, as we could understand the people much better. It really was much better traveling this time as we could communicate so much better. The first night that we arrived in Granada we walked to the central park and met a group from a local church that was reading the Bible over the city in 3 days. They even asked us if we would like to read some, but we chose not too as they were reading really fast and we would have slowed them down a lot. So we told them that it would be better if we just listened and prayed. The good news was we were able to say all of this in Spanish. The rest of the trip was pretty relaxing until I, Cindy, got sick on our last day there. People from Costa Rica have told us the food can be tough on a person’s body and I guess this proved true for me. John’s stomach seems to be like steel so he had very little problems, which was a good thing, as he needed to take care of me. Because I was sick, we had to delay our trip back to Costa Rica by one day. We are thankful to the staff at the Hotel, as they went out of their way to help us, but we were so very happy when we returned to Costa Rica.
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Our first team from the states along with our local friend and his mom
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Visiting Volcano Poaz with our son
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First Team to Costa Rica
We were so very honored to host our first team ever to Costa Rica. We had 2 couples from our church, Wellspring Fellowship, visit us and we were able to travel to some of the poorest areas with them. They were able to get a small idea of the poverty here. They also had a chance to learn how to make tortillas with a local family and they were able to pray for some of the family members and give them prophetic words. Finally, they were able to have fun day at one of our beaches here. John and I had to practice our Spanish, as we were the official translators of the team. We now have a new appreciation for people that have to translate for a living, as we never knew how much this took out of you until we actually had to do it.
Visit with our son
During October we also had a great visit with our son. We traveled to different areas of Costa Rica with him and he was able to see many of the things that he wanted to see. We had always wanted to do a family vacation to another country, but we were never able to afford it. So we are thankful to God for this very special family time together. We are also excited as he is talking about visiting us again next year.
We need your help
While we traveled with our team we had the very special honor of meeting a local pastor. This pastor and his family started a spirit filled church about 3 years ago and they have welcomed us with open arms. We feel so blessed to have made this connection.
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In December this church holds a fiesta, party, for the poor children that live in the area. They are given food, refresco and a notebook for school. Two years ago they were able to bless the children with new shoes for school. The children were so excited to receive a new pair of shoes, something that many children in America take for granted. When we heard this pastor’s heart and that he does not receive any salary from the church we felt like we needed to help him and see if we could not make this year even more special. We would like to raise at least $500 for this special project and we are asking all of you to pray about this and see if God would like you to partner in this amazing opportunity. If you feel lead to give you can mail all donations to Wellspring Fellowship P.O. Box 71733 Albany GA 31708. Please make sure that you include a note that it is for Christmas in Costa Rica. If you would like to give online you can give at www.lovechangesall.org click on the donate button and fill out the form. Where it asks where do you want your donation to go to please check other and then type in Christmas in Costa Rica. We believe that we will get e nough money so that every child will receive a pair of shoes
Matthew 25: 31-46 is a reminder to us that when we do something for the least of these (the homeless, poor, the widow etc) that we are actually doing these acts to Him.
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In one of the poor towns we came across a funeral. There was no hearse, they just carried the coffin through the street
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God is calling us to a new area of Costa Rica
During the last few months God has been telling us that it is once again time to move out of our comfort zone. That it is time to leave the city of San Jose and all that we have come to know and move to one of the areas that have extreme poverty. Costa Rica has seven providences, kind of like a very small state in America, and there are two that have extreme poverty. In fact, we recently read in Tico Times that in one of these providences “there was an estimated 28,000 families living in poverty and 10,000 of them live in extreme poverty. That in many of these rural areas school attendance is poor and domestic violence is rampant.” This one fact alone just breaks our hearts and we cannot just sit back and do nothing.
What we feel God telling us to do is to have a ministry with both a preventive and a street focus. The preventive ministry needs to be focused on the entire family. The few ministries here only focus on women and children and have nothing for the men. We keep asking ourselves if there is nothing for the men, then how will this culture every be changed?
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The street ministry will focus on making relationships with the men, women, children already involved in prostitution. We want to make them feel special when we meet them so we want to give them homemade baked goods instead of the store bought items. We want to work on building their trust so that we can evidently get them off of the street and into a safer place.
God is giving us an ever-expanding vision and we are excited and at the same time nervous about what the next year will bring. Please be praying foe us as continue on this journey with our amazing Papa.
Coffee
Because we have had so many requests for people wanting coffee we have decided to sell a limited quantity of a local shade grown organic coffee for $14 a bag. Each bag has 17.6 ounces and this price is less per ounce then you can buy most organic coffee in the states. If you would like to order please email me at cindy@pishonriver.com and let me know if you would like whole bean or ground. I need to have all orders in by December 1st. We will be bringing the coffee when we come back to the states on December 18th. If we have to ship the coffee to you there will be an additional charge for whatever shipping costs.
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Back to the States
We will be back in the states on December 18th until the 2nd or 3rd week of January. We are looking forward to being back in the states and seeing as many of you as possible. We will be speaking at Wellspring Fellowship in Albany GA on December 29th at 10am and we hope to see as many of you there as possible. We will be also traveling to NC to spend time with John’s family.
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Prayer Requests
• For our next place to live
• For continue healing for John’s dad
• For God’s direction in our continued work here
• For favor in our son’s job
• For divine health for us and for our family
• For traveling both here and when we are back in the states
• For protection and provision
*****if you are interested in bringing a small team on a short term mission trip please email me at cindy@pishonriver.com we feel that we may be ready for teams by the later half of next year. *******
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