Hello All!!
Things are definitely busy here and still going great! I can't believe we are half-way through June already. Josh and I are continuing to see progress in our speaking ability and owe a lot of that to the family that we live with. They have invited us to attend family birthday parties, baby showers, and church events with them and it has been so much fun to really feel like we are a part of the family.
I cleared a huge hurdle today in class and am sending up prayers of thanksgiving. Each student in my class has to prepare and present an hour-long Bible study in Spanish, and I delivered mine today. I was beyond stressed this week as I prepared - Josh can attest to that ;-) - and I spent hours researching, revising, and reviewing my notes.
My topic was the ways in which God speaks to His people. I started out speaking about the more unique ways that God made contact with his followers in Biblical times (burning bush, angels, donkeys, dreams, etc.) but then made the point that in Old Testament times, it was actually far more common for God to speak directly to his chosen people. Regardless of the means of communication however, it is obvious that God was extremely purposeful in the ways that he spoke in the past. We often feel like God doesn't try as hard to speak to us now, but in reality, he has just altered his methods. The Bible is filled with verses explaining that scripture and the Holy Spirit are more than sufficient to communicate God's will directly to us. In the Old Testament, they knew nothing of Jesus Christ, the cross, the Holy Spirit, or the Bible (as we know it) and so perhaps God was a bit stronger in the way that he reached out to his followers. Now, however, God has sent his son as our savior and redeemer and it is our responsibility to take advantage of this grace by spending time in scripture and listening to the Holy Spirit within us.
Now, my delivery today wasn't perfect - there were a few stumbles and some grammatical mistakes - but I am so happy that I was able to coherently convey a message to the class AND I was able to fill the entire hour!
Josh and I have also begun to tackle another project: being a "Big Brother" to a family coming to the school! During our preparations to come to language school here, we requested a "Big Brother" or in our case, a "Big Sister" and a woman already attending school here helped us find our Tica family to live with and answered any and ALL questions that we had about Costa Rica and the school. In requesting this help, we also agreed to BE a "Big Brother" for someone coming to start school in August. We were recently assigned our family and we have begun looking at houses for them. This is awesome Spanish practice for us and also great practice for when we look for a house in Ecuador because we have to call Costa Rican landlords and talk to them about what we are looking for and what the family needs in a house, as well as go visit the houses and take pictures to send to the family. We have seen 3 houses so far and we hope to see several more so that we can give them a few choices. We are very excited to get to meet them when they arrive in a couple of months!
Other than that, it has pretty much been business as usual for us for the past few weeks. Thank you so much for your prayers and love! We miss you!
Love and God Bless,
Steph and Josh
