Back to Life in Costa Rica

Hello Dear Family and Friends,

We arrived back in Costa Rica a few weeks ago and we hit the ground running.  One of our goals for these few weeks was to visit every one of the four churches in the area of Heredia (one of the Provinces (States) of Costa Rica).  We have visited the San Isidro de Heredia Church a few times, but we did not know where the other 3 churches were located.

This may not sound like much of a goal, but when you live in a country where there are no street addresses, finding anything can be very difficult.  One of the addresses we were given was to find the big grocery store in a particular communty and head 200 m west.  Another one was to find the soccer field, take a right, then find the cemetery, then you are close.  The last one was to find another of our churches, take the roundabout, go past the gas station and then take a left on the second little street after the bar.  (We found 3 bars there, so that one was harder, but we found it!).

Church in San Francisco de San Isidro de Heredia

Anyway, we have now successfully visited all 4 Heredia churches.   Each Pastor and church is very special, and we enjoyed so much worshiping with each congregation.  These four Heredia churches have a plan to do evangelistic work together in their communities.  In November, they plan to hold a Maximum Mission event, doing community service and outreach, to help the smallest church in Fatima. The church is alive in Heredia!

The Doctoral Student Group with Dr. Hahn from NTS (left in red).

Another special time was spent with the doctoral students from Central and South America as they were on campus for two weeks studying with  NTS (Nazarene Theological Seminary).  It was great to spend time with all of them.  We enjoyed a tour day to Poas Volcano.

Happy Birthday to Pam Tooley (former CALL student) and Professor Zeidy.

Shelley has been doing lots of future planning in these weeks, both with the CALL language school program as well as with the ESL program.  On top of that, she is working hard to translate into English a book in the School of Leadership series.  Since our Region now includes the Caribbean English field, some of our Seminary resources must be translated into English.  This is interesting work since it involves research.  You see, the quotes are in Spanish, but most were originally in English.  So Shelley has to find the original books (not always easy!) to have the original English in the translation.

Darin and Tonya Kucey, ready for their Spanish lesson with Professor Zeidy.

We have two students arriving for CALL classes this weekend.  We are excited to welcome the Reinharts.  They will study for one full month, learning all they can from Professor Gaby.  The Kucey's continue classes as well.   They are taking about 18 hours per month from Professor Zeidy.  They are advancing well in their Spanish language learning!

David made a special trip to Liberia recently, where we have 16 missions or preaching points.  He and Franlym Pena, Seminary professor and administrator, held meetings to discuss ideas for providing more and better theological and discipelship education for the church planters and cell group leaders.

This week, Shelley and David visited the church in Palmares, located about 1.5 hrs from the Seminary.  A team from Washington will be visiting in January, so we visited the church where our friend Felipe is the Pastor to plan ahead for this team.  We drove about 3 km on a windy, mountainous road to meet a few of the cell groups members in Candelaria.  Plans are taking shape, but a return trip in late October should solidify the plans.  

The Church at Palmares

Beautiful views on the way to Candelaria.

David is excited to travel to the Indigenous area next week (3 days) and then to the Dominican Republic for Evangelism Leadership meetings later in October.  Lots to do!!!

Kayley has been very busy getting caught up at school.  She missed 3 weeks of classes and although she did lots of homework on the road, there was still lots to do upon her return.  Finally, she took her last make up test on Saturday (make up tests can only be taken on Saturdays!) so she is officially caught up!  She has just two weeks of classes and then a week long fall break.  Yeah for Kayley!

We have all enjoyed Stephen and Anne Sickel's new baby, Micah. He is such a good baby and it is fun for us all to have a little one on campus.

Kayley with Baby Micah.

Joshua (OAK t-shirt) and the gang from the Pierpont Church in WV.

Joshua is settled in now at MVNU (Mount Vernon Nazarene University).  He is enjoying college life, complete with the full service dining hall and evening basketball games.  He really enjoys his psychology class and is putting up with biology.  He has a work study job at the IT Help Desk.  He is having to relearn the PC system since he has become accustomed to his Mac.  We are thankful for skype so we can see and hear from Joshua once in a while.

Joshua in the student lounge with Travis is roommate (yellow t-shirt).

A big thanks to you for praying for us.  We are blessed to have so many praying for us each week.  God bless you!

The Webb Family