Trips, Teams and Celebrations

Greetings from Costa Rica.  This month has been so busy that we have lots to share with you all.  What a great month of trips, teams and celebrations.

Costa Rica has many active volcanoes, and Turrialba, which is not far from the city, has been quite active recently.  No lava yet to report, but lots of spewing ash.  It rains ash over the city when the wind is right, which is most of the time.  The biggest issues are allergies and headaches, and occasional airport delays and closures.  If you would like to view a time lapse, see this site. http://www.crhoy.com/espectacular-fotografo-capto-caida-de-ceniza-del-turrialba/nacionales/

This sign is posted at the mall - "Be careful, floor is slippery because of the ash."

We have loved being LINK missionaries with our friends in the Florida District, but now we say adiós to the south as we have been newly LINKED with the Chicago Central district.  What a blessing to have this program in the Church of the Nazarene.  We are waiting to hear who we will be LINKED with around the world.  The last country was Barbados, and we have so enjoyed our new friendships with them as well.  So, hello Chicago Central district!  Can’t wait to visit your churches in the fall of 2017.

Chicago Central District Assembly announces new LINKS missionaries. Yep, that is our family!

We are so proud of Joshua for working so hard for four years to graduate with his degree in Business Management while working part time at Fastenal and as an RA at MVNU.  Honestly, we could not be prouder!

We loved being together as a family. Shelley’s parents drove from Iowa to be with us.  

What a blessing to all be together for this special occasion.

Josh and his good friend Zack.

Joshua's group of friends.  This was before the tears started.

Back in Costa Rica, we said goodbye to our three MNU student teachers.  We loved having them with us and say a big CONGRATS to Jared, Tyler and Jordan as they graduate and begin their careers in teaching. 

Kayley always enjoys having the students on campus.

David travelled to Haiti this month for Evangelism meetings.  It was a great experience for him to learn more about a different culture and way of life. He loved every minute of his experience with the leaders there.  Next time, Shelley hopes to go along too!

The Mesoamerica Region Evangelism Team

Haiti will have a chapel factory soon.  This is the building under construction.

The group of 55 Haitian Evangelism leaders.

David hosted a Work and Witness Evangelism team from Tennessee this month.  The Gateway Community Church of the Nazarene in Franklin/Brentwood sent four of their best!  They group worked with children, showed the Jesus Film and did some repair work on the church. We are hoping that more from this church will return to continue the work in Limon, an important and strategic location for church planting in Costa Rica.

Every four years, we enjoy the privilege of attending the Regional Missionary Retreat.  This time it was in Panama.  

All the missionaries in attendance at the Regional Retreat 2016.

We loved seeing all our missionary friends, including the Sickel family who live in Chiapas, Mexico.

We are so pleased to work with such wonderful missionaries.   We loved seeing them all and catching up on their lives, families and ministries.  Can’t wait to do it again in four years.

Here are a few prayer requests as we enter the summer season:     

• Pray for Joshua as he searches for a job in the Columbus, Ohio area.  He is relocating there in June.
• Pray for Kayley as she finishes her last few weeks of high school.  Graduation is June 18^th.  Also, Kayley begins her first college course online with MVNU on June 6^th. 
• Pray for the Clearwater First (Florida) team who will arrive to SENDAS late June for a week of Work and Witness. 
• Pray for the Chicago Central district as they send more teams this summer to work with the North Costa Rica District projects.

Thanks for your prayers and support.  You are a blessing to us as we minister on the Mesoamerica Region.

The Webbs

Celebrations: A Wedding, Two Reunions, Three New CALL Students, Six Baptisms, and Eighteen participants in a Conference

There is much to tell since the last Webb Page Update. 

Let’s start with a wedding, but not just any wedding: a wedding between two of our long time missionary friends.  David Campos from El Salvador who serves in Haiti married Erika Chavez from the Poas Church here in Costa Rica who served until just recently in the Dominican Republic.  Anytime a missionary marries, it is a big deal, but when two marry each other, it is a BIG party!  We have known David since our days in Guatemala (10 years ago) and Erika not much less time as she has attended the La Finca Poas Church all her life.  We cannot remember our first encounter with Erika, but we imagine it was in 2008.  These two will return to the mission field in Haiti in a couple months.  They are what we refer to as a Power Couple!  Cannot wait to see how God uses them TOGETHER in Haiti. 

Congrats to Erika and David

Two former CALL students returned for short visits and had time to visit with their teachers.  Pam Tooley and Dr. Fairbanks enjoyed their talks with Profesora Gaby.  We love when our students return, and we are never surprised when they ask to see their teachers once again!  We are blessed with awesome and wonderful profs.

Nothing is more exciting in ministry than helping someone to learn and grow and then send them out to serve.  We get to do that a lot and it is always a blessing.  This month, after many hours of Spanish study, Abby Anderson completed the course and is ready to serve as a Genesis missionary in the DR.  She is training now and will be deployed shortly.  Keep her and the other new Genesis missionaries in your prayers.  (Read more about it at www.mesoamericagenesis.org).

Abby had the experience of aquanaut.  She is at the bottom of the ocean walking around. Amazing!

Three new students arrived for CALL with the MNU Student Teaching program.  We are so pleased to have Jared, Tyler and Jordan with us on campus.  They are doing well at student teaching in this new and different culture.  They have many adventures planned during their one month stay, including waterfalls, the beach and a volcano!

David traveled to Sarapiqui recently to visit the Las Marias Church. It is located northeast of the city in the middle of acres and acres of banana trees.  Hot and beautiful!  David and Pastor William went last Sunday to visit and baptize six of the congregation who have completed a Basic Discipleship class.  It took much longer than expected because the area had not had much rain this month and the rivers are a bit dry.  They drove an hour and half to find a river with enough water to baptize!  They wanted the full effect, no sprinking of water for these people! 

As a thank you, the church gave David a few bananas!

Kayley has been busy with school projects.  This is her senior year, so graduation is right around the corner in June.  In her Physics class, they used the idea of the zipline (canopy), which is very popular in Costa Rica, to study the physics of how to design the tour.  Kayley and her friend went all our using paper mache to build the mountains and the course.  Great work, Kayley! 

Kayley has made the El Alto Church her home church and is now beginning to teach Sunday School.  Here she is with her own class of teens.

Kayley made a big decision this month to attend Mount Vernon Nazarene University (MVNU) in Ohio, just as her brother did.  She is planning on majoring in Nursing.   Lots of changes ahead for her (and for her parents!).

David also has made a couple of visits to the Limon church, located on the Caribbean coast.  This port city has many issues with drugs and crime, but the Church is flourishing there.  A team from Tennessee will be arriving next week and David will be working with them to support this New Start church. 

Shelley has been translating and working with two different retreats/conferences in these days.  The Seminary Presidents from the Mesoamerica Region were on campus for one week, and then the Global Consortium (Presidents and leaders from Post-Graduate Institutions) from around the world was in Costa Rica.  We hosted both groups and it was a great time, but a busy time.  Shelley translated until she could translate no more!  We are blessed to work with such great leaders from around the world: Australia, United Kingdom, Korea, Philippines, USA and Costa Rica.

Some of the Seminary Presidents from the Mesoamerica Region

Leaders of Post-Graduate Institutions around the world

Joshua is finishing his college experience and has just two more weeks until graduation. He plans on staying in Mount Vernon for one month, and then make the move to Columbus, Ohio. Pray with us that God will provide just the right job at the right moment for him.

Coming up soon:

Evangelism Team to Limon – next week

MVNU graduation, April 30^th

Missionary Retreat in Panama –May

Kayley’s graduation – June 18

Thanks for your prayers and support.  And thanks for reading this long post!

We appreciate you.

The Webb family

Clearwater, CALL and a Holy Core

Here is the latest from the Webb family...

First of all, this time of year we see some beautiful rainbows, a great reminder of God's promise.

We were invited by the Clearwater Church of the Nazarene to speak at their Missions Partners event last month.  We had a great time visiting with old friends (some we had not seen for many years) and meeting many new ones as well.  Now we are planning for this same church to visit SENDAS in June to help with a Work and Witness project.  It will be fun to have them with us in Costa Rica.  The photos tell the story well…

We love the Tooley family.  We enjoyed an evening together at Starbucks.

This is my faithful friend, Amy.  We had not seen each other for many years, like maybe nine!

We got to see the beach.  Beautiful sand.  So white and fluffy.

Our table at the Missions Banquet. Look at those amazing decorations.

This was the best Costa Rica decoration I have ever seen - looks just like Arenal.

Pastor Pat and Missionary President Maureen.

Bruce Wilson and David spotted this truck in the Walmart parking lot.  The plate says Pura Vida.  There must be at least one Tico in Clearwater.

Shelley speaking at the Banquet.

Back in Costa Rica, Shelley continues her work with CALL – the Spanish language school.  We had Ron, a student from Canada, and Abby, a new Genesis missionary, with us this month.  Ron has now returned to Canada after his one-month stay, but we get to keep Abby for one more month.  She then will move to the Dominican Republic to begin her Genesis training.  She is assigned to the DR.

Last day of classes for Ron.  Great job!

Profesora Nuria and Abby during class.

We also are glad to announce that our friends Honri and Amparo have accepted the pastoral call at the San Pablo Church.  They are going to do great there.  Already David has plans to work in the Heredia churches later in the year with an Evangelism team from the USA.  Great things ahead for Heredia!

Last weekend, we spent time with the church board from the Poas Church.  This is a great group of leaders.  On Friday night we talked about being a Holy Core for the church.  We referred to our friend Daron Brown’s book, Shift, chapter 2, if you want to look it up.    The next day we had a fun time visiting a hot water springs park near Muelle where the district center is located.  This location will be great fun for teams in the future as they come to work at the CR North District Center. 

CR North District Center - Big plans for construction here in 2017.  Looking for a W&W project?  This is a great one for your church or district.

The Church board of Poas.  Great people!

This week David had a really good trip to Changuinola, Panama. There are two church planters there who are working hard for the Lord.  David will visit again later this week, and this time we will hope for a few photos of the leaders there.

Kayley has really had a good time with her friends from the local youth groups. She attends three different youth groups as she can. 

Kayley with the Casa de Oración Youth Group

We really appreciate your prayers and support.  We are looking forward to a missionary wedding later this month, then attending Joshua’s graduation from MVNU at the end of April, the Regional Missionary Retreat in Panama in May, and finally Kayley’s graduation from high school in June, just before the Clearwater Team arrives.  Busy days, but good days ahead.

The Webb Family

Three Big Events

We have had a wonderful last few weeks with three big events to tell you about. 

•          Jesus Film Recording in the language of Cabecar in the town of Bribri.
•      Costa Rica Central District Assembly
•      Costa Rica North District Assembly

David and Shelley travelled to Bribri, a town near the Panama border, at the end of January to stay with their missionary friends the Jones family.  They are wonderful family of four who sacrificially have served for many years in the indigenous area of Costa Rica.  David Jones, the father, was born and raised in the indigenous area and to our knowledge is the only gringo who speaks Cabecar.  His wife Lucy is so sweet. She is from Cartago, Costa Rica. They have two boys,  Andrew and Levi who are home schooled and live life to the fullest.

This translation of the Jesus Film into Cabecar is something we have wanted to have since the Church of the Nazarene began working with the Cabecar Indians a few years ago.  The New Testament (2^nd version) just came out in 2013 and the Old Testament is in process.  Since many Cabecar do not speak Spanish, this film will be a great help to the local leaders as they share with others about Christ.

You can read more about the entire project at this link:

It was an amazing experience to watch the film being recorded.  One Cabecar man or woman would be in the sound booth, while three or four others listened in.  David Jones and the Jesus Film Team leader would coordinate the recording, asking for more energy in the voice, needing the reader to read faster or trying to remove words in Cabecar to make it fit into the spacing allowed by the film.  Sometimes a 30 second piece would take a LONG time to get right.  David Jones worked hard to arrange for more than 30 Cabecar readers to be a part of the film. 

We are so thankful to those who contributed to this huge project which cost $38,000.  There were various donors, some from Jesus Film Harvest Partners which is part of the Church of the Nazarene, and others who gave directly to Jesus Film.  Thanks to each one who supported this huge project.  The movie may be ready as soon as April.  We are excited to see the completed project, and we hope to learn more Cabecar words listening to the movie.

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The yearly meetings (Assemblies) for the local districts occurred on Friday and Saturday.  Both days were celebrations of what God has done and is doing in the churches.  

A new Superintendent (highest district leader) was elected in the Central district.  Our friend, Mario Vargas, has served in this role for 13 years, but now our other friend, Sirlene Bustos, will take over within the month. We will be praying for Sirlene and her local church congregation as they make the transition to another level of leadership. 

We are really excited about the new Pastor in Limon, a port city on the Atlantic coast. Pastor Jairo has restarted the work there and God is doing great things in the community and in the lives of many children.

The North Assembly was on Saturday at the Poas Church (La Finca).  

David directed the Assembly, and did a great job. A highlight was having the Chicago district in the USA Skype into the event to share their greetings and to pray with the North district leaders.  The Chicago district and CR North have formed an unusual partnership that has remained vibrant and healthy now for five years, with more years to come. 

Great things are in store for both districts.  We are blessed to live and work in Costa Rica.

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Upcoming Events:

We are looking forward to being in Florida for a Faith Promise (Missions) event next weekend.  The church in Clearwater will be bringing a Work and Witness team to SENDAS in June, so we are excited to talk with them about all God is doing here.

Believe it or not, Joshua will graduate from MVNU on April 30^th.  We are already making our plans to attend and be with Joshua as he completes another goal in his life.  Who knows, but graduate school may be in his future at some point.  He already will have 9 hours of master’s classes at MVNU when he graduates in April.

Prayer requests:

Joshua’s job search

Kayley’s last semester of high school and college choice for the fall

David’s travels throughout Costa Rica

Shelley’s work including the CALL language school

SENDAS as we make plans for the future

Costa Rica Central and North districts for healthy, vibrant churches and many new church plants.

God bless you for reading this blog.  If you got to the bottom of this page, you truly love missions! (Or you are David or Shelley's Mom).