August Update from Costa Rica

Can you believe it is August already? This year is flying by.  We are so glad to have had a part in 12 Work and Witness teams already this year.  I think this is a record for us.  We can remember one year working with 8 or 9, but 12 takes the cake!  And there are two more to go this year: one this month and one in November.  Whew...I think we are going to make it!

A big and special thanks to the volunteers who have made it possible:  Ted and Lori Bruce (MO District), Bruce and Linda Wilson (South Florida) and Peggy Strange from Missouri who just led her first team (she took the photo above). 

Between teams, we recently traveled to Iowa. We really enjoy speaking at NMI District Conventions. It is always a great experience to share with local missions leaders.  In July, we attended the Iowa District NMI Convention. We spoke in the morning and then held two workshops in the afternoons about a W&W trip to Costa Rica for 2018.  We expected to have a few people attend each workshop, but God surprised us with 55 people in the first one and another 35 in the second. Already we have more than 40 people signed up to participate so we got out our calendars to add a third trip to next year’s calendar.  Three Iowa teams next year!  Gonna be another great year for Costa Rica.

Speaking at the Ames, IA Church of the Nazarene

The construction project is the District Center for the North District located in Muelle.  This project has a great start, thanks to the North district churches who take turns working each weekend. 

Chicago Central Team taking a break from digging.

The first ever W&W team for this project arrived from Chicago Central district in late July.  They were led by a volunteer missionary, Peggy Strange (Bruce and Brian Wilson's sister),  along with her family. We are so blessed to have such great volunteers working to continue the work in Costa Rica. 

 
Two teams arrived in July to finish up the construction at the Quebrada Grande Church.  Here is a link to a great article with photos all about these two teams from Southern Florida.  Just click here: https://sfnazarene.org/big-miracle-costa-rica/

Bruce and Linda Wilson led these two teams, and we provided some logistical support since there were three teams in country at the same time.  

The two Work and Witness teams at the Dedication Service at the new Sanctuary in Quebrada Grande.

David leading the prayer time at the Dedication Service for the Quebrada Grande Church.

Two of our favorite people:  Rev. Johnny Calvo and Bruce Wilson.

At SENDAS, the second course for NTC Manchester was held by video conference.  This is a way to continue to provide great educational opportunities for the SENDAS professors and other leaders.  The course was held in Mexico, linked by video conference to Guatemala and Costa Rica. 

In family news, Kayley has enjoyed her summer at MVNU.  She worked as an RA, in the campus Post Office and has translated materials into English.  She recently attended the Rendezvous event in Canada (a Nazarene church event for Missionary Kids of college age).  She had a great experience! 

Joshua continues his work with Park Bank in the Columbus, OH area.  He and his roommates are looking for a new house to rent so a move is in the works. We are praying they will find just the right place, at the right price at the right time.

We are hoping to have both kids with us in early to mid-December to celebrate the holiday a little early.

Our home assignment time is approaching.  We have a full schedule with services in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Illinois and California.  We hope to see you along the way!

We have another W&W team arriving on tomorrow (Saturday) from California to help SENDAS complete the Orchid building.  Painting are tiling are the main jobs.  It will be a great week of work alongside good friends.

Thanks for your prayers. 

David and Shelley Webb

General Assembly and Two Great W&W Teams

We hosted a superb group from Bakersfield, CA who worked with the North district at two locations. 

San Ramon is a city where we have wanted to plant a church for many years, and it is finally happening.  Pastor Alex is an experienced church planter, and he has begun the work in San Ramon while he pastors his own church in Barrio San Jose in Alajuela.  

The team spent two days in San Ramon painting a children’s basketball court and doing face painting, making animal balloons and conversing in the central park. The cell group of about 10 people in San Ramon was encouraged with the work and the outreach.  

This same team worked at the Barrio San Jose Church building two offices.  This is a real blessing to the pastor who did not have an office of his own before.  The team also worked in a local public school and their testimony was so wonderful that the director asked them to stay another week!

Then the General Assembly and Conventions took place in Indianapolis, USA. This event has nearly 20,000 in attendance so there is lots of preparation that goes into running a booth at this event.  Publications and materials are developed, the designs for the booth are made, and this year we held a SENDAS Gathering event for the very first time.  Everything went really well.

 The highlight for us was seeing our family for two days.  Joshua and Kayley drove to Indianapolis from Columbus, OH and Shelley’s Mom and Stepdad arrived from Iowa.  It was fun to visit together and enjoy the services and meals. 

Before the event ended, we returned to Costa Rica to prepare for the next team.  The Eagle Church of the Nazarene team from Idaho worked at the Los Angeles Church and surprised everyone by the amount of work that got done in one week.  Two concrete floors were poured (no cement truck involved!) and a block wall was built.  But beyond that, the team of five families (half kids and teens) helped the local church with their Vacation Bible School.  What a blessing to work with the children and to hold two sports activities at a local basketball court. The biggest blessing was to see some new families attend the Sunday morning service from the outreach at the court.  God is good!

We feel so blessed to have successfully led (with help from volunteers) 8 teams already this year.  There are still a few to go, but already the work accomplished alongside the local churches is phenomenal.  We hope to have the dedication of the Los Angeles building as soon as the month of August.  That will be quite a celebration!

We are in Iowa as I write this to speak at the Iowa NMI Convention and the Ames Church.  More on that next month.

Upcoming events:

1. Preparing for the July teams to Quebrada Grande and Muelle CR North District Center project.

2.  Getting ready for the NorCal Team for SENDAS.

3.  Trying to keep up with the daily work at SENDAS and the two districts. 

4.  Preparing for Home Assignment in September and October 2017.

We appreciate your prayers for Joshua and Kayley.  We are thankful they are both doing well in Ohio, but we do miss them.

David and Shelley

Your missionaries, happily serving in Costa Rica

Raining Blessings

It is May, and the rains have started to pour in Costa Rica.  Although it is harder to travel in heavy rain, we enjoy the green it brings to Costa Rica.  But God has not only brought us the wet kind of rain, He has also rained blessings on us this month. 

Kayley completed her first year of college as a nursing student.  It was not an easy year for her, but she adjusted to life in the USA and learned that nursing is becoming her passion.  We are so proud of her. Joshua continues to do well as his work in banking in Ohio. He really needed a new car and God provided just what he was looking for so he can safely get to work each day.  We are so pleased that both our kids are doing well.  If you are a parent, you know this is top priority.

Kayley on a hiking trip with friends.

In April, SENDAS hosted a special educational course taught by Dr. Brower from Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, England.  It was a wonderful time sharing with the 12 students from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama, as well as two other centers in Mexico and Guatemala.  Shelley helped with translating, but thankfully her role was small.  We all learned lots!

The group in Costa Rica, wich Mexico and Guatemala by video conference.

We have been busy preparing for many upcoming events.  In June, July and August, there are five Work and Witness teams coming, so there is work to do in anticipation of those groups.  Also, we are excited to attend the General Assembly in June. Shelley is working hard to prepare everything for the Seminary. Come see us at the SENDAS booth at the Exhibit Hall!

The work at the Los Angeles Church continues and the final team for this year arrives in July.  Some amazing news arrived last week.  The foundation that has financed the property loan for the Los Angeles Church has cancelled the remaining debt.  The Church is now owned free and clear. This is great timing since the church is ready to invite a new pastor, and these funds can now be applied to other needs of the church.  

The roof is now on the building at Los Angeles.

This week we visited the newest mission on the Central district which is located in San Ramon.  The area has more than 80,000 people, but no Church of the Nazarene.  There is now a cell group of 10 people from the community, as well as the planting team from Barrio San Jose Church (5 more people) who are meeting twice a week.  This week, God provided them a perfect location to rent, just two blocks from the main square of the town. The June Evangelism team from California will be working in this area to help strengthen this new cell group.  

The entry way to the new sanctuary in San Ramon.

Seating for 40 people...room to grow.

Oscar and Pastor Alex at the first meeting in the new downtown location.

Nuria, Gaby and Carol

CALL continues to serve students who desire to learn Spanish.  We have a few online students currently, and a new student arrives in June for a six week stay.  We are blessed to have wonderful professors for CALL, and we enjoy getting together to share what is happening in our lives, normally over some coffee.

We are looking forward to what the future holds for us with General Assembly in Indianapolis in June, the Iowa District NMI Convention in July and teams working in San Ramon, Alajuela, Muelle, Quebrada Grande and San Jose in the coming months.  Then we will be on home assignment in the USA in September and October.  We hope to see you somewhere along the way!

Thanks for keeping us in your prayers. 
David and Shelley (Joshua and Kayley too).

The Thankful Blog

Yes, we know it is Easter and not Thanksgiving, but we are overflowing with thankfulness for all God has done in these 14 weeks of being with 7 Work and Witness teams.  It has been busy, rewarding, crazy, wonderful and exhausting all at the same time!  Once again, God has shown us mercy and grace as we ministered with teams from California (two teams), Tennessee, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas, Illinois and a team from many states from Jesus Film Harvest Partners.

You can see in the past posts about many of the teams, but today’s blog focuses on the Mundeleien/ Elgin, IL team and the Northern California district team.

The Los Angeles Church is blessed this year to have several teams coming to help them build a new and MUCH NEEDED building. 

There was not enough room for everyone for the Sunday service.  This congregation needs more space!

The Mundelein/Elgin team was the second team (see previous post about the first team to LA in January this year) to arrive to help this growing and serving congregation. The team’s main job was putting up block for the walls for the new bathrooms.   

They also painted the metal trusses.  It was one of the hottest weeks we have ever had in Costa Rica with the sun beating on everyone all day long.  Many were sunburned and exhausted from the heat, but much great work was done in the process. 

Shelley spent one day at the clinic when one lady stepped on a nail and another young lady received chemical (allergic?) burns and swelling from the paint thinner.  Who knew???  Anyway, everyone was ok in the end, although aloe was a friend to many.

The team also participated in a Sunday evangelistic event for kids, and in the end a great connection was made with a local community leader and two teens are now coming to the youth meetings. 

We enjoyed some evening time together as missionaries and church leaders spoke to the group.  David translated for Vicente and Shelley translated for Gabo.  It is always great to hear their testimonies and the teams love it.

On April 1, a team from the NorCal district arrived to work on the final stage of the water project at SENDAS.  This project has been on the list at SENDAS for many years, and we can now say it is FINISHED!  All the sewer water system has now been connected to the city drainage.  It is not easy to find a team for this type of work, but our friend Larry, who works in plumbing, got together a specialized team to help with this project. 

Larry with Andres praying over the congregation of Los Angeles.

The NorCal did such great work that the project was completed one day early, leaving then time to help one day at Los Angeles!  This was such a blessing for everyone.  The team loved the experience, and the LA church was so thankful.  More of the block wall was completed.  

  

The NorCal team also spent one morning at the Bambi Children’s Center which is run by a Nazarene named Aurelina. She and her team care for 70 children at the center.  We enjoy helping there whenever we can.  The children are all from high risk situations and need all the love they can get.  We did a craft with the kids and shared God’s love.

Planning meeting for the Children's activity

Enjoying the children at the Bambi Center

A big thanks to our missionary friends, Bruce and Linda Wilson, who led these two teams and basically saved our lives!  With a number of other responsibilities, it has been difficult for us to be with the teams 24/7.  THANK YOU, Bruce and Linda.

A couple of days after the last team left. the Los Angeles Church completed the roof on their new building!  One more team will arrive in July to complete the basic structure.  We are looking forward to the building dedication in early July.

 In addition to having many teams, we have enjoyed having four Nazarene University students with us this month:  3 from MNU and 1 from MVNU.  Nick, Ellen, Sydney and Laurianne have been such a blessing to us as they complete their student teaching and learn Spanish.  They are a great group of young educators, and three out of the four have interest in teaching abroad in the future.  

We also said goodbye to a special couple who studied Spanish with CALL and taught ESL to some of our missionaries.  Thanks to Tom and Karen who became such special friends in such a short time.  Come back again soon, amigos!

It is now Semana Santa (Holy Week) and we are enjoying a few days of rest.  We did not have the energy to travel a long distance so we spent one night at a Hilton Hotel here in the city.  It was just what we needed to recharge.  We walked in Sabana Park, enjoyed the sunshine by the pool and slept – a lot!  God blessed us with an upgrade to a suite (we didn’t even ask!) and the views were amazing.  It was 24 hours of pure refreshment.  Ahhhhhhhh…

Happy Easter!  We celebrate not only that Jesus really lived on Earth, not only that He is God’s Son, but also that he died in our place and lives again.  He is risen…He is risen indeed!

Many blessings from the Webbs.