Two Down, One to Go!

We hope everyone had a great summer! For everyone else, it's back to school season. As for us, we've been in school all along!  We just finished the second of our three trimesters of language school and are gearing up to start the third next week. Unfortunately, the end of a “tri” means saying goodbye to friends who are finishing up their year of school. The good side of this, however, is that we now have friends sharing the GREAT news of Christ in countries all over Central and South America!

We're gonna miss these two, and many others!

 

It also means meeting the new students coming in to begin their year of language school. This time around, this means new fellow Forgotten Children Ministries missionaries, the Stewarts!  We've had a fun time showing them around town and helping them get settled in.

 

 

Our new FCM missionary friends, the Stewarts, who are new students this trimester!

 

The other highlight of our break has been seeing another volcano! Volcano Irazu is about a 45-minute bus ride from here and sounded like a fun (and cheap!) day trip. We had heard it would be cooler on top of the volcano, but nobody mentioned that what we'd really need is a winter coat! It was about 45-degrees and sleeting, which was definitely the coldest we've felt since leaving the US in December. We're not looking forward to the cold of an East Tennessee winter at the end of the year, but a morning up there was good preparation for us!

What we could see of the crater through the fog and sleet

Please be in prayer for our many friends who are traveling and settling into their new countries and ministries. God has sent out a wonderful group of missionaries this month, and we know that He has great plans for them! Please also pray for the Stewarts and other families who are beginning language school next week. They have each chosen to give up everything for the call of Christ, and they need our prayers as God uses this year to change them and teach them. It is a time of great testing of each student's faith, but God is good, and He is faithful to show each of us His glory through this time!

Finally, for us, please pray for our upcoming visa renewal trip in September and our final trimester of language school. Our Spanish has progressed so much this year, but this will be the most difficult trimester of all, as we will have a more difficult class schedule along with more complicated, abstract topics of Spanish that aren't used in English. I will be adding on a class in translation this time around, while Leslie will be taking “FARO” class, which requires her to find people in the community to talk to about certain topics each week. Please pray for her safety as she spends more time out and about, and for helpful Costa Rican friends who will be willing to discuss these topics each week!