This past week has been a good and also challenging week. A good week of meeting people and learning about Costa Rica along with connecting with my host family, and at the same time challenging (in a good way) as I studied and learned to take the plunge and go solo spending time with non-English speakers.
The enclosed pictures are of: (a) the school grounds (it’s a group of buildings positioned into the side of a hill); (b) some of the female teachers, and (c) the school’s director Julie Chamberlin and I. The last two pictures were taken at a little “fiesta” they had for all the new students as a sort of meet-and-greet.
Here are a few highlights:
1. God worked it out that the first 3 days of classes I was the only student in my grouping. So I had some wonderful one-on-one learning with my two Costa Rican teachers: Sondra (grammar) and Oscar (vocabulary). This was greatly helpful in getting started. Next week I will start receiving additional tutoring with a third teacher here named Laura. The school was founded in 1942 and has an excellent reputation for great teachers and a thorough program. The teachers I have are fantastic and very patient. Next week will be on a much faster pace, as 2 more girls arrive. Praying I keep up as the others are more advanced than I.
2. It has been awesome meeting the other students at the school, most of whom are enrolled in the full-year program. Each one has their own unique story of how they came to know Jesus and how God led them into working overseas. They are from all over the world and when they finish at the school, they will be heading out to countries throughout Latin America. We have people from China, Australia, Canada, USA, and New Zealand to name a few. Some are fresh out of college but most are either in their 30s like me, or are retired couples starting a new chapter in their lives. The destination countries include: Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Columbia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and of course Nicaragua for me J.
3. Most neighborhoods here have paid guards to patrol the area. On Thursday, I met our area’s afternoon guard. As I stopped to chat with her (this is customary in CR, it is considered very rude to merely say hello and rush on), what a surprise to learn that she is from Nicaragua! Some of her family is in CR, some are back in Nicaragua, and one son in San Francisco, California. This last fact, was especially funny because the neighborhood we live in here in CR is called “San Francisco de Dos Rios.” When I pointed that out to her, she could not stop laughing.
4. On Sunday night some of us single women had supper together and afterwards we all sang together. One of the songs I hadn’t heard since I was a young teen. The song was: “In His time, in His time, He makes all things beautiful in His time. Lord please show me every day, as You’re teaching me Your way, that You do just what You say, in Your time.” This was such an encouraging reminder to me, when we’re drowning in language learning that since He brought us to this place, He will get us through and bringing about everything that needs to happen to get us to our destination countries.
5. During the school’s chapel time on Monday, the speaker shared from Proverbs 4:23 “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” He shared that in Old Testament times “heart” was synonymous with the core of who you are. It is the safest and most inaccessible part of you. No other human can put things inside your “heart” except you. When challenges come, what is really inside you will come out – good or bad. I can’t blame other people or circumstances for what comes out. I am responsible for what was in there. We are like a bottle of water: when squeezed, water spills out because water is in the bottle. So important to ask God’s help to watch over my heart and ask Him to clean out the garbage.
Later in the week this came back to mind, as I realized I was partially shutting out my host family. I was blaming being tired, needing to study, and overwhelmed by the challenge to communicate. In reality, what was in my heart was coming out: selfishness and an unwillingness to make myself “vulnerable” (i.e. open up for us all to get to really know each other, make mistakes, have miscommunication and all the complications that can arise from miscommunication.). Talk about a “look at yourself in the mirror” moment. Whoa. A lot of you must have been praying for me either Wednesday night or Thursday, because Thursday God helped me break out of that closed feeling. And that night it was just my Tico mom and I home alone for supper, yet we had a great hour of attempted communication and I felt like we actually understood each other quite a bit. But for the prayers of friends and God's work in my heart that evening would probably have played out very differently.