Just a few Picture's!

The Boys!

School time!

Oh yes totaly worth walking a mile up hill to find this house abandoned!

3 peas in a pod!

These Guys are so much fun!

Adria, a Lifetime Friend!

Oh Jair & Karina, so in love.....


Kevin Hard at Work!

We are going to miss Our life here!

Count down is on, only 3 wks left!

Well it is now the rainy season! Its wet and humedo! The bugs and monkeys are coming out like crazy, Brooklyn is so happy with the lightning bugs, she has her jar ready to get one. Its been beautiful to see the lightning hit the ocean at night, and its amazing to see how much rain comes down too... we have an area on our deck we have to put a bucket under and it takes no time to fill up. Also exciting highlight for me last Friday we took Irene to a beach up north a bit and spent the day with some ones from the states that are here on vacation. We surfed and I got up!!!! I rode a a few waves, I couldn't believe it! Finally! I got up and couldn't believe I was standing, then I did it again, and again, like four times, I am hooked! It was awesome. I really wanted to be a good surfer before I came home but its hard with only having the car half a week, and when we do have it we need to be out in service. So not as much time for surfing. I will try to get a picture up on the blog of me surfing before we leave.


We have a friend here Irene, she is awesome helps me so much with the kids and cooking and so supportive with our preaching work in Spanish. It's so nice to have a girlfriend here from the states to talk to, and who knows what its like were we live, and she now see's first hand how hard it can be here in Costa Rica and/or any were out side of the states. She also makes me realize even more how much I miss all my friends back home. She translated for me last week so I could say more then usual and share many scriptures and it felt great to have her help so I didn't need to think about the language but only about the what to say to reach people, oh I miss service like that, only thinking about your presentation not how to say it! But who am I kidding! I love it!


We had ran into a guy last week I thought looked so familiar then it hit me so I turned around and said,"usted CarneSeria guy?!", he said "si"! and came up to us on his moto I get my meat from him in town and had witnessed to him a bit just telling him what we are doing here but this day with Irene I was able to tell him a little more and give him the new mag on Jesus Christ, he said how important this is and what we are doing, so I read to him also Matt 28:19 and told him exactly what we are doing here because of what Jesus had commissioned. I'm looking forward to having another informal conversation with him this week.

What next!?

So this has been no less of an exciting week then all the rest! Car troubles one after another always little stuff but still things that keep you from being able to drive, the kids and I are now pro's at helping David push the car even a few times bare foot, thank goodness we seem to always find helping hands, locals always stop and Bill has helped us tons, not to mention Josh he is always able to put in the parts for us. There have been a couple of scorpion and bee stings but I really was hoping for nothing much more then along these lines. Silly me! Three kids in a foreign country for 4 months...





So Ruby was playing on the hammock Thursday and flipped off onto her chin! Well I took one look and knew she had to get stitches, I called David and Bill to look and they agreed and Bill quickly called Dr. Freddy the Dr in town to see if he was in. He was about to take lunch but waited for us so he could fix up poor little Ruby.

We drove down to Samara as fast as we could. I never want to have to do that again, we had to hold her down as the Dr. put 5 stitches in her precious little chin, I was at her arms holding them down and her body, (with a clear view of all the going on's of the procedure)David was at her head and the nurse at her legs, then the Dr. called in the waiting room for a man to help with her feet! She is a fighter. It was so hard hearing her cry for us to let her go and we couldn't, we were all in tears! I could barley tell her its ok. I just couldn't get words out with out sounding helpless to her. It was pretty deep, all the way to the bone, not a pretty sight but she is all better now and we can cut out the stitches on Friday!

Then Noah was boogie boarding in some tough waves on a heavier board then he is used to and it came up and smacked him in the face and broke the board... oh and his nose! Well now he matches his parents! Builds character right!

Oh well nothing too bad and its all over... wait Brooklyn! At assembly Bill comes up to me and says Brooklyn's knees are all bloody! Great! I go to find her and take her to 1st aid, it wasn't to bad she scraped them up really good, but she's a trooper and after a scorpion nothing will stop her. It was difficult to translate to the brother what I needed in 1st aid so he gave me on tiny band aid while he drank his coffee. So good thing I had the gauze from Ruby's chin it came in handy. Well that's all for now we are all alive and feel just fine, just have some more memories to add to our stay here in Costa Rica.

The Zone Visit and This week in Service

We wanted everyone to hear about the zone visit that we got to attend here in Costa Rica. Its a special Assembly only had in countrys outside the united states about every four years or so. Last sunday our congregation had to all ride in a bus to attend the assembly. This was under the direction of the Costa Rica Branch since the entire country of witnesses was invited to attended this one day assembly they felt the only way they could get that many people in such a concentrated area was to have everyone bused in and then bused out the same day. So you can imagine this was a pretty long day for many of our brothers and sisters across the entire country. Some had been transported in from as far as 6 to 8 hrs one way. We only had a 5 hr ride so our day started at 3am when our congregation all met at the kingdom hall and we piled into two buses and headed for the Zone Visit. Amber and Tinisa (a need greater sister from Michigan) were up the night before 2 o'clock in the afternoon until 10 at night making breakfast burritos in homemade tortillas for our entire congregation.


This assembly was held at a HUGE soccer stadium just outside of the capital of costa rica near San Jose. This assembly focuses on the needs of the entire country it was quite a seen, there were over 14,500 of our brothers and sisters packed into the stadium in anticipation of Brother Loosch of the governing body to give his wonderful talk. There was total silence when he got on stage, just the sound of the strong wind. This was only half of the country. It was really amazing that how in one day they had the entire country enjoy this very special visit. Half the country enjoyed the program Sunday morning (we were in the morning) and the other half of the country enjoyed the program in the afternoon. The program was 3 hrs long and consisted of a summary of the Watchtower and 2 talks that focused first (this talk was givin by brother Dilinger one of the secretary's of the Governing Body)on "praising God with our thoughts, words and actions. And the concluding talk was givin by brother Losch which was titled "Do you have the evangilizing spirit". These talks were all givin in spanish so David did his best to translate them in english by taking notes and every once in a while handing them to me so I could understand what was being said since I only get every ten words or so. A couple of the points that we really appreciated from the visit were first in brother Dilingers talk he mentioned Psalm 139:1,2 about how we can praise Jehovah even with our thoughts. Sometimes we think praising Jeh is all about our acions or what we do in service but what a nice reminder. Another point that we appreciated in brother Looschs talk was how he opened by mentioning that there is no greater work that we can be doing than the preaching work to glorify Jeh and that by declaring the goodnews we actually are following the example of Jeh (Gal 3:8)since he also declared the goodnews. He also focused on specific needs like using house to house records. Our congregation elders are setting a fine example in following the direction of this need because since Tuesday the first day in the ministy since the Zone visit each morning in service they have been handing out the slips and explaining how to use them. Hard to believe this has not been a regular part of there ministry here. So you can imagine how dificult this could be since most roads dont have names and most houses dont have addresses. It was truly an amazing experience to be here for this wonderful event.





We also wanted you to here about some more of our experiences in the ministy. Amber conducted her first bible study in spanish this week! She went back to a young mothers home named Naudel who we had placed the bible teach book with the week before. Amber took a Tica sister named Marilynn with her who assisted her with the study. The nice thing about ticos is that they are very patient when it comes to foreigners trying to speak their language. The sister and her householder patiently allowed Amber to fumble around with the language while she attempted to read the questions for each paragraph. They were able to cover the first subheading and made arrangements for Amber to return next week! That same day she went to another call (Maria)in spanish all by herself who she started a study with last saturday. She did not intend on going alone however the sister who was with her on the call had to return to the car because there was a horse on the trail that leads up to the home. This sister looks at horses the way Amber looks at bridges. She is deathly afraid of them. So Amber went to the home and rescheduled the bible study for next week. Somehow she was able to communicate that the other sister was afraid of horses and that she needed to reschedule the study. It was really good for Amber to be thrown into that situation to give her the confidence that she can communicate with the people here. I am very proud of her. We are very anxious to return to Maria because all three visits we have had up to this point seem to be very good and Amber has a real good connection with her.

I'm also very excited about a couple calls I made this week. The first was Tuesday morning in an area called San Fernando. I went back to a call that had previously excepted a study but who I hadnt found home for a few weeks. His name is Geraldo. I took a sister who is fluent in spanish with me and she was able to help me conduct the study. When we were about to begin the study the sister (Arianna) mentioned to Geraldo that we always start with a prayer. So I looked at her and said you want me to say the prayer in spanish dont you? She of course said yes and so I did it. I cant remember being so nervous to say a prayer in quite a long time. I got thru it and the rest of the study went really well. Geraldo wanted to know what the bible says about why there is so much badness in the world and why people lie so much. so we studied the first subheading in chapter 11 of the teach book titled "Why God allows suffering?". It went really well, his answers were really good and I look forward to going back next week. (this experience has givin me the confidence to say prayers in spanish now and so when I was asked to say prayer the next day for the service group I told the brother I could do it albeit not very good)The other call was with a man named Luis who is from Nicaragua. He lives in a Bodega behind one of the local Hotels in Samara. He works 7 days a week and is very difficult to find home. I was able to reach him on Tuesday and of course he was working as well and so I left the April special watchtower with him on Jesus and made arrangements to have a study with him next Wedensday at 2:00 oclock. Each time I call on him he seems to really express alot of interest but it's just so hard to get him when he is not working.

We finally feel like we're developing some nice calls and making some real progress with them. After being here for over 3 month now we are really starting to feel connected with our congregation as well. We look forward to coming home but sad to leave our friends here.

Silencio y El Toro!

We have a new member of the Jackson Family. We were in service a few week's ago in a area called Silencio and a bible study of a sisters here had a bowl full of four day old Parakeets, so of course we had to give one a home. This house we we're at just blew me away, a women there was scrubbing her clothes on a big stone and then hanging them (thats common here), there was a huge pig walking around the yard, a few dogs, and they had a big box built up around there water well, this is how they get water, one bucket at a time, there drainage system ran right through their yard/outside living area.

So Brooklyn is its new mommy, she wakes up early in the morning when it calls for her and feeds it with a dropper. Its now four weeks old and getting a lot more feathers coming in. Its nice for them to have a pet, and really with all the other chirps we hear all day and night, we barely hear Silencio.
Wednesday in service we had such a great day very productive, and very exciting, we picked up a few others and worked an area called panama. We started a new study with one of our Rv's and got Raul home who we've had a couple of really nice study's with. On our first study with him he kept calling Jesus "God". So we showed him Psalms 83:18 to explain that Gods name is Jehovah. He was very surprised to see Gods name in the bible since he had never seen it in his bible before. He has so many questions about the bible and when we answer his questions from the bible he is so grateful. We look forward to seeing Raul every week, he is such a highlight of our ministry.

The other exciting....scary thing that happened on Wednesday was that me (David), Noah, and Flugencio (a 78 yr old brother in our hall) were attacked twice by a toro (bull)!! we were walking down a small side road when a toro showed up out of no where. Flugencio told us to get behind him as he put his arm out towards the toro. Like he was going to protect us from it (ha ha). As soon as he put his arm out the toro charged us!! I have never been so scared in my life. We all ran as fast as we could, and at first I forgot that my 6 yr old son was behind me. Fortunately he was smart enough to run as well. Of course he doesnt like cows anymore. And I have never seen a 78 yr old run so fast. The Toro for some reason turned away as it got within about a foot of running us all over. So we went and did the 2 houses that were on the road, however it was a dead end so we had to go back to get to the group. As we headed back I started thinking the bull might still be there, and he was!! This time I was ready for him. We were walking back when I saw him in the brush next to the road. I think he was looking to surprise attack us. When I saw him I said to flugencio "Toro?" like what do we do this time. No sooner did the toro attack and so Flugencio shouted "al puente" "al puente", which means in english "to the bridge" "to the bridge". Well this worked out pretty well because this bridge is so old and dangerously unstable that even the toro knew not to go on it. This time I also remembered to grab Noah's arm and make sure he was with me. We got on the bridge and the toro ran off. Then Flugencio told us to get off the bridge because its very "Peligroso" which means dangerous. We were all shook up when we got back to the group, however I guess this doesnt happen very often so we have a pretty cool story to tell all the friends.