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Tuesday, 3PM CDT
Just to update you, we arrived in San Jose about an hour ago. We are renting the vans that we will drive to Guapiles tomorrow. Everything went fine on the flights and the customs/immigration check. I’ll try to keep you up to date periodically.

Thursday, 8AM CDT
Just a quick update before we head out this morning. We went from San Jose to Guapiles yesterday to check into our hotel here. Then we went from Guapiles to Cariari, where the Guapiles church is focusing its own mission efforts. We had a service at a rented facility, something like a community center, last night. It was well attended – the congregation in Cariari is small, but the people from Guapiles chartered a bus to come over.

We head out in about 20 minutes to spend the day in Cariari knocking doors. I won’t have access to a PC until tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ll try to let you know more then.

Thursday 12PM CDT
Obiously, since I am writing, you know that our plans changed. It is raining here, so we cancelled our plans to knock doors this morning. If the rain clears, we will go out this afternoon. We went all the way to Cariari, had a devotional service with the folks who had come over there from Guapiles, and decided to head back to Guapiles. We had left a detachment there to begin painting on the building. A few of us came back to the hotel for about an hour. We will leave to go back to Cariari in another hour.

And a humorous note from Kevin, Thursday 2:45PM CDT
I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was sitting on my bed, playing my DS when I heard something land on my bed. I looked up and saw a creature resembling a worm thrashing around on my bed. I was about to pick it up and carry it outside when I happened to glance up and see something else. A tiny lizard…without a tail. You can probably put two and two together.

From Kevin, Sunday, 2:00PM CDT
We left at 8 o’clock for la Iglesia de Cristo, waited around for an hour while the vans went to pick up los ninos, and then went to class. It was very hot inside the auditorium. Even the locals were complaining about the heat. Well, [Glenn] taught the class via our translator. We god five minutes to walk around and then back in we went for worship service.

After an hour and a half to two hours, the closing prayer is said, and the wimpy Americans are hot and hungry. Everyone was ready to head back to the hotel when a couple comes up requesting to be married. It was, as you can guess, very informal and very suprising. Church was finally dismissed.

After about another five minutes, rumor is spread that wedding numero dos is about to take place… This next one was slightly more formal…

As I am typing this, [Glenn] and [Tom Brandon] are about to baptize the latter newlyweds…

Monday, 12AM CDT
It is 11 PM and I feel like I’ve been going since 6AM. We had to pack up to leave before we went to the church building at 8 AM. I taught the Bible class at 9:00, and Jason Powell delivered the sermon. As Kevin mentioned there were a couple of wedding ceremonies following the services. One involved the man who used to own the property where the church now meets. He had come back to town to get married. I think their ceremony was more, well, ceremonial. But a lawyer was present for the next wedding, which was formalized legally at the church. We took the new couple to the river to baptize the two of them. I had the honor to baptize them.

After we got back to the church building, I grabbed a very quick bite of food, and then it was time for a Bible study we had arranged for 3 PM. Orlando, Jose and I had studied with the woman yesterday and they asked us to come back and teach the husband as well. There were some friends/relatives there as well, so in all there were the man and woman and three other men at the study. It went really well, and three of them came to the service this evening.

After the service and the vans had taken all the kids back to the barrios, we finally loaded up to head to San Jose. We got in just a few minutes ago.

Hope everyone is well. I am eager to get back. Tomorrow should be fun, but I am about ready to be home again.

Tuesday, 10AM CDT
One last update from Costa Rica
We are getting ready to head to the airport in about an hour. We fly out at 1 PM Costa Rica time, and should get in Atlanta about 7:30 EDT. If all goes well, we should arrive in Huntsville at a little after 9 PM. We have a history of having delays on the flight home, though.

We enjoyed our excursion to Tortuga Island yesterday. It was nice to be able to relax a little. We got off to a slow start with the rain last Thursday, but we had been working hard since then…

I am looking forward to being home. Hopefully, Kevin and I will be at services this Wednesday evening.

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