Day to day in March

As we near the end of March, we wanted to give a little tour of our “day to day” activities. 

Both Devin and Luke are doing various (remote) consulting projects over the time in Costa Rica. Devin has been working with a foundation she has worked with on-and-off for many years, currently looking at organizations that help small farmers improve their income while also adapting to the changing climate (less predictability and more extreme weather), including ways of getting improved info on weather forecasts to small farmers and changes in farming practices. Luke has been doing finance work for a health clinic and has supported an entrepreneur looking to buy a new business. 

Devin has continued her role on the Board at Impact Latin America (which supports house church planting and discipleship across Latin America), where she is the Treasurer (and the volunteer US Financial Manager). Our time in Costa Rica isn’t directly related to this, but there are a lot of overlaps and it’s been great to see the connections! Devin was invited to speak at a recent church event, which was a great opportunity to practice giving a 10 minute talk in Spanish!

Devin’s aso been able to serve an interpreter occasionally at a health clinic in a lower income part of San Jose. We’re all finding ways to plug in at church — Devin has enjoyed joining the team that provides snacks to the kids on Sundays (serving 80+ kids each Sunday with a sit down snack and drink…strangely more complicated than it sounds). All four of us have been providing informal (and sometimes formal) English practice with friends. Cora has especially been having fun with a new structured English practice time she and Devin are doing with a friend and her mom. 

Ethan has been diving back into soccer (after a break to heal another hurt toe), on a local team and also with church and school friends. He often is the leading goal scorer and receives a lot of cheers and accolades! It’s been fun watching him. 

Each of us continues with twice a week 1:1 Spanish classes. It has been a blessing to each have individual classes right at our level. It’s also been a gift to get to know our teachers, and learn a lot culturally through the time together. We’re now almost finishing our 7th month (just 3 more to go) — and we’ve each seen a lot of progress in our Spanish. It’s been so interesting to see the changes and transformation over the months. (At the same time, we are each keenly aware of all there is to still learn). The kids get a lot of additional practice at school, where about half of their classes are in Spanish and half in English. Church (and church friendships and church activities) have been another good time for all of us to have additional Spanish practice. 

The kids now have two weeks off for Easter. We’ll take a trip to Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica for part of that time. After the kids’ school break, we’re excited to welcome numerous friends who are coming to Costa Rica over SPS Spring Break! They will each do a bit of traveling on their own, and spend time with us in Atenas. We are really looking forward to seeing them!