Prayer requests/Praise reports

It has been some time since we listed our prayer requests. That's mainly because they haven't changed much. We thought it was time for an update!

We are just about a month and a half away from finishing language school! It's hard to believe that we have been here for almost six months! Life in Tuis has been good. Tuis is a peaceful little village surrounded by beautiful farm covered hills. Everyone knows everyone here or seems to be related somehow. People are friendly and bend over backwards to help us when or if we ever need it. Several people have adopted us into their family. It will be hard to leave, but we are so thankful for the time we have had here!

Our Spanish is coming along. Tim is progressing rapidly and his teachers are impressed. I am needing to work on confidence when I speak, but this is improving with more practice in my classes. The kids' Spanish is great or so we hear from many others. They don't (or rather won't) speak much Spanish around us. We speak Spanish at lunch and dinner but they often speak "Spanglish", mixing the two languages. Please pray that we will have sufficient ability to communicate in Spanish by the time we leave language school.

Our car is doing great with no major problems. We had another flat tire that only cost $4 to repair. Our car radio/CD player stopped working and a favorite CD of the kids was stuck in the player. It is the only Bible memory CD they own so it was a bummer to think that it was gone indefinitely. Well, Tim and I took the car to go on a date yesterday and in answer to prayer the radio worked perfectly! I took the CD out before it got stuck again and the kids have been listening to it over and over again today! Please pray that our car continues to be the nearly trouble free blessing that it has been to date.

Our sink faucet was broken for a couple of months. We have been using a screw driver to turn the water on and off, but as of a week ago even that didn't work. For the last week we've been washing our dishes outside where we wash the laundry. We had told our landlord about the faucet and just last night prayed again about what to do. We were thinking it was time to hire the work done ourselves when today, in answer to prayer, the landlord came to put in a new faucet! It is so nice and works great!

A big praise is that we are now officially temporary residents of Costa Rica and our residency cards will arrive by mail on the 29th of this month. We'll each have an ID card with our picture on it. At the end of two years we can renew our residency simply by paying something like $20/person/year. Please pray that our ID/residency cards arrive safely in the mail and arrive at their expected time.

Once we have our residency cards we will try to buy voluntary insurance here so that I can get my medication and we can be treated within the social system. It has been amazing to see God provide my medicine since the company that makes Coumadin closed down in Costa Rica shortly after we arrived here. People who don't even know me have been helping me get my medicine. I do not have it in my hands now, but a total of 3-6 months supply of Coumadin is waiting for me at the local hospital right now! This is enough to get us through the process of getting insurance and to make our visit to the States in December! Please pray that we will be approved for the insurance here so that I can get properly set up with a doctor, a protime clinic, and be able to more easily get my medicine.

We have been watching flights to find the best "deal"on tickets to come home for Christmas, but with gas prices so high the flights are more expensive than we expected. Our hope is to go to Oregon for the month of December, but we are also trying to visit some friends on the way. Please pray that we can find some good tickets and soon.

I think our biggest prayer request is for patience and wisdom with our kids. Laura is pretty homesick and has been sad a lot lately. As a result she is often grumpy and easily irritated or offended. She gets canker sores in her mouth when she is stressed and she has eight sores right now! Poor thing! It hurts to eat, hurts to get her teeth brushed, hurts to talk. Her best days are when she has time in prayer. I will find her praying with beside her bed or in a quiet room. Sometimes she'll suddenly jump up from what she's doing to go pray. She tells me mostly that she prays that God would help her to make good choices. I can always tell when she has been praying because she is so loving, cheerful, and helpful!

Tanner is happy, but very much a stinker. Costa Ricans don't like to say no to children and he has taken advantage of this. To keep him happy, Tanners nanny often will let him do what he wants. Things he knows are not ok with mom and dad like watch T.V. all day or eat candy and cookies for snacks, just to name a few. This has not been good for him as you can imagine! I'll be cutting back at language school again next month. He'll then be with the nanny for just two days a week.

Often I feel like I don't have the wisdom and patience it takes to do the job of parenting God's way. Well, that's because I don't have what it takes on my own! I'm daily knocking on God's door, asking for wisdom and patience. He is faithful to give just what I need when I need it. I'm often amazed how just after praying an idea will pop into my head and I'll try it with the kids and it works! Thanks to God! Often friends give such great advice, too! I'm reading two great parenting books right now: "Don't Make Me Count To Three!" by Ginger Plowman and "Shepherding a Child's Heart"by Tedd Tripp. Both books focus on getting to the heart of behaviour and with changing the heart and not just the behaviour. Both books are excellent and I highly recommend them!!

As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read our blog and to lift up our family up in prayer!

~Cindy (and, as always, edited by Tim)