Wednesday, February 9

Today was another taxing day. This morning I went to Haleigh's house to use the internet in order to call my family, update my blog, and check my email. Of course, this morning was also the first time her host family's electricity went out. We decided to walk to a nearby e-cafe, and I was able to use the internet there, which was nice. It was kind of overwhelming to try dealing with keeping in touch in the midst of everything, and I was grateful to have Haleigh there with me.

After I finished at the e-cafe, we went back to Haleigh's house and had a mini-Bible study together. It was a great time of sharing and God showed me a lot of His grace through the time we spent together in prayer and in reading the Word. I was completely exhausted and weak and I just had to lay everything down at the foot of the cross and ask for more. More strength, more peace, more patience, more grace, more challenges. I want to be God's tool through every experience, but it was scary to ask Him to keep moving in my life. This morning all I wanted was a nap. I knew I couldn't take any more of what the world was giving me and I just wanted a break, but God truly showed Himself to me and asked me to let go and let Him carry and guide me through the day. He asked me to be faithful and to step up and lean on Him to get through each moment. What would I do without His grace and mercy?

When we finally made our way to LASP, we discovered that the doorbell there was broken, so we stood outside the gate for about 10 minutes calling for people to come let us in. Once we were in the courtyard, I realized that the tuna my host mom packed me had sort of escaped its container. My whole lunch bag wreaked of tuna. (I would have just thrown it away, but its a re-usable one that my host mom was definitely expecting me to return with) I tried to just take these most recent obstacles in stride, but it was difficult not to just fall apart. I had to take a couple of moments to just close my eyes and ask for strength before I could make the change from focusing on the obstacles to looking ahead and not worrying about everything going on. When I finally got settled in, we had a nice lunch with the other LASP students and then made our way over to ICADS.

I put my lunch bag on the floor during class so the tuna juice wouldn't get all over my stuff, and when I went to grab it during break it was absolutely covered in ants. It was so gross. Normally I probably would have just laughed and taken care of it, but after my last few days even something so seemingly small almost put me over the edge. Again, I needed a moment of prayer. I felt like shouting “WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TEACH ME, GOD?! CAN'T I JUST LEARN IT ALREADY?!” I'm still not sure what He wants me to learn, but seeking Him is the only thing I can do, and I know that He will use all of this for His good.

Haleigh's mom was in the neighborhood again, so she gave me a ride home from ICADS, which was a huge blessing. She knows about everything that's been going on on my end and it was really nice to talk to her for a little bit before going home. It was also really nice to be home a little early, and I had some Spanish homework that my host family helped me with. They truly have been a huge blessing to me, and I feel so loved at my new home. This morning and afternoon I was worried about how I was going to be able to invest in my host family enough while still getting my homework done, but they are so understanding and God totally worked out the timing tonight so that I was able to spend some quality time with them and finish what I needed to for tomorrow. My time at home this evening made me feel like an entirely new person with a completely different life. Some highlights from tonight include:

• I discovered that my host siblings really like Michael Jackson, so we had some good bonding moments while we compared our collections of MJ music.
• Talking about Costa Rican slang/sayings as a part of my Spanish home work
• Having a vocabulary competition with my host brothers (they quizzed me in Spanish and I quizzed them in English)
• Reading Cinderella in Spanish to Melany and having my host dad standing over my shoulder telling me how to pronounce words and what things meant
• Discovering the trick to not eating so much that I explode while I'm here. My host mom has been feeding me a ridiculous amount of food (I get the biggest portions at every meal, and she packed me enough for a full day for lunch plus a sandwich to eat at ICADS today), and this afternoon I was wondering about what the best way would be to tell her that I need to eat less. After eating all of the food she packed me this afternoon, I was greeted with a cafecito (snacks and coffee) when I got home. A couple of hours later I was called into the kitchen for dinner and I was wondering where I was going to find room to fit it all. Luckily, my host mom explained that I didn't have to eat dinner...usually when they have cafecitos they don't eat much, if anything, for dinner. She is so nice, and I'm glad I didn't have to offend her by refusing food (which is delicious, by the way).

Thanks again everyone for your prayers and encouragement! I'll keep you updated as much as possible!