Don't Look Them In The Eye

The Costa Rican Secret Service goes to my church.

No really.

Every week there are about 20 big men dressed in dark suits with ear pieces and microphones in their cuffs. They roam around the congregation during the service and use hand signals with each other. These are not the ushers; the ushers wear red coats. I am scared of these guys.

The Coming Rain

So it rains every afternoon here in Costa Rica. Yesterday, I was hanging out in the living room with my tico (Costa Rican) family when Felicia told me to listen. We keep the front door open for the breeze, and I also think it is meant to encourage visitors. She asked if I could hear what sounded like the garbage truck. I could. And as we listened it got louder. And louder. It was the rain on the metal roofs and the front was headed our way. We bunched together in the doorway and watched the wall of rain cross the rooftops of the houses farther from us. We watched the rain, in a straight line, come down across the roof of the house across the street, cross the street, cross the apartment parking lot and come sweeping directly to our door. It was incredible!! I am really tired of the rain and deperately miss the sun, but this was a reminder to me that even in its abundance, rain is something amazing.

Mashed Potatoes

Felicia serves me rice every day. At every meal. Today she didn't serve me rice at lunch and so she wanted to explain to me why. She explained that she wasn't serving me rice because she was serving me potatoes. But the potatoes didn't look like normal. She pointed out to me on my plate that THESE were the potatoes. They just looked different because they were PUREED. That's right, I got a five minute explanation of what mashed potatoes are. I like this lady :)

Rough Day but He Made Me Smile

I had a really rough day in class. I haven’t had a grammar class in about 13 years (hey, that’s HALF my LIFETIME now). And suddenly I am in intermediate Spanish grammar. That is really frustrating some days. Today was one of those days. I just couldn’t get what the teacher was talking about. In the middle of the morning, after grammar class, we have a half hour break. Usually I go to the computer room and do some work, but today I went out on the balcony because I saw a small spot of sunshine there. So I stood in the only spot of sunshine I have seen in several days and nearly cried with frustration. Then the bell rang and I went back to class, where the teacher promptly replied that we were going to go to a different room for the day.

The rooms are all basically the same except for one. The different one is my favorite, but I don’t have any classes in it. My favorite room is a rectangle and the two long walls are all windows. It is beautiful. My class was switched to that room and I began to feel some relief. Also, the classrooms are not numbered, but are named after various Latin American countries. So I checked the name of my favorite classroom before we went in to see “where” I was going. And guess what…..it was Bolivia.

I had been having a terrible time, but God gave me sunshine, a beautiful room, and a visit to Bolivia. Sometimes I think He is as random as me…but He surely is good to me.