In the Final Stretch

Thank you Bridget (My Sis) for sending along the pictures, as we had no camera with us.

We have returned from 2+ marvelous weeks of vacation in New Hampshire (a last minute surprise trip), a visit to our home-church (First Baptist of Portland, Maine) and simply a wonderful time at Alton Bay with our parents, siblings and friends. What a blessing! My parents Barry & Judy stayed for a week in the motel and my sister Bridget and her family stayed in a cottage along with my neice Haley and her 2 beautiful children, just up the street from us. We also enjoyed time with Mary's mom and sister, Debra. Mary struggled with a stomach bug and then bronchitus during our trip and the kids and I also enjoyed stomach problems. (How interesting given that we have been perfectly healthy here in the 3rd world for the last 7 + months) On our way to New Hampshire I prayed for opportunities to speak spanish while on vacation and we were surprised to find a group of people from Honduras and Puerto Rico at the Conference Center when we arrived. One asked for directions in very bad english and I surprised him by answering him in spanish. They then invited me to join in their worship service....must have been a coincidence. :)

The weather could not have been more perfect with sun every day and plenty of time to swim, boat and share our adventures. Ed Bates, my former boss and great friend, visited us for a day and hired another friend of ours, Jim Paull to take 22 of us on a boat ride to Wolfboro. He then took us all to lunch. Thank you soooo much Ed! Our children enjoyed the freedom to run around and play with friends and we all were thrilled to speak english in public and be understood. We really needed the break and are so thankful for it!

We left Boston Monday morning early and had many travel blessings. The first came as Continental Airlines disregarded the fact that we had too many check-in bags and did not charge us for the overweight ones. (This is our 3rd trip with such a blessing...God is so good) Next we went to get coffee at Dunkin Donuts and the only other 4 people there (at 3:45 in the morning) were 4 human rights activists from Guatemala. I got to speak spanish after 2 weeks with very little and met some potential future allies and friends in Guatemala.... this must have been a coincidence too. :)

Our flights back to Costa Rica were on-time, without incident and very comfortable. We arrived and our bags were of the first to come off, we breezed through customs with no bags checked, had our passports stamped, and then our friend Eduardo was right there waiting for us. How easy could it get? Thank you Lord.

We are now back and settled and actually felt like we were coming home. We had our second day of classes and we all like our teachers (kids included) and are anxious to wrap things up and head to Guatemala in January.