Costa Rica - Mari

I don’t know about you, but to me the idea of walking up to some stranger’s house in Costa Rica and asking them if I could talk to them for a minute was a bit of a crazy idea to me at first. And I’m not going to lie, I was a bit scared to try it. Not because I was worried about safety (safety in numbers and all that after all), but because if someone came up to my house and asked me if they could talk to me, I wouldn’t be interested. And if I weren’t a Christian, I’m not sure that I’d believe someone if they told me about Jesus dying for my sins.
The thing is though, that none of what we did would be possible without God. He prepared those situations for us, and I had to learn to trust Him for that. I also had to realize that I wasn’t in America, and that people are different in Costa Rica. The first day that I had to do evangelism on my own (without another North American) God gave me an extra boost of boldness that I hadn’t felt the day before, and it was incredible.

I want to tell you guys about the very first door that I knocked on. I was with Jerry (my team leader), a translator (Mercedes) and a national (Joanna). We didn’t have as many translators that day as we did team members so we paired up. Plus I was hesitant to go out by myself on the first day. And I have to tell you that as this lady came out of her house (and eventually invited us in), I was skeptical that anything we said to her would change anything. 
Jerry did an awesome job sharing his testimony and going through the eCube and next thing I know he’s praying with Mari to accept Christ. And being honest again, I was doubtful as we left that house. I almost wondered if maybe she just said all the right things because she was being nice. While I wanted to believe that her emotional response was real, I’m a skeptic, and I was still doubtful. Well, I should learn to trust God more and realize how simple the gospel really is, because her faith was real.
I ended up seeing Mari multiple times that week because she came to our cell meetings and we made a couple more visits to her house. She brought her grandson Byron to our very first cell meeting and he accepted Christ while he was there. We also got to go through the eCube with her other grandchildren during one of the visits to her house later in the week. You could visibly see the change in Mari. She stayed up til 2 AM that first night reading her bible. As it turns out, she was reading the same passage that Jerry had spoken on at church that morning (a service that Mari hadn’t been at).

This was taken inside of Mari's house. Mari is in the light blue in between Jerry and myself. Byron is on the far left (behind the mohawk).

She was the first door we’d knocked on, and she turned out to be a huge part of my week in Costa Rica. Her grandson Byron wasn’t at our last cell meeting, so I wasn’t able to get a picture with him, but he would greet me by name whenever he saw me. On the first day he asked one of the translators what my name was and he was the first kid to remember me by name when he saw me.
Mari’s husband didn’t want to talk to us, and Mari is praying for him. He actually left out the back door that first time that we came by. If you could lift him up in your prayers, that would be wonderful. His family is going to start changing and growing before his very eyes, and I’m hoping that he’ll see God in them.

Kids Are the Same Everywhere

Whether on Costa Rica or North America, kids are the same. And I love them. =)

Costa Rica - Some Pictures From Other Team Members

Some houses

A house in a nicer part of the neighborhood

This is what the inside of my team's church looks like

On the bus

This was our view from right outside our hotel room

I think we have every t-shirt in this picture lol

Zip lining!

 

The Ruud family gained two daughters for a week

I'll hopefully have my pictures up soon! Here are the links to some albums that people have uploaded of our trip:

Ashli's Camera

Ashli's iPod

Ruud Family

Tiffany

Ken & Yvonne

Costa Rica - A Typical Day

While in Costa Rica no two days ever looked exactly alike, but we did have a main focus that we worked towards each day that we were there. While this was an evangelistic trip (which any missions trip should be, in my opinion), our focus was also on discipleship and building relationships. We didn’t want to lead people to Christ only to leave them completely alone at the end of the week.

My team's church

There were six North Americans on my team that served one neighborhood in Aserri (a city in Costa Rica). Erika was 13, so we oftentimes sent her out with one of the adults. Each team member would get paired with one translator and at least one national. A national was usually someone from the home church that we were working with, and the translators were volunteers that had come from a city two hours away. A lot of the translators that we used on this trip were sleeping on cots in a church or inside on small bedroom in someone’s house. They gave up a week of their time and a lot of comfort in order to take part in this ministry.

Erika and some of our translators

Each day we’d head out in our little sub-teams and go door to door asking people if we could talk to them. And let me tell you, Costa Rican people are nothing like Americans. Most of them would come out and listen to you, and most of them were very open when you asked them questions. I usually started out by asking them if I could talk to them (then pausing for the translator to translate), then telling them who I was, where I was from, and why I came (with pauses for the translator). Then I usually liked to ask them if they knew where they would go if they died tonight. It usually started the ball rolling pretty well, and then I could ask if I could share more with them. We were all equipped with eCubes, which work incredibly well when you’re dealing with two different languages since visuals are wonderful. 
We would eat lunch and dinner with our whole team (North Americans, translators and nationals) in this one lady's house. She had volunteered to host us (during the day) and cook our food for us for the entire week.

The orange house is the one we got dropped off and picked up from everyday, and where we had lunch and dinner.

Earlier in the week it was usually the North American doing most of the talking, but as the week progressed we tried to get the national or the translator to share instead, and we just watched. The goal being that the nationals would be prepared to do this on their own when we left. There were quite a few nationals who told us that they’d never seen evangelism done this way, and that they’d never known that they could witness to people so easily in their neighborhood. The level of excitement that I saw in some of them was one of the most amazing parts of the whole trip for me.

Off we go

As the week moved forward we also would go back to houses that we’d already been to in order to talk to people who had been saved. If they weren’t coming to the daily cell groups (Bible studies) we were having we’d invite them again, or just try to talk with them for a bit.
As for the cell groups, we had those every night. Eventually we had two of them, one up on top of the hill (the one that I was mainly at) and one down in the neighborhood below the hill. I worked with the children’s ministry every night and I grew quite attached to those kids. I do have some stories to share about some of them, but I’m going to save those for another post.

We worked with the children in the street outside of the house where the cell group was being held

Watching people come to the cell groups and how excited they were about them was such a blessing to all of us. And watching the nationals connect with the new believers and come along side them gave our North American team a lot of comfort in knowing that things are going to carry on long after our one week there.

Me with the children from up on the hill

Costa Rica - Back to the Daily Grind

I have so many things about Costa Rica that I want to update everyone one that I don't even know where to start. I probably never will know how to fully express everything that I experienced while in Costa Rica, or the ways that God worked there. I also won't have a laptop for at least another week, so my ability to write blog posts may be a bit limited for a short while.

I want to thank everyone who prayed for me while I was gone, and who were so supportive of me going on this trip. All in all, the trip went really well with relatively few hiccups. Lives were changed, relationships were formed, team members were stretched, and spiritual battles were won in Costa Rica.

It was a wonderful week serving with the whole team and I look forward to seeing some of these people again in the future! And I look forward to staying up to date with how things are going with my Costa Rican church. I'm already getting updates from one of our nationals down there.

(most of) The North American team

More updates to come!

Costa Rica - Some Quick Pictures

I don't have the energy to write a blog post tonight, but here are some pictures from Costa Rica that my roommate Ashli has taken.

A shot of some houses in one of the neighborhoods

Me at our hotel (the view is incredible!)

A view of some roofs that Ashli took while we were driving down the mountain

This is the house where my team is eating our meals and where we get dropped off and picked up everyday. They have been wonderful hosts.

Costa Rica - Trip Update

I wasn't expecting to have internet access here in Costa Rica, but it turns out that our hotel has (limited) wifi that my room is close enough to that we can pick up a signal. My roommate Ashli brought along her laptop, so here I am with an update.

So much has happened since I got here that there's no way that I'd be able to write about all of it here. Maybe after I get back from the trip I can do some posts with more detailed stories, but for now I'll just give a quick update.

There are 22 people who are part of this trip, and we're split into 4 teams. Mine is the largest with 6 people. Jerry is our team leader, and then we have Kathy, Missy, Erica, Tiffany and myself. I'll post pictures of my team when I get home and can load my pictures from my camera. We were assigned to a church and attended it on Sunday morning. We also helped with the service, and I ran the children's ministry (there were only 7 kids that day). I've realized that all the year's I've spent in children's ministry, whether as an observer or leader, have prepared me for this trip. At first I was a little bit thrown off when the very first thing I had to do on my first day, before I even fully understood what we were doing, was to run a Sunday school. But God had prepared me for that day, and one thing I've realized is that children are the same everywhere. It doesn't matter if they're North American or Costa Rican, they all act the same way.

The second half of Sunday and all of today we spent evangelizing. How this works is each of us gets paired up with a translator (and our translators have all been amazing!) and a national. Our translators are obviously there to translate, and the national is someone from the church who wants to learn how to evangelize. Now, I have quite a few stories I can tell you about people coming to Christ, however what is really standing out right now to me is what is happening with the nationals. Since we get to each lunch and dinner with our team, including the nationals and the translators, we've gotten to talk to them quite a bit. Today one of the nationals told us that he never knew that evangelizing was so easy. He never knew you could just go up to someone and talk to them about Jesus in the way that we have been. And today us North Americans were stepping back a little and letting the nationals share their testimonies when we talked to people. It's been amazing to see how the nationals from my team's church are getting so on fire to spread the Word.

We also do cell groups in the evenings, so that we can disciple the new believers. It's the most encouraging thing ever when someone that you prayed with to receive Christ comes to the cell meeting! I've been doing children's ministry during the cell groups as well, but I should get to take part of one of the cell groups at some point this week, so I'll save talking about that for later.

For now, I'm going to go to bed because my legs are exhausted (San Francisco has nothing on the Costa Rican hills that my team gets to walk on!). I will end by saying that my team and everyone on this trip has been wonderful, and I'm really glad that God worked it out for me to be here!

Please keep praying for us!

Rewards Credit Cards & A Rant

Let's Build Some Credit History

I signed up for my first credit card when I was 18 years old because I wanted to start building up my credit history. The plan was to use a credit card instead of my debit card for purchases, and then pay off the balance in full each month. 

1% Back

My first card worked out well enough for me until I realized that there were some wonderful rewards credit cards out there. One that has been popular for a long time is the Chase Freedom card, which I signed up for at the recommendation of some co-workers. This became my main method of payment for everything that I could pay for using a credit card. In return I racked up 1% of everything I spent. Woot! Even better was the fact that you could redeem $150 in rewards dollars for a $200 statement credit, all you had to do was wait until you'd accumulated that much. I wasn’t interested in gift cards or offers for useless items I didn’t really need. I became a huge fan of rewards credit cards by using this card. Plus, I liked the security that using a credit card offered me over using my debit card.

2% Back

Can anyone see where this story is going? A couple of years ago Schwab had a wonderful offer. A 2% cash back Visa (not AMEX or MasterCard!) that linked directly to a Schwab brokerage account. Each month your rewards are automatically deposited in your account, which can in turn be transferred directly into your checking account. I was sold! I stopped using my Chase Freedom and started using this card for everything I could.

Side Note: I realize that this method would be dangerous for certain people with certain spending habits, but I've never used a credit card to spend more money than I have. I only use a credit card to make purchases that I would otherwise be making.

My Schwab credit card is one that was highly rated by most personal finance websites, and was one that was only available for a limited time. For a long time there were many, many people who lamented over the fact that they'd missed out on getting the Schwab Visa. And I sat back and smiled while gladly using my card for everything I could. Today, two years later, this all came to a screeching halt. In the last month or so I’ve gotten some notices that my credit card was being sold to B of A and to expect the transition. At first this didn't bother me, since I've always used B of A for my banking. A letter reassured me that my rewards were not going away. A 2% rewards card that would show up on my B of A account, simplifying the number of online accounts I had? Awesome!

The Rant

And then today happened. Without getting a new card in the mail, last week my online Schwab credit card account ceased to exist. I figured it might take a day or two for my new account to show up at B of A, so I patiently waited. Finally, today (four days before I leave the country) I decided I couldn’t wait any longer to pay my bill and called them up. After 30 minutes of waiting on hold and talking to a representative, I was able to pay my bill over the phone, told that my current card would not longer work (turns out they were wrong, it worked this evening), that my new card was in the mail and would arrive within a week, and that the rewards program had changed. Say what?!? I initially freaked out because I thought all of my auto-pay bills that are setup to use my old card were going to end up bouncing while I would be unable to fix issues as they came up due to being out of the country. And the lack of warning was not cool. Luckily, the card still appears to be working, so I’ve been placated just a bit.

However, I've yet to figure out if using the new B of A credit card, with it's roughly 1% rewards, will be what I keep doing or not. I'm researching other options, we'll see if I can come up with something better.

FatWallet forum about this card in case anyone is really interested

Now What?

Completely unrelated to all of the above, I did recently sign up for another credit card due to the free flights that I would get from doing so. I might blog about that another time. For now, I have the new card as a backup (it gets 1% back) and my Chase Freedom is still an open account, if I can't find anything better. But I haven't been a huge fan of rewards credits cards and free money for all these years in order to sit back and take the average. I'll be trying to find another situation where I can get at least 2% consistently (I don't like "bonus categories").

Bottom line, having to deal with a very badly handled transition like the Schwab --> B of A one was poor planning on their parts, and I'm disappointed that two of my solid accounts would cause me the hassle. Boo. But the real bottom line, and the reason I’m blogging about this, is because if you're in a place where you're using credit cards responsibly, you should be using a rewards credit card! I've made more than $1,000 so far by using them (there were sign-up bonuses as well), not including the large rewards from the Southwest card I just signed up for. And with the exception of my 30 minute phone call today, by using the cards correctly I’ve earned that money by doing nothing other than what I would normally be doing with a debit card. It’s basically extra income without any added work.

This post gives you guys a glimpse of the personal finance loving side of me. After this my blog will probably be consumed with lots of Costa Rica posts for awhile, but hopefully this post is of interest to someone.

Winter

I woke up this morning to a temp on the 40s (outside, the house was in the 60s and my tile felt like ice cubes to my poor bare feet) and a wet world outside. I feel like winter has officially arrived on Phoenix. My grip on my Starbucks cup this morning was not only because it contained my life sustaining caffeine, but also because it was a source of warmth.

It's hard to make out much in this picture, but the mountains by my work were covered in clouds as I drove to work this morning. It definitely added to the winter feel of the day.

Hello winter!

Costa Rica - My "Go Kit"

One of my teammates recently got her "Go Kit" that everyone gets once they've gotten signed up for an E3 trip. I remember excitedly waiting to get mine and how I excited I was the day I came home to the package on my porch. I never shared much about that on here because I was so busy trying to get everything together.

The kit contains eCubes (EvangeCubes) that we'll be taking down to give to the nationals we'll be partnering with in Costa Rica. One of them is for us to use on the trip as we go out witnessing, and we'll get to keep that cube at the end of the trip. The kit also has two packets of the eCards to bring down for the nationals to use, and I'm assuming to give to those who accept Christ while we're there.

There are I Am Second materials (shirt, bag, stickers, bracelets) that we get to keep and utilize for witnessing here in the States. Also included were a guidebook with all sorts of information about going on a trip, a guide for support raising, as well as a prayer journal.

I remember that getting my kit made me feel like this trip was really happening for the first time. And getting to take down the eCube and eCard resources for the nationals down there is something I'm excited to get to do. 18 more days!

Costa Rica - Fully Funded!

Over the weekend and on Monday I received a few more support donations for my trip. I finally got around to sitting down last night and doing the math to see where everything came out. I'm still waiting on one donation from someone who told me it's on the way, but even without that I'm only $20 shy of being 100% funded! I never expected to come anywhere near 100% and I was expecting to pay for part of the trip myself. I'm now going to be able to use my own money to pay some extra expenses (bringing supplies for our ministry down there, checked bag fees) and possibly buying sports equipment for our sports outreach.

The fact that God has provided pretty much the exact amount that I need for this trip is a beautiful example of how God provides for our needs. I've been extremely blessed by my church through this process, and completely humbled by how many people I have in my life who support me on so many levels.

I'm now able to shift my main focus from paperwork and support raising to my final packing list and spiritual preparation. More than anything, I'm trying to spend a lot more time in prayer for this trip. You can raise enough money to go, you can bring everything you need, but I don't think there is anything more important in situations like these than bringing them to God in prayer.

Before I leave for Costa Rica I plan on making a specific prayer list for this trip. I'll probably post it here on my blog, so you can check back if you're interested in that. In the meantime, I want to thank everyone for how incredibly supportive you've been! And I want to ask for continued prayers as the rest of my team prepares to go, and especially for a couple of team members who are still support raising and waiting on passports.

Side note: If you check my support raising site it actually says I'm $25 over funded, but that's only because I put down some money initially to get my account started. I count my amount raised by adding up all of my donations, and that's how I got the full amount minus $20.