Read your Bible

Bridget and America

July is a different kind of month for us.  Since my (Bridget’s) students have their mid-year vacation the first two weeks in July, we decided to go to San Jose and get the annual car inspection done. We stayed with our friends, the Sanchez family, and they invited us to a “Christmas in July” tamale making party.  Their family and friends gathered in the morning and spent the day making 80 tamales.  My new friend, America, taught me to wash the plantain leaves and tie the tamales in different ways depending on the ingredients. We ate them late in the afternoon with a vegetable chicken salad and slices of cinnamon ham bread.  What a treat! This is the traditional Christmas meal in Venezuela where our hostess, Rosalia is from.

Lifting the kitchen's main beam.

Paul spent part of his time in town looking for a couple of tools to buy.  A team from Village Parkway Baptist Church in Texas is coming to help him add wooden siding to the current kitchen at Centro Emanuel.  The renovation actually started earlier in the year when Paul and Julian, his worker, added cement bases to the posts and additional braces under the floor.  The main beam supporting the roof was sagging at a joint causing the side walls to bow. Paul has been slowly lifting the main beam and pulling in the walls at the same time.  It seems renovations are always a little more complicated when you actually get started.

Reading the Cabécar New Testament.

I have been using my break to do some lesson planning for the Bible part of my English classes.  We are going through the book of Genesis and are about at the halfway point.  Each class we start by listened to a recording of a chapter or two in the Cabécar language and then I retell a simpler version of the story in English.  Before the vacation we studied Genesis 21 where Sarah, at age 90, gave birth to Isaac, just at the time God had promised her and Abraham.  I am trying to plan the rest of my lessons to cover the remainder of the book by the end of the year.

Doing this study has made me realize what a privilege it is to have a variety of translations of the Bible and study resources in English. For the majority of my life I have taken the Bible for granted.  I grew up listening to Bible stories in school and at church every week.  In contrast my students only have one translation of the New Testament and part of the Old Testament in their language.  There is nothing more important than reading the Bible everyday.  Reading through the entire Bible gives us the big picture of who God is, how He works to reveal Himself, and to understand His perspective.  The Holy Spirit in turn uses it to shape our thinking, develop our understanding, and shows us how to respond to God.  When we first became Christians we memorized 2 Timothy 3:16-17 from the New American Standard Bible. It says, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”  We have found this to be true in our lives.

As you think of us, please pray for:

• 16 Cabécar women graduating from the Puentes de Vida (PDV) training
• Village Parkway Baptist team as they work and fellowship with us
• kitchen remodel
• our meetings with women in the local communities
• a trip to the dental clinic and into the reservation to visit a PDV health promoter
• the first showing of the Jesus film in Cabécar

We are grateful God provides all we need to serve Him in Costa Rica.  Thanks for being a part of our team!

Bridget and Paul