Date Day! and Super Bowl Sunday

Saturday, February 2

Eddie and I began our day with a trip to the local market to pick up a few necessities before catching the 11:00 bus to Turriabla for our first “Costa Rican Date.”  Titi Amanda agreed to babysit for the day while we went out to lunch and then shopped at the farmers market for our weekly fruits and veggies trip.

Our first stop when we arrived in Turrialba was the bus station.  We needed to buy our bus tickets to San José for next weekend.  Then we wandered through Turrialba without feeling the need to rush to catch the next bus.  We started with a stop at the local shop that makes cookies from Holland.  By chance, we ran into one of our neighbors.  She was helping the shop owner make the cookies.  

We bought ourselves a packet for our first treat of the day.  They were delicious and very DUTCH!

We then stopped in Don Hugo’s shop.  He makes pants and does other clothing repairs.  When we arrived, he was fixing this man’s bag. 

After the man left, Eddie and I got a chance to encourage him.  He was sharing with us that he is going through a “storm” in his life right now and that it is just such a difficult time for him and his family.  I will be honest, I understood very little of what he said, but I think that just being a listening ear was what he needed.

We moved on to our next activity which was bathing suit shopping… not my favorite thing to do, but I found one that I believe to be suitable.  Then we headed to lunch.  We found the new restaurant that our friend Kerlin works at.  We ordered the best drink ever: Mango Lemonade.

We also enjoyed our burrito and pita.   

It was a nice quiet date, and we enjoyed the chance to talk and just hang out together.  Thanks, Amanda for babysitting!!!

After that, we had to finish running errands.  We got our groceries and headed home.  When we arrived, there were just a few kids hanging out on our front porch.  Jaden was sleeping, so they were trying to play quietly.   It didn’t last too long, so Amanda went with them to the playground.

Eddie taught a guitar lesson and led the weekly youth group meeting.  It was slightly discouraging because not many kids showed up for youth again this week.  Eddie had a great lesson planned with great activities, and the group was made up of mostly adults and American students instead of the Tico youth like he had hoped.  Just pray that God moves in the heart of the people of this church.  Many are committed to Sunday morning and not much else.  We are praying that God uses us to reach the community, and right now it feels like not many people are interested.

Sunday, February 3

Sunday Church Service:  Eddie and Amanda began our worship hour with some awesome worship music.  Then Hector and Eddie co-preached the sermon.  This weeks topic: Laziness.  They touched on the topics of physical laziness, emotional laziness, and spiritual laziness.  Josué even shared his testimony about how he went through a period of time where he was very lazy.  

After church, we cooked a delicious “Sunday Dinner” of baked chicken, fried potatoes and salad.  We planned a “Super Bowl Party” at Ryan and Kirsten’s house because they have high-speed internet.  I wanted to make some banana bread, but our bananas were covered in bugs.  I decided to throw them out in the woods next to our house.  As I did, I discovered a bunch of bananas that had fallen from a tree in our yard.  They were yellow and looked delicious.  Some birds had eaten a few near the top, but check out the ones I salvaged:

We took the 4:00 bus to Ryan and Kirsten’s house for our “Super Bowl Party.”  We had a hodge-podge of snacks like: guacamole, banana bread, soup, and a few other party foods.

The boys played together and Eddie and Ryan set up the projector.  They played a movie on the “big screen” until it was time to watch the football game.