4 Cruces: Makena! Makena! Makena!

That was the chant yesterday as Makena was carried off of the soccer field at the end of a brutal match-up between the Rio Negro kindergarten (Makena's school) and the Manzanillo kindergarten. Two weeks ago, Makena's class was slaughtered by a combination of 4 and 5 year olds that had been practicing and a few parents that blurred the line between "helping" and cheating. Yesterday, after two weeks of practice in the blistering heat, Makena's class stood tall and took the battle to their tiny opponents.
When Makena first started practicing, she was easily distracted and had a hard time following the game. Then, her coach tried her out as the goalie. She found her calling in life and immediately began an ascent that ended with her being carried off the field on the shoulders of her teacher and several other parents, all to chants of, "Makena! Makena! Makena!." It was one of the funniest things I have seen since we have been down here and we laughed hysterically. She is now a local celebrity of sorts (having helped her team to win by blocking multiple goal attempts by the other team). Makena simply said, "I was embarassed." We were very proud of her and also very much enjoyed the opportunity it gave us to interact with other parents and students. Here's to hoping that God uses all of this for His purposes. What a day.

4 Cruces: Makena! Makena! Makena!

Cruce Missionary Page

4 Cruces: One of the things I don't like

I don't like snakes. The other day, I heard a first person snake story that made my skin crawl. Andres, one of the first kids that became a Christian several years ago, told me what happened to him a few days before. He and his mom watch houses for people that are on vacation or are absentee landowners. Right now, they are watching a farm up in the mountains. Andres was out working the other day, gathering bamboo with a couple of other people that live at the farm. He was walking through grass that was about shin height. All of a sudden, he felt something hit his heel from behind...hard. He turned around and saw a terciopelo (fer-de-lance) thrashing around with it's teeth stuck in the heel of his rubber boot. Reflexively, he swung his machete and cut the head off about the same time he saw it. The body was flopping around behind him. He started freaking out at this point and tried to pull off his boot. One of the people that had been working with him yelled at him to stop. When he stopped and looked, he realized that the fangs had gone all the way through the boot and there was venom dripping off of them. If he had pulled his boot off, he would have been "bitten" by a dead snake and would have suffered the same reaction. They ended up having to cut the boot off around the head of the snake to get it off cleanly.

One thing you should know... The fer-de-lance has been called "the most feared snake in the western hemishere" both due to it's aggressive nature and the potency of it's venom. I would have passed out. Anyway, it gave us a good opportunity to talk about God's plans for our lives. I told Andres a long time ago that God had a plan for him. This reinforced it for me. Hopefully, it reinforces it for him.
In other news, it has been pretty crazy with just Amy and I trying to keep up. We are talking with a soon to be couple from Texas that are very interested in moving down to partner with us. We are excited about that. There are some other opportunities as well and we are praying (and ask you to pray as well) that God will provide.
I also just finished several days of meetings with our director from the States. Those meetings went well and I am excited about future possibilities within Alternative Missions. We have a long road ahead as we gear back up after the loss of Whit. There is no way we can do it all...especially in our own strength. Please pray that we'll get the temporary help we need while others are preparing for the long haul, through language school, etc... We will continue to look for God to provide opportunities to share Him with those around us.
I'll write about Makena's soccer game later. It was one of the funniest things I have witnessed since we moved here. Cool and funny.
"The crazy one" has us all laughing most of the time.

One last photo...we added palm leaves to the front of the house for about $100. It came out looking pretty cool and provides the protection we needed from the rain for our stairway.

4 Cruces: One of the things I don't like

Cruce Missionary Page

CCj Now: Family Fun Day-May 2009

See Photos of "Family Fun Day" >

Family Fun Day, along with other evangelistic outreaches was this past weekend and everything went great. We teamed up with “IBCB” in the San Jose area to do various evangelistic outreaches throughout Jaco. The event was as much about stretching us as it was about reaching the lost. 25 people came from “IBCB” to participate. All but one of them were youth who had never been on any kind of mission trip or had ever shared their faith in these types of ways (dramas, mimes, small group witnessing). God loves it when we step out in faith and this was definitely a step of faith for them.

The group arrived Saturday morning and immediately went to work. They headed to the park first where they set up to perform dramas and puppet shows for the kids. (These are the kids that we do a weekly Kid's Club for.) They also had face painting and snacks available. The parents were in attendance as well and were presented with the gospel. After the event was over, we gave out 30 bags of rice and beans. One to each family that came. After the park events were over, the team headed back to the church for some lunch. That afternoon they went to the beach and performed more dramas. The reception was very good. The day ended with a Potluck dinner at church and then a refreshing time of prayer. Once prayer was completed, they hit the streets from 9 - 11 pm to share the gospel with the abundant night-time crowd.

We were praising God when one of the guys they spoke with showed  up at church on Sunday. After the service was over, a homeless man (Alejandro)came in and asked for help. Gabe spoke with him and lead him to Christ. Alejandro is an alcoholic who was asking us to help him get clean (he was sober when he came in). Being Sunday afternoon, we were unable to get him into a rehab program. So we let him hang out at church with us while we had lunch and fellowshiped. That evening Gabe prayed for him and told him to come to our house the next day and we gave him directions. Usually when someone wants help, what they are really asking for is food and shelter. If you ask them to return the next day they usually won't. The reality is that they don't want to leave the bottle, they are just hungry. To our surprise, at 10 am this morning, Alejandro was waiting at our front gate. We gave him some coffee and bread and proceeded to contact a rehab center that is run by missionary friends of ours. They were glad to hear about him and able to receive him. (Oftentimes the programs are full. This one was full but they offered to give him a mattress on the floor.) So, we put him on the bus and sent him to the center.

Please pray for Alejandro. For his new walk with the Lord as well as his struggle with alcohol.

CCj Now: Family Fun Day-May 2009

M. Lawrence Missionary Page

CCj Now: Twitter Followup

One month ago, I wrote a blog entry stating that I would be trying out "Twitter" as a way to keep people informed of all that is happening in Jaco. It would serve as a way to offer quick updates between blog entries and newsletters. I figured that at least it would serve as a way to keep me on track with my time usage. Well, I wanted to post a follow up to that entry letting you know what I think so far.

"Twitter"... what an amazing little tool it has turned out to be. It has been a blessing to me in more ways than I imagined. First, it has served as a great way to let people see what happens to us day to day. While some of these entries may seem insignificant, they show you what everyday life is like on the mission field. Second, it has served as a great way to tell you about the ministry opportunities that happen each day. Third, it has served as a great way to follow some of you (if you are on "Twitter"). It is fun to see what you are up to, and it only takes a few seconds to check it, then go about the day. This has caused the last way that I have been blessed by using "Twitter". I have been quite challenged by seeing some of your daily routines. I've been particularly challenged through Pastor Pedro Garcia's Twitter entries. Pastor Pedro is the Pastor of Calvary Chapel Kendall, in S. Florida. They support us to be here on the mission field. He is a great guy who is the same age as me and has a young family as well. To top it off, he also Pastor's a large, growing church (does he ever sleep? :) ). Seeing his entries have challenged me in positive ways.

So, there you have it. For now, we have seen many benefits and uses for "Twitter". I hope you have enjoyed following us on it. If you do not follow us, but would like to, simply go to "Twitter's" web site and sign up for a free account. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can even add entries from your device.

In His Grace,

Mike

CCj Now: Twitter Followup

Lawrence Missionary Page

CCFj Now: The Conquerors Strength Team: Jaco Crusade 2009

GO TO PHOTO GALLERY >

This is a long overdue update. Thank you for your patience.

We landed in Jaco the first week of February and set to work right away putting the finishing touches on the planning for our first large scale community wide outreach! We were asked in the summer of 2008 to host The Conquerors International Strength Team, a team of men and women who travel the world spreading the Gospel through their show of extraordinary feats of strength.  The Conquerors were planning a trip in conjunction with The Book of Hope: a ministry whose goal is to see every child in every nation with a bible. BOH has produced a “magazine-like” tract that shares the gospel with children at three age levels by presenting the four gospels in story like form.  This was a project that required many volunteers, and praise God for them. God used this opportunity to unite the local churches in Jaco. We met with the local pastors and mapped out a plan to involve all of the churches for one common goal, to see Jaco reached for Christ!  We planned a week filled with touring all of the local schools in the Jaco area bringing a shortened version of the Conqueror’s stage show, and the distribution of the Books of Hope and a wordless bracelet to each of the children in the schools. We presented to nearly 1000 kids! The doors were opened wide to the gospel in both the local public elementary and secondary schools. 

The week ended with an evangelistic crusade in Jaco’s newly completed central park. The Conquerors presented their show and the gospel to a crowd of about 1500 smack in the middle of the two most popular bars and prostitution spots in town. After their show, they spent almost two hours ministering to the crowd with lines of people waiting to pray personally with the guys and local pastors. They witnessed people being healed and receiving Christ! The local churches, along with Calvary Chapel, provided a team of volunteers throughout the crowd doing everything from serving free water and empanadas, to prayer walks through the crowd, and even picking up trash. It was truly a group effort. The crusade saw about 200 people pray to receive Christ. We were so in awe of how God worked. Pray for further opportunities in the community to continue reaching out to the people of Jaco. Pray for the people who received Christ to be plugged in to a local fellowship of believers.

CCFj Now: The Conquerors Strength Team: Jaco Crusade 2009

Lawrence Mission Page

4 Cruces: At last

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. There are some good reasons for that but even so, I can hardly believe how long it has been. We are finally out of survival mode and are living in our new house. It is not finished...still quite a bit of work to do...but it is liveable and that is huge. We had no running water in our rental house for the last four weeks we were there. That meant bringing water in jugs to flush and do dishes and going elsewhere to shower. Just taking care of simple tasks like that took up so much time on a daily basis. Now that we are in the new house, things are starting to settle down. For the first time in nine months we have hot water and don't have to go to that bathroom in a bucket if we wake up at night. The bathroom in the previous house was only accessible from the outside and you definitely don't want to walk around outside at night in the jungle.
We also have ceiling fans and are dry...two incredible things that we still can't get over. Right now, we are reveling in the small things. Credit to our move goes out to the team from Calvary Chapel Jupiter who helped push us over the hump. They spent five days sanding, varnishing, painting and building in order to take the house to the point where we could move in. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us as well. Life has taken a sudden turn for the better.
After two months, there is quite a bit of other news to tell as well. First, a few weeks back we had the privilege of baptizing Pablo. We got to know Pablo almost two years ago when he first visited from Spain looking for land to build a surf camp. Pablo ran into a lot of problems during the construction of his first cabin (imagine that). He also experienced quite a bit of loneliness being apart from his family. It was during this time that we became friends (through a shared love of the surf). Pablo spent quite a bit of time in our home eating and hanging out. As God began working in his life, he began coming to our house church...something he had never experienced before. Little by little, he was drawn to God. One night about a month ago, I had an opportunity to sit and talk with Pablo before church started. The conversation came to the point where I asked him if we wanted to give control of his life to Jesus. Without hesitating, he said "Yes. I need to do that". He explained that when he was younger, growing up in the Catholic church in Spain, he had felt God calling him into a relationship. At the time, he said no...he had other things on his mind. After years of running into dead ends and coming to the end of himself...God was still knocking. That night just over a month ago, Pablo prayed and told Jesus that he wanted to follow Him. We baptized Pablo two weeks ago...eight people on a beach in Puerto Viejo...but a whole lot of happy witnesses in Heaven.

I also had the privilege of speaking at some friends' wedding a couple of weeks ago. I'll post a couple of photos now but will save the story for a soon to be written update. The wedding was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen and God provided a way for us to make him known publicly.
Finally, we are sad to be losing Whit Hazelton who has been working with us for the past eight months. Whit came down last September to serve with us long term, but as things go, he is now returning to the States this coming week to get married and live with his future wife and son. It has been an incredible experience to work and serve with him and we are sad to see him go but wish and pray the best for him, his future wife Kristin and her son. We need your prayers as Amy and I are now solely responsible for everything, including weekly skate sessions, house church, youth nights and administrative duties. We believe that God has placed us here for a reason and are trusting that He will send the right people and give us the right ideas at the right time. Please pray for us as we need a minimum of one to two people, preferably a couple or a family, to join us in the near future as even our legal status as a mission is in jeopardy. I will focus much of my efforts over the next two months on recruiting new staff members, both from the states or locally, to join with us. Thanks for your prayers and your interest.

4 Cruces

Cruce Missionary Page

4 Cruces: Water and other events

Well, we've had quite a bit going on lately. Just for kicks, I took the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale test (which rates a variety of life events such as job change, death of a family member, illness, etc...on a point scale) the other night just to see where I rated and found I was well over 300 points. Actually, I came in at 321, which places me in the "severe life crisis" area with a 79% chance of a major health change. Interesting.

Anyway, we've been working hard to get into the house. We've given up on finishing and are hoping at this point to make it livable. One of the last big items we've been struggling to complete is our septic system. Last Tuesday we finally found a backhoe to come out and dig the pit. The next day I drove to all three hardware stores trying to find the right type of rock to put in the drainfield. Non of the stores had anything. I finally tracked down a trucking company and was able to have a load delivered. Now, our house is on the other side of a very steep hill that basically requires a four wheel drive just to climb. Because of this, the truck had to drop the rocks at the bottom of the hill which meant that we had to haul around 12 cubic meters of boulders over the hill, one truck-load at a time in our pick-up. We spent three days working on this and still aren't done. The day after the back-hoe dug the hole, the sides caved in. We worked on that all day the following day and got it opened back up again only to have another day and a half of torrential downpours fill the hole with water and mud. Yesterday, we started over again. It is incredibly difficult to get anything completed here.

Thankfully, things are going well with the skatepark and with our church. We had our monthly cookout on Friday night and there were quite a few youth that showed up in spite of the rain. At one point, the winds and rain were so hard that the movie screen blew down and we were all huddled against the office door trying to keep dry. At least the food was good. Church continues to go well as we work our way through Romans. Tonight we'll be watching a movie about the events that took place in Rwanda several years back called "Beyond the Gates" Two weeks ago we studied in Romans Chapter 5 and took some time to specifically talk about Paul's words regarding sin and grace. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Tonight, we'll talk some about the existence of true evil while we watch the evidence of God's grace in the midst of horrific events. It is a great movie and truly illustrates this point.
Next week, more work trying to get moved in. We could really use some prayer in this as our next door neighbor continues to make threats towards me (which is another stressor that I don't need at the moment). Thanks for following along with us.

4 Cruces: Water and other events

Cruce Missionary Page

4 Cruces: In Her Own Words

This is a cool "before and after" video posted by missionary to Costa Rica, Barrett Cruce.

Part 1

 

And... Part 2

via: 4 Cruces

Cruce Missionary Page

Technorati Tags: Costa Rica,Cruce

4 Cruces: The opposite of discouragement

I've never experienced highs and lows in life like I have here in the field. Life is anything but even-keeled. I never know quite how we're doing...are we being effective? Is there more we can do? Does anyone even care? How much harder can daily life get? Where are the thank-you's? Some days it is enough to make me wonder what the heck I was thinking when we picked up and moved down here four years ago.

No sooner does that thought enter my mind than God begins to provide encouragement...
We recently went to a New Year's Day pig roast, which is really a gathering of missionaries throughout Costa Rica at the house of our friend Bob Wilmarth, owner of the infamous Goat Farm (one smell and you know why it's "infamous"). We often feel somewhat isolated down here in Puerto because we don't have much contact with other missionaries and their families...people that understand what it's like. It was great to spend a day hanging out and talking with people that can identify with the different issues we face on a daily basis. To hear a seasoned missionary say..."Don't worry about things...it takes at least four years for most missionaries to even begin being effective where they are because there is so much to learn and so many hurdles to overcome" is so encouraging. To have someone else that has been working in country for many years tell us, "Wow, you guys picked the hardest place in the entire country to start a ministry" speaks volumes. To watch our kids play for hours with all of the other missionary kids was priceless. All in all, it was very encouraging.

Other encouragements...we were invited by a friend we met at the pig roast, to speak to a group of college students from Messiah College this past Tuesday. I hope they were blessed, but I know that we certainly were as we not only had an opportunity to meet some neat people and to share with them what God had done in our lives, we also had the opportunity to listen to a man that grew up in the jungle here in Costa Rica as the son of missionaries to the Cabecar Indians, an indigenous group that lives in the mountains behind Puerto. His story was very inspiring. He has gone through a lot in his life and has put up with things we can't even imagine in order to share the love of Christ with others. We felt priveledged to be a part of the evening.

Reality quickly destroys the romantic idea of "missions"...whatever that is. There is only one thing that matters in the end...the call of God. Were you called? You had better go. If you weren't called...if you're not sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has put a calling on your life you better stay home because without the surety of a calling, there are better, simpler and easier ways to pass time. Don't do it because it sounds cool...like a good thing to do. It will destroy you. Living here has helped me in some small way to identify with the subjects of Hebrews Chapter 11. I don't know if we will ever see the results we hope to see in our lifetime, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has placed us here. Case in point? Barring something unforseen, after having to wait a full year since she accepted Christ, we'll baptize Anastasia tomorrow night before house church. One small drop in a very deep bucket but another huge source of encouragement.

4 Cruces: The opposite of discouragement

Cruce Missionary Page

Technorati Tags: Costa Rica,Puerto Viejo

4 Cruces: life

Pray for Barrett and Amy and the girls if you think about it and click over to their blog and leave a comment to let them know... thanks... bryon

Well, it seems to get harder and harder to put together an update. In trying to get the house finished, we're falling way behind on our communications. Please forgive us. We don't have a phone line out where we live and it can sometimes be pretty difficult to get online at all.

It is now Tuesday and I am trying to get caught up on administrative duties, communication with potential staff members, etc... We are also working like crazy to finish the house. Our goal at this point is to make it livable so that we can move in. Our contractor is doing good work but I have decided that he is terrible at math. We are now so over our contract amount that we are close to having to shut down. Third world calculating finally catches up with us. Anyway, I am spending as much time as possible working on-site myself both to make sure that workers continue going strong and so that I can get as much done myself as possible. The roof is 98% complete, the flooring is 80% complete and hopefully we'll have a functioning water system and bathroom in the next week or so. We could definitely use prayer in this. We want to finish and move so that our living situation is stable and we can put all of our energies into our work rather than being so distracted. I keep reminding myself that this is a short time which will increase our long-term effectiveness.

As for church, things really seemed to go well this past Sunday night. We had a pretty large crowd...the largest in quite some time, and everyone really seemed to connect and enjoy the night. I took a slight detour from our ongoing study through Romans to talk about faith. We have just finished Chapter 4 where Paul spoke about Abraham being made righteous because of his faith. There's a lot of talk in our culture about faith, but all too often, faith is an end unto itself. We spent a couple of hours Sunday night looking at faith from a biblical perspective before we head through the rest of the letter to the Romans. I really enjoyed teaching and everyone seemed to enjoy listening and discussing as we went through the study. My hope is that we will continue to grow closer as a body and that we will also begin to grow. Please pray for us and for our effectiveness. Please pray for the new Christians as God molds them into new creations.
Finally, we'll also be celebrating a baptism this next Sunday afternoon. If all goes according to plan, Sebas (who has been part of our church since the beginning) will baptize Anastasia whom he shared Christ with early last year. It will be an exciting time.

4 Cruces: life

Cruce Missionary Page

Technorati Tags: Cruce,Costa Rica,Puerto Viejo