Les & Diana Morris

I can do all this through him who gives me strength.We have captured some snapshots in time to share a little bit of our lives.We’ll share what our typical days look like and some photos.

This 2nd tri at Instituto de Lengua Española continues to be much harder for us than the 1st tri was, but we are also continuing to make progress.  Our survival Spanish has certainly become better.  We can get around, shop asking for help and where to find items items, order off a Spanish men, talk to the family we live with, give taxis directions to our house, catch the right bus, pray a little bit for people … and of course go to classes.  For our friends who wonder how fluent we will be when we visit NH in December, we’ll see when the time comes.  For now, we study hard.  It will come … eventually.  One other part of our learning is growing in our understanding of this culture and to a small extent, the culture of neighboring countries, so we’ve included pictures of a trip we took.

Following is a small example of something we’ve learned. Just for fun, we’ll imagine I have a headache (from all the work in Spanish!)

1. So you want to say, “I have a headache.” You think, I’ll figure out those words and translate them word for word.  You end up with something like:  “Yo tengo un cabeza dolor.”  Literally, “I have a head pain.”  Pretty bad, but it gets the point across.
2. So, you fix that to say, “Yo tengo dolor en mi cabeza.” “I have pain in my head.” Survival Spanish.
3. Move on to “Tengo dolor en mi cabeza.”  A little better – you don’t need “Yo” for “I,” because the form of the verb “Tengo” is the form you use for “I.”
4. And now, “Me duele la cabeza.”  Apparently, this is the better way.  “Myself, hurts the head.” from an English standpoint.

It’s a slow, but GOOD process and we’re getting better step by step.

So … entonce – what does a typical day in our lives look like, this 2nd tri?

• The alarm goes off at 6 AM.
• We get ready for school, make our bed and eat breakfast with Mami at 6:45 AM
• We walk out the door around 7:10 AM and walk 1 km to school – Les carries his salveque, coffe and umbrella; I pull my salveque with umbrella (arthritis in my neck with a pinched nerve caused this change – doctor’s orders)
• Les and I are on a worship team that he is leading in chapel / capilla this tri. So, if it’s a Wednesday (practice for Thursday Chapel), he carries both guitars.  I carry his coffee.
• 1st Class starts at 7:30 AM (Gramatica) with prayer in both our classes (en español por supuesto!)
• 5 minute break @ 8:20AM with long lines in the restrooms and /or a fast run to the the little cafe that sells coffee / snacks / refrescas, etc.
• 8:20 AM – 9:15 AM is the 2nd half of Gramatica
• Recreo (break) for 1 hour and 5 minutes – time to relax, work on homework, sometimes have worship team practice or on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s go to chapel – or go for additional tutoring.  his tri, I will be doing that twice a week for at least a month to try to get on op of some difficult things and improve conversational skills
• 10:20 AM means Lenguaje – time to practice using what we’re working on in Gramatica, play games like Taboo or Bible Trivia (in Spanish or course!), pray in Spanish, review homework, ask and answer questions
• 11:10 AM and we get another 5 minute break and back to work for the rest of Lenguaje
• 12:05 PM and classes are finished
• Wednesdays you can add on an additional hour of practice for our worship team
• Either 12:05 or 1:00 we walk home 1 km for lunch, which we share with Mami, again practicing our Spanish skills, usually for about an hour
• Siesta!  At least, that’s what we often do for about an hour.  Sometimes, if we need snacks or additional school supplies or cash, instead we walk to Multiplaza del este – it’s about 1 or 1-1/2 miles; we do our shopping and return home
• Now we relax a little, maybe read a book and then start in on homework
• Homework – anywhere from 2-5 hours.  Last week and the week before, we each had several nights with the 5 hour variety. At our age, this is a little bit grueling, but it’s what needs to be done.
• Somewhere around 6 PM, we are called to dinner with Mami and Papi and get to practice our Spanish communication skills again.  Usually for about an hour
• A little reading / watching TV (in Spanish with CC in English or English with Spanish subtitles) or a downloaded episode of a show from home, but many nights we just don’t have time or are too tired
• Bed and dreams of conjugating verbs …
• Saturday are our day off and we try to do something fun.  Last Saturday we went to see Thor in the Movies.  Watched it in English with Spanish subtitles, only to discover that about halfway through the movie we had switched to reading the subtitles … comes with the territory!  Your brain is constantly trying to grasp the language
• Sundays, we now alternate between La Vina del Este, where the Vineyard director for Central America is the Senior Pastor and … yup, it’s all in Spanish.
• 1st we tak a bus to San Pedro and then we wait and catch a 2nd bus to church – takes anywhere from 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
• We worship with Spanish songs, (often familiar English songs translated into Spanish and listen to a message in Spanish, (typically a bit longer than at home).
• The following Sunday, we catch a different bus into San Jose central, walk something like 18 blocks, wait and catch a 2nd bus to Viña Anonos.  Here, we know more people and it feels more like home, with Rodney, Cindy, Julie, Steve, Tito, Eli and a host of other friends.  Often there is a short term mission team from home, which means we worship in Spanish, but the message is in both English and Spanish
• We return home after either staying for lunch with Rodney and Cindy, with some uplifting fellowship time or catching lunch in San Pedro if we went to Del Este
• Siesta time
• And then we dig into homework (we might be conjugating verbs – sometimes 90, memorizing verbs, usually 42 based on pictures, translating a newspaper article and writing a summary of it in Spanish, or taking a passage of scripture and writing a Bible study).
• Bedtime – I’ve been known to crash at 8:30 PM or need to study until 11 PM; Les often studies until 10 PM or later
• Then we do it all again … a day in the life of Les & Di
• And we know,  “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”  Phil 4:13TNIV

Please enjoy the pictures and the above schedule for a taste of “A day in the life of Les and Di.”

May 6 Streams in the Desert devotional said something that was so important and I wanted to share it:

A person who has Christ as his Master is the master of every circumstance.  Are your circumstances pressing in on you? Do not push away, for they are the Potter’s hands.  And you will learn to master them not by stopping their progress but by enduring their discipline.  Your circumstances are not only shaping you into a vessel of beauty and honor but also providing you with resources of great value.

How good and easy that sounds when things are going well or even not so well.  How incredibly difficult that feels when things are really hard … But what a beautiful perspective!  As I sat in classes this 2nd trimester, I felt overwhelmed at what I would need to learn this trimester.  At the same time, I felt excited at what the outcome would be.  I was thankful for the teachers we have and out class is a good balance.  There are only 4 of us in my class, so there’s no way to duck!  Right now, learning Spanish, wondering exactly what shape and form the future holds, these things feel a lot like a fire.

It reminds me of a song that a dear friend down here posted recently – of course we sing it in Spanish. One of the lines is “Set a fire down in my soul that I can’t contain, that I can’t control.”  I’m not an expert on pottery, though I have another dear friend who is.  But here are couple of facts that parallel what the Chief Potter does in our lives:

• Stoneware is generally fired once with temperatures of 1100 °C to 1300 °C (for a point of reference, 1350 °C = 2462 °F)
• Porcelain has an initial firing temperature of 960°C, and a secondary firing temperature of between 1400°C and 1450°C.

As I thought about this, I realized something about fine china, porcelain.  It’s not like everyday stoneware.  It’s the “good china” we bring out for special occasions.  In the same way, we are the clay in The Potter’s hands and He is forming and shaping us to be the finest of vessels … sometimes this means we need to be “fired” by the most intent heat. Sometimes we need to be fired more than once.  Rarely do we like the heat. Yet, as Streams in the Desert reminded me, we should not be trying to stop the progress, but allow our Lord to form and shapes us, just as He wills.

Isaiah 64:8 says:  Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

May we all say yes to His workmanship.  Go ahead Lord, put a fire down in our souls that we can’t contain and we can’t control – because we want more of You Lord.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A8almp_nCU[/youtube]

For Manchester Vineyard’s up and coming mission teams, here are the words in English and Español.

///There´s no place I´d rather be///

//Than here in your love//

So set a fire in my soul that I can´t contain, that I can´t control.

I want more of You, God

I want more of You, God

///No hay un lugar mejor///

//Solo en tu amor//

Hay un fuego en mi ser, no tengo control no puedo contener.

Quiero mas de Ti, Dios

Quiero mas de Ti, Dios

As promised, I’m trying to post more often.  We are off and running, 2 days into the 2nd Trimester.  Sometimes, we feel as if we’ve come really far in a relatively short time.  Other days, we experience tremendous frustration, as we continue to work hard, practice, memorize and so on.  Just last night Diana’s class needed to memorize 100 commonly used verbs … for today.  Les’s class had to work on a 10 minute presentation, using only a few notes for today and he has to do it again tonight for tomorrow. We have learned a lot but have such a long way to go to get to a place where correctly using the language comes naturally.  It’s easy to get bogged down.  There’s an old saying that comes to me – “Get your eyes off the price and on the prize.”

There are two scriptures that express this even better:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 1 Cor 9:24

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us … Heb 12:1

The price for us right now is school and learning a language, in another country, away from the people we know and love, away from our home, away from our “stuff.”  We try to concentrate, while we’re fighting in the trenches called school, because we want to see God reach down into Costa Rica and change lives. We want to join Him.

From time to time we get a taste of this and it is incredibly encouraging. We have the privilege of spending time with 2 Vineyard churches here and helping out in small ways. Recently at Vina Anonos, I was able to carry on a conversation with a Grandmother who is a Christian, visiting this church. She came, because her grandson goes there and she has seen such an incredible change in life. Truly, these are the times His Glory comes down. They are the result of our good friends Rodney, Cindy, Julie and Steve paying the price and working in the trenches.

So for now, sit back and listen to this older Jason Upton song sung by Christ For the Nations … and whatever trenches you are in, we encourage you to keep your eye on the prize.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyZSYPNAEfE&feature=related[/youtube]

If you’d like to see some of the work that is going on to transform the building for Vina Anonos (referred to as Casa Nueva), Julie posted pictures of the process.  Just click on this link, which should open in a new window: Casa Nueva (Vina Anonos) Pics

In Him,
Les & Di

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is kind of the same (variation on a Sesame Street Theme).
We are just finishing up our first trimester break and enjoying the time off. At this point we feel like super-saturated sponges, with more and more information that just keeps getting poured in, through instruction and day-to-day living …. Our “sponge” holds a lot of the information, but some leaks out! We are going to attempt to blog more often, so that everyone can stay up-to-date with what’s happening in the lives of Les & Di.

We thought it might be fun to show some contrasts. Costa Rica is very different culturally than the US. If you watch television, you probably think of it as a tropical paradise with lots of American Style housing and beautiful beaches – and it does have those things, but then so does California and not all of our country looks like that! The country lies wholly within the tropics, yet boasts at least a dozen climate zones and is really diverse in local micro-climates. Most regions have a rainy season (May-November) and a dry season (December-April). It receives about 100 inches each year in most places and in some of the mountainous regions 150 inches. Compare this to the United States East Coast (including NH, NY, NJ & AL) where 32-64 inches is the average.
So, we’re here to say some of these things are “kind of the same.” But there are many difference everywhere we go and in everything we do. Sometimes Costa Rica feels natural and we feel at home. Other times, it’s just completely foreign and we can only call upon the grace of God – not that it’s bad … it’s just different.

As North Americans, different tends to be good on a temporary basis – a fun adventure for a vacation or a visit or even a short term mission trip. Then we go home and everything goes back to normal. We let out a contented sigh, glad to be home again. In our case, this is not what we believe God is saying or doing in our lives at this point, and so we work hard at learning the language (4 hours of daily classes and anywhere from 2-5 hours of homework). Then we practice the skills we’ve been learning with The Tico family we live with, with people on the streets, shopping, giving directions to a taxi driver to get home (remember there are no addresses here – your address is directions. Ours is Zapote, Terminal de Buses, 175 metros oeste, 50 metros sur, en casa blanca.) We work on honoring the culture we live in and so we try to remember to greet everyone in the room with a kiss on the cheek, we remember to say “permiso” when we are leaving the table and we walk and ride buses everywhere, only resorting to Taxis after dark, since the bus changeover to get home is in the Coca Cola district downtown, a notorious red light district, that gringos and ticos alike try to avoid. There’s much to love here … but it’s different.

We thought it would be fun to share some different pictures to illustrate.

US Shower - Hot Water from tank or tankless

Beautiful Costa Rica Bathroom ... with trash can for all toilet paper, due to plumbing

Typical Sign, sometimes in English, but always in Spanish in Costa Rica bathrooms

The Rainy Season In Costa Rica is intense for short periods of time

Always carry an umbrella during the rainy season (sombrillas for women & paraguas for men)

Riding a Tico Bus is inexpensive, but often standing room only - like sardines

Riding a US Bus - seatbelts inclued - are you even permitted to stand?

San Francisco de Dos Rios Neighborhood - we walk to school nearby every day

Typical Suburban home in NH (plenty of locks, but no bars on windows or doors or yards and no razor wire)

Precario (very poor barrio in San Jose)

Families in Transition - low income housing in Manchester NH

Costa Rica Cows - you see lots of these, but they don't make us moo

NH Cows - source of bovalexia (well known "disease" causing people to moo at them)

Gekko on the wall - and we will name him Pete - he eats bugs and chirps!

Raid vs. Pete - we use Raid in the US if the bugs are bad, but Pete is way cuter

Diana's 1st Tri Lenguaje Class (sorry no pic for Les' class )

Diana's 1st Tri Gramatica Class (sorry no pic for Les' class )

Friends - both students & teachers, seated on the terraza

Les & Di on the Outside Balcony after our 1st 2 Classes of the day

Anna Silva (one of the Fonetica teachers) showing us how it's done (claiming piñata candy, that is)

Traditional Dance by Nuestras Maestras (Our Teachers)

art of Capilla (Chapel) Worship Team

Pretty sure we didn't remember how this song started!

Often referred to as gringo traps, because we don't look for them and students frequently step in them!

Typical Rain Gutter in Costa Rica City

Paseo to Nicaragua - gop of Volcan Masaya. Strong fumes (you can only stay for a short while), and all vehicles have to face the road for a quick escape, as the volcano occasionally spits!

Some of these things are kind of the same. Like the hearts of people. Most of the Ticos we meet are gracious people who are willing to help us as we try to find our way around and try to speak their language. They are not critical of our attempts to speak Spanish, are considerate of our efforts and seem to appreciate that we are trying. In churches, when we have the opportunity to pray for someone, we often have to resort to English after using up the Spanish we know. God knows our heart and He knows the people’s needs and His presence is made know in the midst of our short comings. Language is no barrier for Him.

So we will continue to learn the culture and the people and practice our Spanish, imperfect as it is. Jan Strout summed up how we feel about Spanish, when she posted something on Facebook today: “It doesn’t have to be PERFECT! God is not a perfectionist…trees are crooked, mountains are lumpy, lots of his creatures are funny looking, and he made it all anyway.”

And as we learn and practice our new language skills, we will remember:

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; “

Lamentations 3:21-25

Our hope is in him, “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” Romans 5:5