A Psalm

I arrived back home in Yakima, Washington last night after a full day of travel. As I neared the end of my internship I thought back to the beginning and what was going on in my heart then. In the weeks leading up to moving to Costa Rica I was terrified and I felt distant from God for no apparent reason. It wasn’t until we were on the plane to Costa Rica that God reassured me. For our final intern bible study we were assigned to write a Psalm. Mine is about this experience.

Of Esther, when she was an

EMI intern in Costa Rica. A Psalm.

My God, will you be with me?

Where I am going, will You lead?

or have I turned to my own path;

wanting my own way?

Even when I purposed to serve You;

when I came to a country not my own,

I doubted Your guiding hand.

Was it really You who lead me here?

Fear engulfed me;

the threat of the unknown.

Would I succeed or disappoint You?

I looked for a sign,

any promise to cling to.

When I was already on my way You told me;

on the journey You spoke,

“You are my daughter.”

I listened, but You said no more.

What was this that I could cling to?

You shield me through the unknown.

My failures change nothing.

My successes change nothing.

I am Yours.

As I walk forward,

I am still your daughter.

El fin

With less than a week left in Costa Rica, we have a lot of work left to finish up our project. Yesterday we sent out a preliminary set of plans to all our volunteers for their review. Today we are trying to get those revisions done and sent out again for their review.

For the last couple weeks I've been desiring to share some of my testimony with my host sister Maria Paula. God convicted me at her age that He alone was to be worshiped, not boys. However, I am generally shy about bringing up those kind of conversation topics and in Spanish I was even more hesitant. I started praying that God would bring an opportunity for me to bring it up. Then I started praying that He would bring it up, because I was scared to. Sunday afternoon Maria Paula and I had to walk to the pulperia to get some corn flour for grandma's tortillas. As she was telling me about the latest boy developments and how she is feeling, I saw an opening for sharing what happened with me and started talking...in Spanish. I told her some of my story and how God told me that He was better than boys. I was in shock that I had actually said something. Praise God for His power to use me despite my uncertainty! She simply replied, "I know." I didn't tell my story the way I usually tell it, but I pray that what I did say was the right thing and that if there is something else He wants me to say that He will pull it out of me like He did this time. :)

Life right now is a chaos of working to finish our project, packing, spending last moments with our host families and fellow interns, and doing purposeful processing of what God has taught us during our six months here. In the midst of all the change and non-routine of this week and the coming month, as I see my family and move back to school, I am reminded that my God is my anchor. He is the constant factor through it all and that is all I need.

At Work cont.

And this is my wonderful office mate Allison Byrd. 

HelloOo!

She is great fun to work with, can tell what mood I'm in (apparently I respond to "Hey, Esther..." with a "hmm." when I'm in a bad mood), and at 10am consistently asks if I want to join her on a trip to the corner store (pulperia-new Spanish word for the day) to buy Oreos and milk. She and Kevin have been working in Revit and Photoshop to create renderings of our different projects. This is a rendering of the Directors' House that Allison architected for our project in Honduras. 

Working to the end

Allison and I have been working hard on redlines for our project. Here you can see Tim redlining our latest set of new sheets. Note the red pen cap.  

Tim is usually pretty focused but I guess we giggled a little too much when we took this picture. 

Tim has been a wonderful supervisor. He is organized and tells us clearly what we need to work on. He does redlines as soon as we have a set of new sheets ready for him so that we can keep the project moving. He is quick to leave his work to answer our questions whenever we say “hey, Tim.” He takes the time to understand our questions and if he doesn’t know the answer gives us clear direction for a course of action. I have really appreciated his words of affirmation, which are not given flippantly nor are they extravagant. A “good job” or “that looks good” from Tim mean a lot and when he thinks that we have done a good job he always lets us know. Speaking of Tim’s organization, if anyone has an event, visitor, or trip announcement Tim always asks “did you put it on the Calendar?” The Calendar is our shared Google calendar. Allison and I have noticed that he always has Google calendar open, typically with his email open on his other monitor. So when I had my camera out the other day and saw this I had to snap a photo.

We are sure at this point that we will not be able to completely finish our project. We had been planning a water system that did not rely on a well, but the ministry recently dug a well and hit water! This is great, but it changes all of the plans for the water and wastewater. Thus, we have not received anything from our water engineer. We would still appreciate prayer that we could get the rest of the project finished. It will be a lot easier on Tim to wrap up only the water section rather than have multiple sections to finish. The structural plans are undergoing a lot of revisions right now. As we create the plans inconsistencies make an appearance as well as methods that can’t be used in latin America. Our office director, Micah, who is a structural engineer, has been helping with our structural design since he has more experience with central American construction than our structural engineer volunteer. Pray for quick communication between them as when as quick, good decisions. Brad and Kevin’s project is now finished. They were blessed with some really high quality volunteers. So they have been recruited to help on our project. Kevin and Allison have been working on renderings of the new buildings for fundraising and Brad and I have teamed up on the structural redlines. Here is Brad studying one of our structural sheets. (He didn’t even know that I took the picture.)

Maria Paula

I have enjoyed hanging out with my younger host siblings here in Costa Rica. Over the last couple of weeks my host siblings have warmed up to me even more, coming into my bedroom to see what I am doing and hanging out with me there. One evening last week all three of us were on my bed: Maria Paula playing games on my laptop, Emanuel drawing colorful pictures in my journal, and me reading. This weekend as I cleared my bed of my Bible and journal, Maria Paula asked me if I read my Bible every day. I said "Si, casi" and she asked me why. I told her that I wanted to learn more about God. Last night as we were painting our toenails on my bedroom floor she asked me why I didn't go around in short shorts and low cut or spaghetti strap shirts. I told her that guys have a harder time thinking pure thoughts if you wear those kind of clothes.

Please pray for my dear sister, Maria Paula

I am amazed at the impression that my habits can make without me being aware of the fact that anyone notices. I don't think of being an example when I am reading my Bible. I do it because it is vital for my relationship with God. I praise God for using those things to provoke Maria Paula's curiosity and that these questions came at a time when I had sufficient Spanish to answer them, though I feel that I could have answered them better. I crave your prayers for Maria Paula, that God would draw her to Him. I feel that her  current trajectory is heading towards looking to boys for happiness. She doesn't care much about God, though her parents love Him. I would also appreciate prayers for myself, that I would continue to faithfully love God, and that He would give me the right words for her.

The last 3 weeks

It has been a while since I’ve written. We interns had to leave the country for three days to renew our visas. Visas only last for 2 months, so you have to renew them if you want to stay longer. We took this opportunity to visit Panama. We didn’t go to the Panama canal as it is on the opposite end of the country. Instead we went to a group of Caribbean islands off the coast of Panama. We got to go snorkeling, hiking, and kayaking, and I was amazed at the variety of God’s creation. Amidst the diverse lush foliage surrounded by blue ocean it was hard to imagine the brown and gold hills of eastern Washington. Yet God in His limitless creativity made those also, with a beauty all their own.

We would appreciate prayer for the completion of our project. We only have about six weeks left here in Costa Rica and some of the volunteers on our trip are about a month behind schedule on getting their work to us. Thus, it will be difficult to finish the project on time. Pray that our volunteers would spend the time it takes to get their portions of the project to us very quickly and that we could compile it and refine it before we leave so that the EMI office here doesn’t have to work on it next term in addition to their new projects.

Recently I have been dealing with some homesickness, as well as anticipation for starting grad school. I am excited to start studying math again, to be teaching, and to be living in a new town with new roommates. There is a lot to look forward to, however, I don’t want that anticipation ruin my appetite for right now: enjoying my host family, working with EMI, living in a different country, and learning what God is teaching me. So I would appreciate prayer for focus to finish well and savor my time here.

Mi Familia Tica

This weekend I went with my host family to the wedding of one a previous EMI intern who had lived with them. He was getting married at this beautiful place in Costa Rica and Emanuel got to be the ring bearer. They accept us interns into their homes like we are their children. Alejandra introduces me as her "hija gringa" (which could roughly be translated as "north american daughter"). I finally have a picture of the whole family so I thought I would write about each of them.

Alejandra, Juan Carlos, Maria Paula, Emanuel, and me

Juan Carlos is a graphic designer. He loves to ride his bike and study God’s Word. He also likes to read (which apparently is rare for Ticos). He doesn’t talk a lot, but when he does he is pretty funny. He is a great cook and likes to try fancy recipes from magazines. El es muy tranquilo. (sorry sometimes the Spanish just works better)

Alejandra loves to talk. I like it because we can still have conversations even without me talking! She likes to pretend to dance in the living room. She works hard to get us all out the door in the morning on time and with breakfast. She also works hard around the house. The only chore that she really doesn't like is ironing. (Ticos make sure everything is ironed. They are very conscious of looking nice.) She is pretty light skinned for a Tica and has green eyes. Posiblimente puedo parecer una Tica. She calls Juan Carlos her boyfriend all the time.

Maria Paula will turn 14 next week. She is likes makeup, clothes, high heels, and boys. She is outgoing like her mom and greets me enthusiastically when I get home. We have connected by riding bikes together, as well as me listening to whatever she has to say about boys, and helping her with math homework. She is very social and loves to hang out with the interns. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons we will walk to the center of town, get ice cream, and hang out at the park. She and Emanuel like to watch a reality TV show called Combate, where team Naranja and team Azul compete in a variety of games.

Emanuel is 8 years old and absolutely loves to ride his bike. When he can’t ride on our deadend street he rides endlessly in circles on our small patio. He is very responsible with his schoolwork. He likes to try to scare people and "help" me make bread and cookies by eating the dough. (They love my Mom’s homemade bread recipe) We play whatever game he comes up with: cards, hide and seek, mean dog…  When we watch Combate Emanuel will jump up and join the Azul victory dance. As I get near the house after work I often hear him yell, “¡Mamá, Esther viene!”