Hey Everyone! Hola hola.
So far I’ve been having a great experience living in Costa Rica. Today we ate a delicious breakfast and headed down to the Abraham Project to serve God and the missionaries.  On our bus rides, it is impossible for me to sleep or close my eyes because there’s so much scenery for me to take in.  The ride is usually pretty long though.  When we got there, we took nails out of as many wood blocks as possible.  But THEN it started to rain.  We had to stop what we were doing and go indoors for other work.  We washed the dirty walls in the school area of the orphanage so that they could be painted later. 

There was a little niño (boy) who had a mini conversation with me as I was working in the hallway.  He was so cute and I was touched that he tried to speak in English to me.  He was pretty good for his age. ❤  Anyway, then we had a break and ate lunch in the cafeteria.  Our food was so spectacular.. haha  I love the cook who works hard to give our team a yummy meal!  It was rice, juicy chicken, mashed potatoes, and salad. P:  After that, it was USA vs. Costa Rica in a soccer game outside.  Then we worked on getting nails out of the wood again and finally ended our work by 3:00ish. 

When we got back to the hotel, I went swimming with a few people (even though the weather was cool and drizzly outside).  After that, we drove out to a restaurant and ate dinner.  I’ve noticed that every meal is served with a juice in the beginning and a little dessert at the end.  So the same thing happened with tonight’s dinner. 😉  I think everyone enjoyed their meal.  Later, in the hotel lobby, a few people and I had a coffee party and hung out for a while.  Then we had devotions.  After that I was too tired to do anything else, so I went to sleep in my cozy bed.  Buenos noches! ZZZzzz

PS- a special shout out to the 5th and 6th grade class: thanks so much for praying for me.  You guys are the best. ❤ I’m really enjoying my time down here! 🙂

another PS- Happy belated birthday to Mom!! love you bebe.  I hope you had a fun-filled day with mucho pampering. ;D

Erica Scheidt

Our day began with a wonderful breakfast and then we headed to the Abraham project site. Our eyes and hearts were opened wide as we were given a tour by Kirby who is the female you see speaking with us on the soccer bleecher steps. After the tour, we donned sunscreen and put on our gloves and got down to business. One group of students moved dirt, one group worked to dig earth away so that a brick/concrete slab could be laid, and another group got the fun exciting job of clearing out a septic gutter, meanwhile our disabled member stripped paint and sanded a coffe table. You want to guess which job I got? I’ll just say that all of us enjoyed a shower upon returning home! We also got to eat with the local volunteers and workers which was a real blessing. Then it was “Game On” as the local work crew invited us to play soccer. We tried to do more work, but the local weather (rainy season) had other plans as a rain deluge ensued and cut our work day short. We now look even more toward going back tomorrow and cannot wait to dig in again (literally). Thanks for all your prayers and support and know that God should be given all the glory for this wonderful work. Hasta luego!

Brett Markey

Here are just a few of the areas of the Abraham project. The bleechers to the soccer field, playground under roof due to rainy season, living quarters for many children in what we would call foster care.

Red rooves and bars on every window and door-typical.

Jared lost his first pair of glasses and had to go for his second pair

Hola de Costa Rica! Hello to my friends and family back home, and a special hello to the 4th grade class! I have been having so much fun here! There are so many fun things to do here; swimming next to a waterfall, ziplining, relaxing in hot springs, and getting to work alongside of Costa Ricans at the Abraham Project. Its amazing to see how God is working here. Seeing how God can unify people from different nationalities, and move people to accomplish things, even when it seems the odds are against them was truly a blessing to me as I cleared out a sewage ditch today. I hope everything is going ok back home, please continue to keep us in your prayers as we do have 3 more filled days ahead of us, pray that we may do God’s work here for the people and that we may grow in our spiritual maturity.
~Austin Weaver

Hola from Costa Rica!
Steph and Abby here, Costa Rica has been great so far. We have had many great opportunities and have experienced many awesome things here in the jungle of Costa Rica. Today we started our work at the Abraham Project. This is a daycare and foster home for the local Costa Rican children. We were able to help out with many projects around the Project, including digging and landscaping. It was a great opportunity to use our abilities to serve a great mission. We also got the chance to play soccer with a few of the workers after lunch, which was so fun, but also humiliating due to the locals’ soccer talents. But they were gracious and took it easy on us. Tomorrow we are hoping to spend time with the children in the daycare and have the chance to connect with them, as well as Thursday too.

Shout out to 4th and 7th grade; hope you guys are having fun back home. Keep working hard summer is almost here! 🙂 I hope you have enjoyed reading our blogs daily.
Hasta Luego!
Steph and Abby

Just after a wonderful evening meal we had a devotional time followed by some taking some time to refresh in the pool. Did I say refresh? Well at about 10PM a student whom has been injured many times before, figured I was plenty refreshed and needed a little more stress. So said individual jumped into the pool and turned their ankle (which included a nice cut/gash), just so I would have something to do. Little do most people realize that I am way ahead of these perplexing situations and so I simply asked our guide Dustin to have a look. He has studied pre-med and has a degree in Kinesiology, so this situation was well confronted. And to reassure parents…a phone call went immediately to Eric Lewis, whom then contacted the parent and then I was able to speak directly to the parent by the guides international phone, which he carries 24/7. The guide knew we had arranged travel insurance and told me that the hotel had insurance as well so we were totally covered no matter what had to be done. God is in control, and I just wanted you all to understand just how smoothly things take place when you have done all your homework and are confident in your plans.

Brett Markey