The Answer!

Remember the whole "We thought we were going to Honduras and now we're not"  situation?  And how it was hard and stretching and we grew in our faith?  Well, finally after months of praying and looking and fussing, and praying some more, we have an answer!  We met with the director of Campamento Roblealto and a representative from LAM Tuesday and we will be joining the work there in the fall!

While we still have to sign our letter of intent, things are pretty set now.  I can't tell you what a relief it is to have an answer, have more of a refined direction and to be able to move on to the next step of this crazy adventure!

Noah's main job will be working with the college aged volunteers (you might call them summer staff).  He will be working along side of them during the camping seasons (January and July) as well as following up with them during the six months in between camp seasons.  You might call him chaplain of sorts, or pastor to these young adults.  He will also be working alongside the program department to help develop Bible studies, themes, and lessons for the campers.  If you are at all familiar with Barakel summers, he will sorta be Roblealto's Dave Douglas.

I will be helping where I can with things like having the volunteers over for a pizza night, or plan a Christmas party or whatever else comes up, the same sort of things I would do during the summers at Barakel, but my main job for a while will be the boys. 

We're excited!  We can see how God has been preparing us for this ministry, everything from our degrees, to our time at Barakel, to what our gifts are.  And there is a huge need here in Costa Rica to train up young men and women who are firm in the Faith, who know the Bible and who have leadership skills to lead the next generation.  This position hasn't existed before us, but it is something that the director and staff at Roblealto have been praying about for a while now.

Roblealto is about an hour from where we live now, up the mountain north of San Jose (thanks google maps for this image!).  It was started in 1948 (how funny, that's right around the time Barakel was started!)  The property is lovely and perfect for a camp.  The camping season is a bit different from the United States because of school schedules. Instead of camp being full all summer, we will be busy all of January and then for half of July. 

We won't live on the property, but somewhere close  Right now we are praying that God would show us the perfect house for our family in the area.  And big on the list of things we are praying for is a secure yard for the boys to play in and a bath tub.  Yep, a bath tub is number two on our list of priorities!  We aren't sure exactly what town we will live in, but Roblealto is going to help us figure that all out as the time gets closer. 

So what's next?  Well, in 41 days we graduate from ILE after our year of language study.  Then we'll head to West Michigan for the summer, to have baby and finish support raising.  We are hopeful that we will be at 100% by the end of September so we can move to our new home in Costa Rica early October.

Thank you all so much for all your prayers for wisdom through this process!  God sure has used it to grow us and for that we are thankful.  We are also very thankful to be on this side of the process too!