Great spiritual retreat!

The final days of April the ProMETA team had two wonderful events, one of them being a spiritual retreat. Jim and Leta Van Meter led our three days with the theme "Come away and be with Me!" And, it was incredibly restful. Times of worship, prayer, bible study, personal reflection, and long periods of rest in the afternoons all were bundled together resulting in us returning to the office with renewed strength. In the picture you can see Judy participating in a late-afternoon event. We enjoyed moments where we gathered in smaller groups for games, study, prayer, etc. and relished one another's company! The retreat was held at a Catholic retreat center about a 30 minute drive from our house in San Jose. Because we were the only group there, it was very quiet and peaceful.

Meetings in Bangkok

Greetings from Bangkok. I have been in ReachGlobal meetings for 3 1/2 days now with another 1 1/2 days to go. Once a year all the global leaders meet together for fellowship, training, networking, and strategic planning. Because it's always difficult to find a place that is centrally located to all staff, the venue changes every year. This year the meetings are in Bangkok (next year in California). The flights totaled nearly 36 hours of travel (either Costa Rica is at the end of the world, or Bangkok!) I leave for CR on Saturday and then fly with Judy to Florida on Monday for visa work and a couple days of R & R during Holy Week. I've been able to stay in touch with Judy daily via a webcam and Skype - hurray for technology! One of the strangest things while here has been my email correspondence. All my e-mails arrive during the night because of the 13 hour time difference so I have an entire day to answer them before the next wave of mail rolls in! Thanks for your prayers.

Parents visit us!

It was wonderful to have my parents and Judy's mom with us for nearly a month. They arrived on Feb. 21 and left on Mar. 20. We kept very busy with my dad preaching two Sundays and leading a men's breakfast. We also had all of them be in two of our ProMETA team meetings and even asked them to share experiences with the team. The wealth of Christian ministry experiences was something worth sharing with the rest of the team. We also asked my dad to help us record the audio portions of one of the ProMETA courses, one that had nearly 45 Power Point presentations to go with the content of a new course called, Old Testament Backgrounds. So, my dad spent nearly two weeks at the office recording the audio tracks to go along with the visuals. That was quite special.

A wonderful week in Boston!

What a wonderful time! Because I (Keith) needed to be at a conference the week end of February 20th, Judy and I spent nearly a week in Boston with Kris, Hanjo, and our two grand daughters, Kyla and Kiara. We took a day trip to the beach and "enjoyed" being there in below-freezing temperatures! Not much like Costa Rica! But, the week has gone well and tomorrow we head out of Boston, Judy back to Costa Rica and I travel down to San Antonio for the conference. A highlight for us here was our visit to their church plant and preaching with Hanjo translating into Korean (the church plant is primarily focused on Korean students in the Boston area - the church planter is a Korean student at Gordon Conwell Seminary). Next week I'll be headed back to Costa Rica arriving on Wednesday. Thanks for your prayers.

LATN Team Retreat

It was great for the entire LATN team to be together in January. All ReachGlobal missionaries from Latin America had just meet for one week in Costa Rica (Jan 14-21) and because all our LATN/ProMETA staff were in country, we took advantage of the ocassion and added three more days to our time with our own retreat, Jan 22-24. Staff from Spain, the US, and Peru were able to join those of us living in Costa Rica. The primary focus of our time was spent on spiritual formation issues, but we also spent a few hours on the implications of becoming accredited. In this particular picture, Dr. Ted Kautzmann, ProMETA's academic dean is sharing with the team some of the implications. We are planning on having at least two retreats each year for the purpose of spiritual formation. We will also bring the team together once a year for a week of working together face to face. As you can well imagine, these tend to be busy, but great times together.

Earthquake in Costa Rica

We thank God that our LATN team is doing fine and that as far as we know, there has been no damage to our offices as the result of Thursday's 6.2 earthquake. The epicenter was less than 30 miles away! The earthquake struck at 1:21 pm and our building shook back and forth for about 20 seconds. Over 1500 aftershocks were reported as of yesterday. The death toll last night was at 15 but there are still 100s of people missing, so we're not sure what the final count will be. As far as churches are concerned, many of the churches with which we have contact were far enough away from the epicenter to have suffered damage. I am still waiting to hear from a Free Church pastor regarding the dozen or so churches he works with. We are looking at various options were we as a team can help out (it may be giving donations through one of the local churches), but for the most part, the government and the Red Cross are the ones handling rescue operations. We would certainly appreciate your prayers.

Christmas and New Years!

Christmas and New Years are always special moments of the year, and this year was no different! New Years in Latin America is unforgettable. This year we watched fireworks from the balcony of our house - spectacular! As you can see from one of the many pictures we took, we were treated to a beautiful 20 minute demonstration of colors and sounds in the sky so typical of Latin America!

And for Christmas we were able to take advantage of some bargain airfares to Ft. Lauderdale to be with Gregory, his fiancé, his future in-laws, friends and supporters. We also did some paperwork on our resident visas for Costa Rica, although less than what we had wanted. The picture to the left shows Judy, Gregory, Alexandra (his fiance) and Doris (her mother) making Venezuelan hallacas much like the Central American tamales. Making " hallacas is a tradition at Christmas time and we were thrilled that even during our short visit we were able to make over 50 of the banana leaf - wrapped delicacies!