Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all! I hope you have been able to take a break from your normal pace of life and spend some time with family and friends. One of my friend's Facebook posts about the birth of Jesus struck me recently:
"This is the emptying.
The release of heaven.
The descent
into the warmth
of a young girl's womb.
Vitally yoked
to her heartbeat and life.
Sharing the scandal
and embarrassment of flesh.
A covenant of love
sealed in ligament and bone.
Glory
to God in the Highest.
Glory
here in straw and blood."
God becoming man - leaving His paradise and taking on the "embarrassment of flesh" - all so that He could restore His relationship with us that we broke in the first place. That is why Christmas is worth celebrating.
Being away from family has actually been the hardest part of this Christmas season for me, but it's taught me not to take time with family for granted. I can now empathize with people like deployed soldiers who cannot be with loved ones for Christmas, and actually going through the experience myself helps me to understand it in a way I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
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| After I finished my wrapping! |
What I've been up to since my last post (I know it's been a while
J):
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| At the border crossing - the Gappers went to Nicaragua to help Comunidad Cristo Resucitado (one of our sister communities) put on a youth retreat |
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| The village we stayed in was called Santo Tomás. It was pretty small (pop. 20,000) and fairly rural |
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| The building of Comunidad Cristo Resucitado |
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| The three boys closest to the camera were my host brothers |
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| Independence Day parade |
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| Sightseeing |
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| More sightseeing - I look happy, but that was before I ate the food I'm holding which I think contained some disagreeable bacteria (it was accepted from a stranger - don't tell my mom! J) |
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| Man-made showers - this retreat was an outdoor camping retreat! |
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| The circus tent where the main retreat events took place |
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| Night games - very muddy! |
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| Finishing the night games - the theme was like "Knights of the Round Table" |
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| The place we camped for the retreat was a cow farm... |
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| ...and everyone had to wear rubber boots the entire time because it was so muddy |
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| 300 17-21 year olds all camped on the same farm! The Gappers are in the front row. |
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| My birthday was the day after the retreat ended - a beloved tradition is to shove the birthday person's face into their cake! |
Our trip to Nicaragua was a challenging and intense but also very valuable experience.
I was glad to be able to see how life is lived in a more rural area, and it was also cool to see a Sword of the Spirit community at work there. The people of Comunidad Cristo Resucitado have faced many hardships (Nicaragua experienced a civil war in the 1980's) and have a lot of faith and zeal.
To see more pictures from Nicaragua, you can visit
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1465278672962.2038149.1263360465&type=1&l=331c757529.
The Gappers have been able to live according to a fairly regular routine in the past few months. Monday through Friday we would meet in the Árbol de Vida community building at 8:30 to pray, and then we would spend until 12:00 doing a variety of personal spiritual growth activities - taking a self-administered course on the Psalms, reading Christian books, etc. After that we were free to plan our own time - often we had to work on the various projects that each one of us is assigned and attend meetings for different groups or events, and we've also been able to have some free time to do non-work activities. Here are some photos from events we've participated in:
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| Acting in a skit for a CEM retreat at the end of September. The Gappers had to play the demons! |
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Gavin and I had to plan the games for a CUM retreat in October.
This was Ultimate Cabbage, a recycled classic from Ann Arbor. |
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| We dressed like ninjas to lead the Go-Ninja-Go game station |
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| Alex's 21st birthday. I wasn't the only one who had to get my face shoved in a cake! |
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| Singing to raise money for the VEM summer program at the Community's "Festivalito," a carnival-themed event that I helped to plan |
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| At the 15th Anniversary party for the Latin American GAP program |
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| Sour-cream-with-figs ice cream after church one Sunday. Very interesting - I though the figs tasted like pickles |
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| At my host brother's band concert. He plays the alto saxophone. The picture in the background has a gazebo because there is a historical tradition here of having live music on Sunday afternoons in the gazebos that are always in parks in front of the older churches |
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| Recording the dialogue for a Christmas play |
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| Singing "Oh Holy Night" at the Christmas play |
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| A trip to the Gold Museum downtown |
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| The Árbol de Vida Community has an activity called "Interfamiliares" where groups of families get together for informal activities in order to get to know each other better. I went with my host family to a barbecue at a nearby country club. |
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| Passing out sandwiches and coffee to the homeless with people from CEM in downtown San José. We had to have a police escort since this part of city is more dangerous than others. |
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| Serving at a meeting of the newly forming Sword of the Spirit community in Heredia, a neighboring city |
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| Charito and I had to put together 85 folders for the upcoming youth summer program. Lots of paper and lots of hole punching! |
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| My friend Manu teaching me to salsa dance! |
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| We had a Mariachi band come and play for one of the middle school/high school youth group meetings |
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| Kanela is very cute but has too much energy for anyone's good |
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| Humorous English phrases and translations abound. I think this is some kind of juice store. |
The Gappers were also fortunate enough to be able to take some trips during our vacation time in December. We got to go to the beach with some friends...
To the mountains with the Aragon family and my host family...
And to some other mountains with the Calderon family:
I am very grateful to the people who took us on vacations. It was great to get to know them better and to see some of the country outside of San José - there is so much natural beauty here, which I think is just a small reflection of God's unimaginable glory.
The past few months have been filled with many blessings, many challenges, and a lot of grace. I hope to add another post soon with some reflections about how things have been going and what I've been learning. May God bless you richly in this new year! I am praying for you.
