So I was noticing the other day that it has been a good long while since I have blogged. So I guess I might have a lot to talk about! Nathan left yesterday morning for the US, as he will be taking his ophthalmology boards on Tuesday. He has been studying hard, hard, hard over the past few weeks. He will be glad when they are behind him. So the last few weeks have been a bit busy with our schedules and our studying. We have to continually remind ourselves that our success and worth is not in how we perform, but only in Christ alone. This sure is hard for me to remember many days
I know the last blog was from Nathan, which indicated that we were experiencing a time of struggle. I have really had a hard few weeks. I tend to struggle with change and since we are moving once again in April, I am feeling a bit unsettled and sad about the upcoming change. I could never have imagined that Costa Rica would have been such a sweet place for us. We have many dear friends here. That makes leaving so much harder. I remember feeling this same way last year when we were leaving Texas. I told myself then, and I will tell myself now, that it is much better to leave a place very sad because we have sweet relationships and a place that we consider home rather than to be happy to leave because I hated living here. The Lord has been so faithful to us here and I long to trust that He is going to be faithful again in Peru. Many times I allow my sadness to cloud what is the truth, which is that He is indeed going to be faithful again.
On a bit of a different note, we have, or I guess I should say Nathan has been making lots of plans for Peru. It appears that an addition is going to be built onto the clinic, that our mission agency owns, that already exists in Cusco. This addition will be for ophthalmology and will also have the capacity to house visiting students/residents and also peruvian students as well. We are really excited to watch all of this come together in the next few months. There is definitely a lot to be done between now and then. We also have been trying to look for a place to live when we arrive in Cusco. We are not sure if we are going to live with a Peruvian family for a brief time before we find an apartment. I have loved living with our family here in Costa Rica so much that it would be so fun to get to know another family in Peru. We will see.
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| The existing clinic in Peru. The addition will go behind the clinic. |
Last night was a lot of fun because we had a birthday party at our house for Nathan. His birthday is Monday, but since he will be in the states, Mamí decided that we need to celebrate before he left. Her reason for this was that if something happened to him in his travels, at least he would have gotten to have a really fun party beforehand :=). So we celebrated with balloons, streamers, Mamí's famous tres leches cake and a yummy dinner. It was really fun. Louis David, the four-year-old grandson of Mamí and Papí was so excited about the party that you would have thought it was for him instead. How fun it is to celebrate holidays and birthdays with our family here!
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| Nathan very surprised by his party |
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| The decorations |
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| Dinner with the family |
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| Oh the wonderful tres leches (I love that the one is backwards b/c louis david helped place the candles) |
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| Precious picture of Papí, Nathan and Louis David |
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| The birthday singing! |
Thank you so much for all your prayers and sweet kind letters and emails over this past month. We are really humbled and thankful to not be forgotten.