The Goodness of God. Part 1

Hello blog readers!
So it has been not stop rain here for close to a week. I guess this is what is meant by rainy season.
So today I see this need to learn contentment from the Lord. Some days, some moments even, I can find myself missing home or missing people. Yes there are many great people at home that I miss :)

And from that I see how I can walk away from contentment. This passage in Philippians 4 is so important to learn from. It is from God and his strength that we are able to be content.

12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Ok so that was just a quick thing that came up this morning for me. Now on to the Goodness of God. God is good. I have been so encouraged this week by a lessons I have been listening to on the Fruit of the Spirit by Joyce Meyer. We are called to goodness. That just sounds so good! A verse that I took away from that teaching that day was in Isaiah 30:18

"Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of Justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!"

If you go and read all of chapter 30 and then see the context of this very powerful verse it becomes that much more powerful. In vs. one God talks about his children doing things that are not his plans. In vs. 10 and 11 the children of God don’t want to hear truth, they just want to hear "pleasant" things. Gods answers to these actions are discipline and hard things seen in vs 12-14. Then one of my most fav verses that I need to write down and post on my wall by my desk is:

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."

That is hard to read because I find myself restless in worry, loud in my thoughts and not trusting but questioning and not noticing when I need to repent. I DONT WANT TO BE THE ONE THAT HAS NONE OF IT! I want all that the Lord has shown here! and praise the Lord for his goodness that it is his plan for us! I pray I walk out that verse and each day I pay attention, am I walking out those things?
I am going to make this a 2 part post because I need to get to work. :) This week we have been working on CAD drawings for the hospital plan remodel. It is coming along great! Sorry to cut this short everyone! Much love to you all, I pray all of us walk in Isa 30:15 that we will walk in all of it not none of it and not just part of it! We will continue on the GOODNESS on the next post!!!!

Fall for us all!

Hello lovely blog readers,

          This will be a very short post here before I get started with my day at the office.  Wednesday was the offical start to fall! And even with me being here in this summer type weather, where the grass is always green and flowers always blooming I am thinking of the beauty of fall.
          Just the idea that the old has gone so the new can come! I love how in our own lives that process can hurt and look messy and ugly. BUT look how beautiful it is displayed all around us in fall! When God starts new things how LOVELY! So today will be poem day for us. Below is a poem I wrote maybe a year ago or so. It is talking about the idea of trees and the changes they go through and how it can be similar with us. This poem is a litte more about a winter tree, but we need to go through fall to get there :) Have a BLESSED day!

I Will Use My Imagination

I will use my imagination today, in a joyous way.

I will be a tree today and maybe learn to stay that way.

What is it?
Light dancing on white. My hands cling to it and it holds me.

I did not meet my death, but rather a deep breath

But my decoration and protection did fall; I let it float down on the ground.

 (no longer will they look at my scarlet and gold, no longer will they look at me)

So I stand bare for now. But I carry a promise that wholesome protection will fall from on high.

 Soon that light will catch every eye.

My branches have a pulse, I feel.

It gets cold. It gets dark in time. There use to be light. It stays dark.

But then even with little light, or none, down falls the promised white, from all sides.

Covering every bare part of the tree that is me.

This deep, bare bark now sheltered.

Me, stripped and unseen.

It is to be found on me; love sits there, on the tree that is me.

~ The Lord and Erika

LOVE LOVE from Costa Rica!!! I am thankful that the JOY of the Lord is for us every single day no matter the type of day we are having! BY HIM FOR HIM! Lets live that out today!

Home in Costa Rica, back from Guatemala!

It is time for an update if I do say so myself!

HELLO wonderful blog readers and eMi support system.

Grandma and baby girl, This little one can not get any cuter!

           Today is a day off for me here in Costa Rica to allow for time for people like you all to get an update! I just returned from my 8 days in Guatemala! Four of us from the office headed out last Saturday to the city of Chichicastanago a few hours outside Guatemala City. Our team met up with four great volunteers from the states. An architect, a structural, electrical and mechanical engineer. What a team we had! Full of knowledge and ready and willing to bring the Lord glory with time and design work.

<-- here is the great team that came down!

A LOOK AT THE WEEK:

Day one we set out on a tour of a hospital in Antigua then we completed our drive to Chichi. Guatemala had been experiencing many mud slides along their roads which made for interesting travel and saw many missing parts of roads. Thank the Lord for our safe travels! We arrived in Chichi and saw the hospital we would be working with. Then we got to go to a local night church service.

            The next 3 days and Friday we spent working away on design. We would get up and eat a great breakfast. We then got to have a group singing, praying and devo time. One of my favorite parts of the days was sharing life stories, by the end of the week we heard everyone's! After that then we would head to either the hospital to research and document or work away at the hotel in the room we took over for the week. I spent the days working on putting hand drawings and layouts into CAD. We would break from our work for lunch and dinner and wrap up a few hours after dinner. It was great to learn and work alongside the volunteers.

             Thursday we got to have the afternoon to experience more of the city. We went to the big market that Chichi is known for! That was a cultural experience. We also saw some churches and got to drive out of town to visit some local people. It was very hard on Thur. because Lynn Dee the lady I roomed with needed to head home after finding out her mom was not doing well after having heart surgery. We can be praying for her as she is home now, we have not got any updates from her yet.

Then Saturday we had our final presentation to the hospital board. Now we are home and will be working on this project for the rest of my time here. We need to take our idea and get it all worked out and into construction documents to be able to give to the hospital. So you can be praying for the voluneers as the continue to work these next months on final plans and as we at the eMi office get it all in CAD and all orginized for the hospital!

Now time for some pictures!!

Market

How we got around

Me :) hello supporters!

A look into a normal moment! Hard at work!

There are many more pictures, I will post more on the next one! Thank you for taking a look and time to read into my life. Much love from Costa Rica! I am thankful for the support you have given me as I spent this fall here! It is wonderful to think how big God is and how grand his plan for the world. How it can bring 4 people from the states to Costa Rica to send them out then to Guatemala, to meet up with 4 others from the States to meet wonderful people that work at one hospital in Chichi! Our God knows big things and very little detail things! How amazing! Our God is a good God!

Rain Clouds

A bit from my head for you...

Every day the clouds roll in around noon.

They carry rain in hopes to drop it off.

It is the plan and purpose they have, to cover

the sun and cool the ground.

Here in Costa Rica during this season of rain it rains. Haha for real! Every day it pours down. There has been a theme of water for me in my daily devo also. The other day I was reading Psalm 77 and found water there too! Take time to read it, then we can talk about it :)

What a powerful moment we read into here. This person is in sorrow of a night! We can all relate! Amen. And what did he do. He remembered the Lord. He though of him. In verses 7-9 we see him question. These were big questions. His mind was taking him down! And he fough back with the rest of the psalm! Amen! May I learn to fight like this too. What a great example. He sets his mind on the things the Lord HAS done. He remembers the miracles the works and the deeds of the LORD!

Vs. 16 we look at the power of storms and rain and water! What a great thing we can see and hear and feel to remind us of the Lord. I am blessed to have these daily rains. I pray I will remember!

"Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen." vs.19

What a wonderful picture. The sea parting and knowing God is the one who did it, the one who is leading you, but unseen footprints. We are called to trust the Lord that we shall make it across! I read a quote this weekend that said if you never trust the river you can never cross it. This makes me think of putting our TRUST in the LORD!

About time for a post! lets remember how we can TRUST the LORD!

Another Hola from Costa Rica!

I have just finished a morning of language school. For lunch I had a small hamburger, not the same as in the US but reminded me of it a little and some pina juice for lunch! I have speaking plenty of Spanish here and find it hard to speak English normally. My mind is jumbled with both! As time passes I am sure it will get better.

So these past weeks we have not been going into the EMI office. We did get to have a great dinner where we shared our testimonies with the EMI staff.  Part of the program here is having a staff mentor so this was a way for them to get to know us better. The staff families are such a blessing here!

So I need to fill you in on some activity that has gone on here. My first weekend I went on a walk with my family into the jungle to a waterfall! Yes that is right! Here are some pictures from that great saturday! That ended in swimming in the rain and being very dirty and wet... daily rain we should have remembered!!! :)

Meet my sisters Jessica, from the states, Wendol, de Costa Rica. And my brother, Augusto, de Costa Rica! 

And the WATERFUL

It was truly a tropical expirence! Walking through it all! What a beautiful thing to run into at the end of our hike! I think we may go back again with the whole family and other interns next time!

Time for the WORD

So what I wanted to share last time! Here we go. Let’s look into the word that is sharper then a double edge sword! That is the word of the LORD for us! So my first week here daily at the office we had a devo. We took a look at Romans 12. At the end of chapter 11 we get thoughts of how great our God is!

Vs. 36: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Due to these 1-11 chapters and these thoughts of how amazing our Lord is flows chapter 12. We talked about what do we all do now?! We worship be being living sacrifices. Verse after verse of this chapter unravels and builds on how we live this worship out. We talked about it being like an onion that layers get pulled back and uncover more and more of the meaning.

Take time to look over this. This chapter calls us up high! It calls us to change, to not be in the “pattern” of the world around us. Then we get a look at gifts that our given to us. Ways we can worship!

Gift- charisma in Greek, Chris meaning- grace or undeserved, Ma meaning- result of something. What a beautiful meaning of a gift the result of grace! The chapter then explains about sincere love! This reminds me of any gift without love is useless. We are called to bless! The verse that stands out the most to me in this section is vs.12

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”


I leave this post with that verse! May the Lord help each of us with these 3 things! Much love to you!
<3 <3 <3