Notes from the Journey, Latin American Chapter

This American Life: Scenes from life back in the USofA

2012-11-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

Greetings!

I apologize for the miserably long lapse of time since I've published some updated news. I hope that in the past several months, you've gotten some insight into what I've been up to via prayer letters, church presentations, or personal conversations. I've been back in the United States since May, so I've taken advantage of these past several months to try and meet personally with people (since I'm around to do it!), and also to share publicly at churches about the ministry work I've gotten to be a part of for the past several years in Costa Rica.

My prayer letters for this year are available on my MAF profile website: https://maf.org/blowers, in case you missed one of the exciting installments :)

A huge thanks to those of you who I've gotten to have conversations with. Many of these are a real encouragement to my soul. It is good to hear some of the things I'm processing reflected back for me. Of course, I come back a very different person than when I left four years ago. But it is a real encouragement to see and hear about the life I've been distant from for four years as well. That is, I am fascinated to hear about the interesting things going on in the lives of others that I've only been privy to via facebook updates and occasional notes.

While back in the U.S., home base has been the basement of home... that is, I've been living downstairs in my family's home here in Nampa. I was able to visit a few other locations to spend time with family and share about ministry news: Oregon, California, Kansas City, Florida, and Oklahoma.

I'm working on a more detailed collection of thoughts and experiences that have impacted me since I've been back in the U.S. Until I get that done, take a look through the following photo albums and we'll call it good:

Please know I am VERY grateful for the hospitality, kindness, and encouragement that so many have showed me since I've been back. It is very appreciated. Thank you also to those who have begun giving (or have been faithfully giving for many years) to help me be a part of this ministry.

Ghetto superstar

2012-04-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings! I recently added a few interesting articles in my separate blog about living in La Carpio. There's a lot of writing on there, so if you're behind or even if you are checking it out for the first time, here are some articles you might want to start with:

If you comment on anything there, I'm the only one that can read it. I'll continue to add articles as I find time but I won't always update with a separate announcement on this blog.

Yielo Fieldwork

2012-03-17T16:43:00.002-07:00

Please read. Please comment:

http://globalwanderer.net/yielopuqui/?page_id=9

Perhaps you're curious about what life is like in an entire community built on land than no one has legal title to, a stone's throw away from the largest garbage dump in the country (and a line drive away from the country club's golf course across the valley). Perhaps you never noticed that in places without paved roads people toss water on the dusty road outside their doorways too keep it from unsettling and coating the insides of their homes and from clogging up their lungs. How are places organized and coordinated where resources are scarce and government can't keep up with population growth? Or ever wondered how people who don't get 24-hour running water store up water for the day when they can't afford sophisticated backup water systems? How many buckets of water does it take to bathe oneself in the morning from a 55-gallon drum?

I recommend getting curious about what life is like for people in parts of the city that everyone avoids, and I recommend finding out for yourself by talking to people who live there and asking lots of questions. Thanks to God's protection and the relentless hospitality of the people in La Carpio, I have no complaints and a huge list of awesome memories from my six months living in "La Cueva." Most of the photos and videos I posted were about our amazingly talented students and the incredible things they were doing, or about birthday parties and interesting things going on. Those are the parts I wanted to share with everyone and remember about my time there.

But the day-in and day-out living conditions in La Carpio can be a challenge, and nobody knows that better than the people who live there. A lot of aspects of a place like that can be just plain disturbing and hostile. This is the well-sensationalized perspective that you can get from most news reports and popular commentary, and the bits of it that are accurate can be quite terrifying when you are face-to-face with them or when someone close to you suffers from these threatening realities. There are tidy phrases to describe life in places like this: fierce competition over scarce resources, "social density", delinquency, "microlocalities", the periphery, environmental hazards... all interesting terms, but what is it really like to live in a place like La Carpio?

When I decided to live in La Carpio, the best explanation I could give was that it was a learning experience, and pretty much everything about my time there was a learning experience. I went as a student and a guest. But there was a spiritual dimension to it as well, one that most strongly impresses on my mind the term "reconciliation". As I wrote somewhat aggressively in a spin-off of Thoreau's famous statement of Where he chose to live and What he chose to live for, I am not satisfied with an unexamined life that accepts these inequalities passively, and I want to see for myself what good news God's message of love has to speak into this issue of increasing disparity between the rich and poor. I wanted to understand what growing up in La Carpio was like for the youth we work with. I wanted to know what day-in and day-out living was like for a family in a "squatter settlement."

The over-all conclusion I have is good news. We're not all that far apart as it may seem. In fact, we are deeply connected on this issue, and the quicker we realize it the more ways we can work toward true reconciliation, and making the world a better place.

So, I felt from the very beginning of my time there that this was good news that I should share with as many people as I could, as best I could, in the most detail that I could. Toward that end, I am finally beginning to compile and write up some of my notes and journal entries from when I lived there. This blog is where you can find all my research, notes, videos, journal entries, and commentary about La Carpio, all in one place. I'll continue to update it as I find time. I hope you enjoy it; I hope you are encouraged; I hope you feel as convicted as I do about people living in hazardous places like these; and I hope I pique your curiosity about finding ways we are all connected on this.

http://globalwanderer.net/yielopuqui/?page_id=9

Moodle Month

2012-02-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month we had two fun events relating to the learning platform we use, called "Moodle." Moodle is an open-source web environment for managing and delivering on-line courses in a virtual environment. Lots of universities or seminaries will use Moodle or something like Moodle to construct their virtual classrooms, where students log on and participate from all over the world.

At the beginning of February, Rosalia and Maureen from our Learning Technologies team here in San Jose led a 3-day workshop last week teaching educators and administrators from various seminaries and missionary institutions in Costa Rica how to design and deliver their classes on-line. There were 8 attendees, and these classes will help them make the training they offer available to Spanish-speaking students all over the world. The attendees will learn more about how to use the Moodle learning management system to set up virtual classes for on-line students. I audited the class as well, since I usually help with the technical side of the Moodle installation, but don't usually know what all goes into the construction of a course within the program.

Click here for a collection of photos from the event!

A week later, two fellow MAF missionaries from Nampa visited our team, Tony and Brian. We talked about lots of topics relating to educational strategy and the platforms we use. Also, Tony and his family plan on joining our team here in Costa Rica before the end of this year, so he got to be introduced to the country and see a little of how our team works here.

Click here to see a few photos from their trip

From more connected to more protected

2012-01-31T20:42:00.000-08:00

Most recent news for me here in Costa Rica is that I've moved to a new apartment closer to where I work (and closer to where I was living before). It has been a lot of fun getting settled and experiencing some privacy and quietness, a luxury I haven't had for the past three years I've lived here in Costa Rica. San Francisco de Dos Rios, where our offices are and where I'm now living, is quite different, if you can imagine, from where I was living in La Carpio.

Part of what I will have to do in these next months is wrap my perspective around a different approach to security, safety, and comfort. I've already been thinking a lot about the differences between where I'm at now and where I was living in La Carpio. Put simply, in a place like where I live now, people feel safe and secure when they are more protected, whereas in La Carpio, safety came from being more connected. I could leave my car parked on the street, at night, without worrying about it being broken into or robbed (well, I worried, but nothing happened). This is doubly perplexing because La Carpio is notorious for delinquent crime and most of the kids on the street knew that my windows open easily from the outside. Here in San Francisco de Dos Rios, a car on the street at night is an automatic invitation for a break-in. I only left my car out on the street once in SF2Rios and it got broken into, combed for everything of value, and then they popped the hood and jacked the battery. Cars are regularly broken into in front of our office and in the web of streets between where I'm now living and where I work, and muggings are pretty common. And yet, this is where all the foreigners flock to live (both latino and anglo foreigners), and they still somehow perceive a place like this to be safer. In some ways, it is, but in many ways, it is not. Each place has its horror stories - I could get robbed or harmed in La Carpio or I could robbed and harmed in San Francisco de Dos Rios - the former seems more "worth" the risk. To take one of my favorite quotes from the devotional I was reading while I lived there,

we learn that the most dangerous place for Christians to be is in comfort and safety, detached from the suffering of others. Places that are physically safe can be spiritually deadly" (from Common Prayer: A liturgy for ordinary radicals).

While I was living in La Carpio, I didn't write or discuss much about the experience publicly, because I was fully focused on being present, with minimal analysis. Participant observation and delayed judgment would be the anthropological way to put it. Plus, there were a few other concerns I had about how such a move would be perceived by others, and it turns out they were well-founded. Granted, I didn't have a very reasonable explanation for what I was doing - at least, I didn't bother to build a case for it. Now, however, I'm planning on taking some time these next few months to go back over my journal entries and rehash some of the things I learned and experienced. Moving to live there was probably one of the most radical moves I've made in my life up to this point, but during my devotions I had a great prayer guide that reminded me I was in good company. A lot of things made me confused, uncomfortable, and uneasy. Most of the time, though, I remember feeling quite content, at peace, and almost electrically alive, thanking God for exactly where I was, exactly at that moment. I am still asking myself why I left, if that's the way I felt. I think, though, it was a natural transition point, and I need some time to think and reflect on my time there.

So anyway, for the next few months during my time of solitude (anything feels like solitude after living with 18 people!) I plan on revisiting my journal entries, my notes, and my "research", and finally sharing some of the stories and things that I learned while I lived in La Carpio, including the different reasons why I went to live there and whether it's something I could (should?) do again. I haven't quite decided how I'm going to put all these experiences into words, but it will probably be through entries on a separate blog. If you are interested in following along on that specific experience, please let me know by commenting or sending me an e-mail or a facebook message or whatever, just so I know to keep you in the loop. I will continue to update this blog with general news and stories, but I won't be announcing each time I update the other site.

This American Life: Part Christmas

2012-01-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I have since returned from 2 weeks in the U.S. for Christmas and some R&R with my Idaho friends and family. I got some much-needed relax-time, and a lot of low-pressure hang-out time with people in the Nampa area. Besides not getting to see everyone, my time there couldn't have gone any better. But overall, I quite enjoyed not having an agenda, a task list, a schedule, and any projects to work on for a short time.

Some highlights of my time in Nampa stand out - I got to see and hang out with Isaac, Rain, and Camden (Hughes) for my birthday, in which I struggled to maintain a positive score in an intense game of Dutch blitz. My cousin Ryan got engaged as well, and I took engagement photos of my brother Camden and his fiancé Habtam. Over the next week I remember lots of food, stories, card games, and an occasional burst of political discourse. I briefly reconnected with the political topics in the U.S. after a several year black-out where I only receive the highlights that make it to local news stations.

I was hoping for some snowfall, but there was none to be found the whole time I was there, except a brief dusting. The temperature didn't change much at all... just the scale - that is, I went from about 25 degrees Celsius to 25 Fahrenheit. I took a few nostalgic walks through the NNU campus, watching the sparrows and woodpeckers flitter around the cold lifeless trees, and was even surprised by a family of quail in the bushes outside the prayer chapel. The campus felt like a lifeless ghost town during Christmas week, but I amused myself imagining how the shopping cart got into the Elijah drain, and listening to alarms from abandoned dorms strain to resurrect some life out of the empty rooms.

Some other highlights were: developing film with Mark and Kelly in the fine arts darkroom, playing racquetball with my dad at the gym, visiting Jason's secret "writing spot" where we can watch the trains and traffic whiz by below without being detected, and discovering some half-a-dozen hidden geocache treasures. I got to visit the Whosoever Sunday school class that is still going strong with a sum total of probably over a millennium years of wisdom, and see some friends in the ICM International Church. And if that wasn't enough, I got to drop in on a Lord of the Rings marathon on New Years' Eve at Paul and Gracie's, and trek out to some hot springs on the banks of an icy river with my family. And right before I left, I got to attend an MAF team meeting in person, and visit with Brian Ward and his family for a short bit.

Visiting Idaho-home is a mixed-feeling experience, I should point out. It is then that I realize how much I give up to be on the mission field and live overseas, both materially and socially. From day-in to day-out it becomes easy to forget how much my friendships and family time mean to me, but going back is a jarring reminder of how much I miss out on while I'm away. I tend to focus on the exciting things I get to be a part of in Costa Rica, and I truly do thank God for the things I've been able to be a part of, but it isn't without considerable sacrifice. I try not to get wrapped up in how much I give up to be a part of God's work here, but at times I'm reminded, and Christmas time was a big reminder. Not asking for sympathy! Just stating that I have a great group of family and friends that I LOVE spending time with and miss very, very much.

Well, I skimmed over a lot that happened those two weeks, but it was a great, restful time, which I really needed before returning to the daily grind in Costa Rica. Take a look at the following photo album to see some of the other adventures of this Christmas season.

This American Life: Part Christmas (Facebook photo album)

Jesús' first Christmas

2011-12-20T19:05:00.001-08:00

This will probably be the last update I'll send directly from "the Cave" for a while. It's been an awesome 6 months here in La Carpio, full of more impacting experiences and life lessons than I have time to write out at the moment, but I'm working on a few updates to let you know some of the things God taught me while I lived here.

Right now I'm full of conflicting feelings of anticipation and severe anguish. Tomorrow I'll be on a plane headed toward Nampa to spend Christmas with my family, a luxury I haven't had for three Christmas's now. I'm excited for that, but I'm not "feeling" it, yet. What I'm "feeling" right now is the painful sadness of leaving a family whose lives I shared for several months now. Each time I get on a plane to leave Costa Rica, I am reminded that the stronger relationships and friendships I make here, the more difficult and painful I make it to leave. In a way, I thank God for allowing me to still be able to make life difficult for myself in this way.

I found a place to live when I return, though.... that's an answer to prayer. I felt an irrationally low level of stress about the fact that I did not know where I would be living when I return to Costa Rica in January. Thankfully, by God's provision what looks to be a decent living situation plopped into my lap less than a week before I left. So now I know where I'll be laying my head when I get back after Christmas. Stay posted.

Normally that would be cause for much greater celebration, but again... I'm not yet feeling it. I'm still feeling the pain of separation and leaving these 6 months behind, and not having had a chance to fully process it. That's one of the reasons I haven't posted regular updates about the experience while I've been here - there are several reasons, but that's one of them.

I'll write more as I find time, but for now I'll rehash a poem/reflection I wrote several months ago when Jesús (Hay-Seuss) was born (the youngest member of the Chilo Tribe, the family with whom I've been living). Since this is Jesús' first Christmas, I remixed the reflection to fit the occasion. The obvious starting point for this reflection was the similarity between the names Jesús and Jesus. Beyond that, you'll have to figure out the relationship between the two in the poem.

Maybe you were born into the Cave,
into a prickly bed surrounded by animals.

Maybe you were born into a world in the throes of a genocide,
when babies were considered a threat and killed before they reached 2 years old.

Maybe you were a hated foreigner in someone elses' land. Maybe there were rats there where you lay, maybe sewage outside and soldiers entering houses, Zealots in the street preaching what was best for them and a self-glorifying religion creating burdens to large for people to bear.

Maybe your birth was marked by explosions of light in the sky.

Maybe you were born to a poor family striving to make ends meet, to a young mother with no medical care, living far from home and family.

Maybe your father's hands were calloused, hard, and strong from decades of work with raw materials.

Maybe your parents were displaced for political reasons, and rejected from every door they knocked on for help.

You probably had no privacy at birth, but were surrounded by a dense throng of animals, people, noise, and activity.

I wish I could assure you everything will turn out well for you in the end. It probably won't, but it might.

You might still learn to love and live. Maybe even you will be amazed at the faith you see. maybe even you will see persistence that surprises you. Even if you know how it will all end, never stop pleading for another way.

I wish we had a better world to bring you into, but that's where we're at right now.

We've been waiting for you. Maybe you're the one here to clean up this mess. We're sorry this is what you are born into. Maybe you're the one who can save us from it.

Slumdog Millionaire

2011-11-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

Well, this update has been several months in the writing. I kept thinking that something would click and I would have a better explanation or description of the rather significant move I made back in June. However, even after 5 months it is a little difficult to put into words, but I'll give it a try...

Back in June I alluded to new living arrangements in the works; that was a euphemism for a pretty drastic change that has been several years in development. After a lot of thought, prayer, and planning, I packed up the essentials and moved in with a host family in the La Carpio squatter settlement.

Many thanks to all of you that have been praying and keeping me in your thoughts over the past few months! You never know what that could mean to a missionary serving overseas! Sometimes there's a lapse in my ability to send out timely updates, but please know that your concerns, thoughts, and prayers are always greatly appreciated. Same goes for quick comments and notes of encouragement... you never know when they arrive at just the right time.

So what has it been like living in a "squatter settlement", or a "shantytown"?

Well, one of the favorite terms I came across that describes life in place like La Carpio is "social density", which explains a lot. I went from a household of five to a household of 19, in a slightly smaller area. "Social density" occurs in the streets outside where we live as well; they are almost never empty. There are nearly always kids playing, loud conversations, music at top volume, and a cacophony of other noises right outside my room. For example, as I write this it sounds like there is a park full of kids playing tag outside my room... right outside my room. If they run hard enough into the sheet of tin they would fall into my bedroom. The weekends are an especially big party in the streets.

Some of the most basic living functions took some adjusting to as well. How many buckets ought one to use to bathe in the morning? (about 10). Where is the toilet paper kept if not in the bathroom? (each person has their own roll because if you leave it in the bathroom it will get soaked and disintegrate). How do you flush the toilet correctly? (takes skill).

I guess the next important question to address is... WHY? Well, the best explanation is that it is a learning experience, on several levels. Primarily, spiritual and life learning. God has been shaping both the desire and the possibility for this as a learning experience for me for several years now, and the time finally came to just take the next step and make it a reality. I really felt he had something for me to learn here. In the months, weeks, and days before the moving date, my writing became intensely spiritual and I felt God's presence in way I have not felt... well, ever. That is, I suppose the intensity and radical dependence on Him for each step of a drastic transition is not new. But the particular circumstances surrounding this move were different; I didn't know what to expect. Hehe, in fact, that's part of the reason I didn't write a lot about the decision to move - I didn't know if the new living arrangements would last 3 days or 3 months... or never materialize in the first place.

Well, things worked out, it has certainly been a "learning experience," and that initial intense conviction that God was with me in the first steps... is still there, not as intense as before, but still there. That's the best assurance of all. When I actually wrote this post it was during a relatively strong rain, which creates a rather soothing din on the tin roofs that sometimes lasts late into the night. To me, it's one of the best sounds in the world to sleep to.

So, as I post this update it's been nearly exactly five months. I will share more stories as I get the chance. But some of the photos, videos, and stories you see now will be from "The Chilo Tribe," as the family I live with is called. If you have trouble picturing exactly what a "squatter settlement" looks like, I recommend the following two videos, that I posted a while back, and the following two photo albums. I pick these specifically because although the area suffers from poverty as a material deficit, there is a lot more going on here and these videos show that:

Sometimes I Think Sitting on Trains

2011-10-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

How awesome is it that I can walk 10 minutes and catch a train and ride it part of the way into work? The answer is shown in this video... VERY awesome. It's cheap - less than 50 cents, comfortable, and only takes about 20 minutes longer. And it's really, REALLY fun.

The kids in the video (Jose and Carlos) are two of the kids in the family I'm now living with. Neither of them had ever taken the train, even though it passes by the valley across from our home each morning and evening blaring its horn. It's only a 10-minute walk, but we have to cross a river on a footbridge and pass through a tall grassy area that everyone is afraid of because of some crazy guy that will attack you. The family always sends Jose and Carlos along (as bodyguards?), and we go in the morning when hopefully the baddies are sleeping in. A few weeks later (just recently) I invited some other members of the family along as well and we rode the train to the end of the line (east-west).

One of the things I think about sitting on trains is how much labor, energy, and talent goes OUT of the new place I'm living, and how much garbage goes IN. You see a lot of heavy machinery and industry going on during the train ride - hydroelectric dams, high-tension powerlines, asphalt plants, sand processing factories, a corn flour factory, and busloads of people traveling out each morning, extracting a lot of good resources and work from the place I live now. Most of what goes IN to the community is garbage, literally, about 700 tons of garbage per day, since the country's largest garbage dump is located on the other end of our community. However, right across the street from the dump is where our kids get computer classes and play soccer, which is an extremely important development of talent and inspiration for their futures. I can't help but hope, though, that some of that talent gets put back into changing the future of this community.

Excuse the social commentary... just wanted to contextualize the video a bit. All the big machinery grinding around is sort of fun. I have not yet built up the courage to hop on the back of a garbage truck to ride it for a few blocks. The train ride is more my sort of fun, and I tried to capture that in the video, and be a little creative with the project. Bonus points if you can spot the signature camera shot from an English director who made some of my favorite movies, many of them featuring trains.

The short clip was edited on Cinelerra, a free multi-track non-linear video editing program for Linux, on Ubuntu Studio 10.10. I wanted to try out a new video editing program and so I tried a couple Linux ones. Cinelerra was a bit complicated and clunky, sort of like Avid (to me), but it gave me the option of multi-track editing and blending modes. Way more options than I know what to do with, but the result turned out pretty good. There were some simpler video editing programs (like Kino) which work a bit like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. Now you know what to edit your next low-budget film on :)

Speaking the word

2011-10-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been sending out a lot of updates about our team's projects here in Costa Rica, and I've been receiving a lot of cool stories from the rest of the MAF teams around the world. I am reminded that some of my team members (many of whom I've never even gotten to meet!) live and serve in some pretty challenging locations. You may get a glimpse of that if you get other publications from MAF that they periodically send out.

Two weeks ago two of my MAF Learning Technology team members came to Costa Rica to lead a training workshop for indigenous church leaders in the southern region of Costa Rica. Many of the participants were from Bribri, Cabecar, and Ngobe communities, three of the six indigenous languages that are still spoken in Costa Rica. The training was given in Spanish. The workshop includes discipleship training for church leaders who need better strategies for serving oral communities - that is, where most conversation and authority happens around conversations... not around the written text. Some of these indigenous groups have just recently received print versions of the New Testament translated in their own languages, but I think the orality approach will be a very important complement for the people these pastors serve.

It was great to have some team members come visit! On the team were Laura Macias and Regina Manley who currently work from MAF headquarters in Nampa. The photos are from Laura's blog: http://maciasinmissions.blogspot.com. Some members from my local church here attended the workshops as well.

It's also good to be reminded of the other programs and work that MAF is involved in. I did not realize this until recently but nearly all of our Latin American MAF programs are called "affiliates," which means they are owned and run by national leadership. This creates a different dynamic in how missionaries like myself from the States serve - under the logistics and supervision of locally run organizations. Anyway, there are a few interesting comments that link what we do here in Costa Rica with the rest of what MAF is up to around the world. There are always interesting updates on their website at http://www.maf.org, and our Learning Technologies team at http://maflt.org.

To Infinity, and Beyond!

2011-10-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, some of our students at the La Carpio computer lab got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to talk via Skype video to Franklin Chang, a Costa Rican-American astronaut and veteran of seven space shuttle missions. This is quite an extraordinary event for the kids. Franklin Chang is one of the more well-known Costa Rican national heroes, and they may have heard of him on the news or in their science textbooks, or even on PBS NOVAScience. Getting to hear from him face to face and ask him some questions was pretty exciting for everyone.

And it doesn't stop there. This week we've started up classes in 3d programming with a program called StarLogo TNG. It's similar to the interface the kids got familiar with in Scratch. I wish I could tell you more about the program, but I am actually learning along with the other students. The three-person teaching team is made up of some La Carpio youth that have shown some incredible aptitude for programming and other uses of computer technology. Queso and Freddy are still helping out with the classes and getting some first-rate training through Omar Dengo, a foundation that focuses on technology development in Costa Rican education.

God keeps bringing together amazing talent for this project to keep in motion. The newest member of our team, Carlos, came in with some more advanced training in network installation. The network in our computer lab was previously a rats nest of cables that resulted from a partially completed team work project. When I came, I plugged things in so that they were provisionally functional, and was hoping that another team would come sometime to finish the job, install conduit, and organize the cables. Well, that team DID come, from the fourth bus stop in La Carpio. We put the tools in Carlos' hands, and he walked through the technical process of routing cable, measuring conduit, and hiding all the messy network havoc we'd created. He showed Queso and Freddy how to create the terminals with a crimper tool, and together they tackled the job over a period of about 3 days. From time to time I went in to try and be helpful, but they didn't need me for anything except to clear out the chopped up cable. Carlos declared he didn't want to see any cables visible by the end of the job. I was impressed at how much pride he took in his work, even taking before and after photos to show to his professor at the technical school where he was training. I think the photos say it all:

It was a mixture of joy and sadness for me to watch this process. Joy because I could take my hands off the project and just watch some talented youth we'd invested in take the reins. Sadness... because I didn't get to be a part of the real fun! I just watched the process from behind a glass window and checked my e-mail, completely cut off from all the action! I guess that's part of the goal, though, but letting things move on without you (successfully!) isn't as easy as it sounds. It's difficult letting it go a little...

On Teaching and Learning

2011-08-16T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty awesome celebration. We completed an 8-week class in computer programming where a group of about 15 students got introduced to the worlds they could create and control through computer programming.

There were a lot of highlights about this class. First of all, I got to see the guys I've worked with for several years now get selected and trained professionally by a nationally renowned technology training center. They were trained to teach other students in their barrio, and thanks to some huge corporate grants, will be paid for their expertise.

A project that Queso made in class was so good that he was selected to showcase it at a press release, where he and another fellow teacher from La Carpio made it into the national news. One interesting thing about that project is that I remember his idea for the project from several years ago when I first started teaching him; it wasn't until now that he finally found a way to make it a reality... and it's a pretty fun game!

So Queso's project got selected to be showcased. Next up, our guys got complemented for the progress they'd made with the students. Willy took the reins and led most of the classes during the 8 weeks, and last week the administrators of the program came to peek in on how we were doing. They said it was the best instruction site they'd seen so far. They were very impressed. This was encouraging to hear, because the classroom that began getting a face lift back in January (see the previous post) now really looks like a classroom - all the machines are working and optimized, the walls are painted with a verse about the renewing of our minds on the wall, the projector is up and running, and the air conditioning works without flooding the classroom. Just walking into the room makes you imagine the possibilities.

I can't brag enough about our guys, they've stood out in more ways that I could have ever imagined.

In other news, our Learning Technologies Costa Rica Team shared at the church I attend two weeks ago. My boss, Mauricio, talked about changes and developments in Latin American missions. Which is quite an interesting topic, really. My ideas and experiences of missionary work have been shaped in unique ways through my three years here in Costa Rica, especially by seeing how nationally-led missionary outreaches work. In many ways we've worked through that reality as a team, and so it was cool to be able to share about the different things we do at our church. In the photo is our entire office team.

A couple of other learning experiences for me show up in the photos that I post on-line. I attended a robotics class for educators (the students were getting ahead of me and I felt like I was getting left behind). Next I attended the first Latin American conference on "Scratch", the educational programming tool we use in our classes. It was pretty interesting to be a part of the exchange with other Latin American educators. And finally, I visited a partner ministry in Honduras that hopes to create a learning lab similar to the one in La Carpio... with a few additional challenges and tweaks.

And finally, another learning experience on the horizon is the final year of the applied anthropology masters degree I'm doing on-line. This experience studying on-line has been a fascinating complement to the work and cross-cultural experience I've had here in Costa Rica. So much of it relates directly to what I am doing. As an example, you might want to check out the 15-minute oral presentation/report I created about "environmental justice" issues in La Carpio.

Technology without borders in La Carpio

2011-04-26T13:58:00.000-07:00

This is old news, but once again, good news. It sometimes takes me awhile to post new developments, for which I apologize. I posted a video about "New Horizons" in La Carpio back in February, but I never explained what was going on in the video. Here's what's up...

There have been lots of changes and some exciting new developments in La Carpio. Leaving the previous computer lab intact, we did some shuffling around to a new location with another partner ministry in La Carpio. This has been a great chance to springboard off our previous project and help out at another well-established partner ministry in the same slum. We had a group of our faithful cohort from the previous site join us in opening up the new pedagogical tools, and within a few hours they had assembled a battery-powered physical therapeutic treatment apparatus (read: robotic back massager).

One of the most exciting things was that some of our guys from the previous place, along with some guys from the new place, helped build and install some new computers. With my supervision, they essentially assembled them from scratch. They've been excited with some of the new features and made a few videos to show off some of the cool projects we've been doing.

Here is a video showing clips from the computer installation process:

Here are two more videos showing clips from the process. I will let you decide which one was made by the missionary and which one was made by one of the teenagers.

Featured in these videos are:

Freddy and Queso, our two main lab technicians from the original learning lab
The new mac-mini that the videos were edited on
Me demonstrating the new tactile feature of the mac that senses air movement across the screen and moves the mouse cursor accordingly (they think of everything!)
A few new friends from "Christ for the City", the local organization we're partnering with there.
Pretty eye candy in the Edubuntu 10.10 linux operating system

Pretty exciting and encouraging stuff! The idea is to sort of to recreate what we had in the previous computer lab, using some of the lessons we learned, and the expertise of the same guys who helped construct it. This location offers us a more controlled environment to do that (still located in the slum, but with better security). Also, please keep this new development in your prayers. We still need lots of prayers for momentum, and for the missing pieces to come together to provide a long-term benefit for the community.

On purple fingertips and other immigration issues

2011-04-10T01:22:00.000-07:00

I arrived in the house today after church to find that the entire
family was over and everyone had one purple-tipped finger. No one else
seemed to think this at all out of the ordinary, so I withheld my
confusion and after a few minutes asked about it casually in conversation.

The purple-tipped finger signals that a Peruvian has voted. Today are
the presidential elections for Peruvians, and so here in the Peruvian
household where I live there is a big hooh-hah about the current
candidates. I haven't heard anything regarding the elections until
about a week ago, but the degree of electricity in the air inspires me
to write about this fascinating occurrence. Cousins and aunts and other
relatives are all over, each bearing the purple mark on their fingers
to show that they've voted. Voting in Peru is mandatory... you are
fined something like $57 dollars if you try and perform any legal
transaction using your ID card if you haven't voted. So everyone here
in the house made sure to vote.

Some things about the elections seem the same. Over lunch there is
passionate conversation about the different qualities each candidate
brings, small concessions made for the opposition and huge claims made
for the family favorite. The conversation ranges from position on
social issues to how the candidates look and dress. The "authentic
nationality" of one of the candidates is a big issue of contention.
Some people keep switching the channel to Smallville between political
updates. Everyone in the family votes for the same person except the
rebellious teenage son, who votes for someone else for reasons that are
unclear and infuriating to the rest of the family.

There are some major differences as well, from what I am used to in
elections. First of all is the mandatory voting thing and the purple
finger. You gotta make sure it covers your fingernail and don't you
dare wash it off for at least 24 hours. Also, there are five main
candidates running with a distinct possibility of winning, not just
two. The far left candidate (not referred to by name but as the
Chavista, from Hugo Chaves) is actually far left, not just less
right. There is a woman in the running, the daughter of the infamous
Alberto Fujimori which I remember learning about in International
Relations class only because of what I thought of as a very non-Latin
American sounding name. Also, I found it interesting that when I asked
what political party the family favorite was from, they said he came
out of nowhere and was basically running his own party.

As I am surrounded by the excitement of the small Peruvian consortium
in my household, I am intrigued by the fact that in the Costa Rica
world right now, nothing is really happening. In most households right
now, it's just like any other Sunday. I was reflecting that this is one
of countless experiences I've had with other immigrant groups here in
Costa Rica - Columbian independence day, Thanksgiving dinner with U.S.
Americans are two examples. These national celebrations turn immigrant
populations into an uproar and throw everyone together to tune into
news or sports from "home," while the streets outside seem quiet and
totally unaware the need for excitement and activity.

Another thing that strikes me about these celebrations, especially with
my church (the majority of which is Columbian) that I realized early
on... that we're all immigrants in this country together. I never
thought of myself as an immigrant partly because of the stigmatization
attached to the word, which isn't really directed toward myself. I tend
to work and congregate with other immigrants, though. I remember
feeling this especially toward the beginning of my time here when I
realized that other immigrants had this valuable pool of knowledge
about how to make the best of their time here in Costa Rica while still
being foreigners without official citizenship. Other immigrants are
super resourceful about how they get around and know some of the most
beautiful, free places to spend time (at parks, cheap beaches, etc...).
They also have these huge celebrations for events from "home" that no
one else is privy to. They also have their special food products that
can only be found in their home country - regardless of whether these
special foods actually taste good or not, they evoke memories of their
childhood and home (for Peruvians this is Inca Cola [which tastes like
every other carbonated fruit drink I've tasted], chicha morada [which
is a really uniquely flavored purple corn drink], and some special
brand of Christmas fruitcake [has to be the special brand] which is not
really that appetizing.)

This is such a familiar feeling for me, though... walking in on an
explosion of activity where everyone knows there is a clear cause for
celebration and drama, yet the reason and excitement is lost to me.
Even after the reason for all the hoohah is explained to me, I still
have a hard time getting as excited about everyone else about it. It's
pretty interesting to watch, though.

Recent News

2011-03-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been far too long since my previous update! Far, far too long, I am very sorry. It hasn't been quiet, by any means. All recent news has been poured into my prayer letters, facebook posts, and picture albums. But just in case those slip by you, here is a short summary of the previous month's adventures, including links to more information about each event.

You might note as well that I've added some tabs to my blog up above. That way you can jump straight to my photo albums and videos. I've also added an interactive map, from which you can see visually some of the different places I've visited and ministered at. Clicking on some of the locations will pop up photos, videos, or more details on the location.

February 2011:
Yis Kar Du Sarat

February 18 weekend, I participated in a mission trip led by Costa Rican nationals deep into the Chirripó indigenous reserve. For over 15 years now, the leader of this missionary outreach has been visiting remote parts of her own country to train, evangelize, and encourage Christian leaders where they serve. On this trip, we left at 2 A.M. and hiked 7 hours into the reserve, forded a few rivers (the one pictured being the largest), and participated in a few evangelistic services and events with the Cabécar families. 7 hours hike also meant 7 hours in from the nearest electricity source, cell tower, and village. We also delivered gifts for a very-late (February) Christmas party. I went mainly to help with children's activities (some of the photos of children's activities are from a previous trip). Several of the kids in the photos (including Kimberly, the young girl in most of the photos) raised their hands and prayed to accept Christ, and were baptized that Sunday in the same river pictured, as were most of us non-officially while crossing back over. This is my third trip with this church group, and Alicia, the team leader, went with me to Haiti in August.

January 2011: Hidden Treasure

In January I went to camp with a group from La Carpio. It was a blast as always, and this year we had a batch of lots of new kids. One of our guys, Freddy, mixed together these two videos:

Check out two video slideshows I made during December - one when my cousin Mindy visited and another for Christmas and New Year's celebrations (lots of fireworks). Oh, and I turned 27.

Familiar Faces and Places

2010-10-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Joe, the painter who forever mummified small lizards and spiders by coating them with a layer of paint in the doorjambs of our house, is not dead. This is in direct denial of the most recent report I'd received about him, in which I was notified that he could not be found after the earthquake and was assumed dead. Apparently everyone had been notified that he'd suddenly shown up healthy and alive. Except me... I was totally unaware of this. So when Joe popped his head into the library on the Nazarene campus where I'd grown up to briefly greet me, I pretty much sat there in shock with my eyes watering after he left and for a lack of better ideas of how to respond when dead people show up to shake your hand. Joe has always been one of the most cheerful people I know. I went back to working on the computers in the library.

I got to see lots of familiar faces on the Nazarene campus, including Mari who now called me "good man" instead of "good boy." The yard outside our house where I'd caught a tarantula hawk for a bug collection in science class was now speckled by a few tents that students were currently living in. Yvette, who used to help us around the house, was still around, and was very excited to see me. Thankfully, Edwidge gave me a ride back to Delmas 75. I had no way of getting myself around, so I'd been hitching rides, walking, and taking toptops all week. He took me out to lunch in our old Montero, which apparently he'd slept in every night for a month after the earthquake.

I got to stay with my good friends (and now coworkers) the Williams. I met new members of the MAF team working there in Haiti, including Todd and Jennifer Edgerton who had us over for a delicious meal one night. Everyone has their earthquake story... many of which include begin with... "man, if it had happened just a few minutes earlier...", or "if I hadn't picked the kids up early from school like I usually do..."

a few years ago

a few weeks ago

One of the major highlights for me was getting to ride along on an MAF flight up to Anse Rouge to visit my classmate Judy. Apparently MAF employees are regularly granted the opportunity to ride along on training flights in Nampa, but no one had notified me of this well-kept secret, so this was my first chance to fly MAF since I'd joined... well, for the first time in over a decade, really. Seeing the land of Haiti drift below me was a surreal experience. Such a beautiful country. I only got a few minutes to catch up with Judy and meet her beautiful little girl, Ani, but I was lucky to make it up there at all. The 11-hour trip was only 43 minutes by plane. Judy has a blog up about little Ani's adventures, and Jason Krul, the pilot who took me up to Anse Rouge, has some interesting stories on his blog as well.

on course for Anse Rouge

Jason doing all the piloting and me getting to wear the headset.

Ani!

and Judy!

I got to see my old school, QCS, which is looking great. Some teachers and friends I remember were still around. The computer lab was awesome, well-equipped with 25 classroom computers and flat screen monitors, all running Edubuntu, which was of particular interest to me because I'm a nerd and into that sort of thing. I walked home with Kristie Mattenley to see Shane and the fam again (he was my youth pastor from back in the day).

QCS's outside wall covered with Wyclef Jean slogans.
I wonder which teacher is such an avid supporter

One of my main reasons for visiting was to check in on a project MAF has had with the STEP seminary in Bolosse for the past few years. STEP has extension courses in workbook format for a few pastoral students outside the city. We've been working with them to get their extension courses into a digital format so they'd be more easier to distribute, more accessible for those with computers and an internet connection, and cheaper to produce. I explained once in my blog why I feel committed to working in educational solutions in countries like Haiti. You can read the article I wrote here. I was wrestling with this sense of urgency I feel to meet the needs of country's afflicted by natural disasters, poverty, and political unrest. It is tempting to me to be drawn more the "disaster response" approach, but on further reflection I concluded that perhaps for me, education is the right field to be in. Situations like Haiti has are not brought on in one fell swoop, and they are not solved in one frenzied stinger operation either. Not at all am I trying to belittle the tragic reality of the earthquake in January, nor discredit groups that were able to make short-term relief trips. But 6 months after most of these groups have left, I see the schools, seminaries, churches, Haitian businesses, and orphanages that are in it for the long haul, working not just for a temporary balm but training Haitian leaders to direct the future of their country, I am encouraged. Even as you read this entry, be sure to keep Haiti's November elections in your prayers. It encourages me to see seminaries like STEP and STNH investing in people as long-term responses to the corrosive oppressiveness that weighs Haiti down. It is good to be a part of that solution, as well.

I went to Haiti quite uncertain as to whether I would come back encouraged or with a feeling of despair. Let me just share a few thoughts on that topic. Firstly, the resolute urgency with which Haitian Christians and foreign missionaries serving there plead for God's intercession and guidance is quite moving. People are committed and working for things to improve. It is unclear about how that will happen, however. The second thing I noted was that many foreigners in Haiti trying to help are on the verge of throwing in the towel. I think it is easy for a visitor to leave Haiti with a burden of despair and hopelessness, and I began to get a feel for that from many of the ex patriot workers in Haiti. However, despair is certainly not the sentiment I got from any of the Haitians I talked with. I finally concluded with a sweeping generalization, which I normally try to avoid. In this case, though, I concluded that despair and hopelessness is not a native Haitian trait. If anything it is imported from the outside; it is far more prevalent among foreigners working in Haiti. We ought to be careful not to spread this particular ideology in other countries we work in.

I left with a heavy heart for the tragedies Haiti faces and the challenges for its future. But I also left with the words of hope from many of my conversations and visits with Haitian friends. I realize how pathetic and superficial my faith is when I talk with people in Haiti, and the best I can manage is to listen and learn from what they say, as people who have lived it in a way I will probably never know. I think the video I posted in the previous week's reflection sort of expresses that.

Marc and me

Pernier falls

Haiti has at least two wonderful well-kept secrets that remain mostly hidden from foreigners coming expecting a trauma tour. Marc Williams took me to visit a feeding program he helps at and introduced me to some of the kids he's gotten to know there. Children have always had a way of piercing through all the pretentious walls I can put up and making all my years of training and formal education seem quite trivial. The kids in Haiti, with their carefree playing, stark honesty about both the good and the bad, and determined earnestness, are one of Haiti's best kept secrets. Another secret carefully hidden from most visitors is the land. Flying up to Anse Rouge at a lower altitude and seeing the coast and mountains stretched out before me, speckled with small huts and a few trees, was an awesome experience. And the day before I left, I hiked with Marc and his friends up a chain of waterfalls less than 30 minutes from where I used to live. I lived in Haiti for 9 years before Edwidge showed me these waterfalls that were buried in the mountains so close to our home. Many people in Haiti have never even seen these waterfalls, and have no idea they are so close to where people live. By the time the water from these waterfalls crosses the road, it is a gully-wash spreading out rocks, trash, and soapy muck onto the highway (in beautiful multi-color example of a "delta formation" if you payed attention in geography class). But if you follow the stream up past where people are washing their clothes and bathing, up past where there is a congestion of trash and pollution, you come to parts of the valley that are clean, peaceful, and serene. It is in these places that you can get a glimpse of what Haitians know about their country that few of us ever get to see.

Stories from Haiti - Week 1

2010-10-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

I got back from Haiti exactly one month ago. Curious at all as to how the trip went?

It was quite an eventful month, with two weeks in Nampa and two in Haiti. Lots of unexpected small pleasures; lots of huge blessings. Many unexpected tragedies, too; and many big challenges. It's hard not to speak in generalities, because there were so many things that impacted me on this trip. Haiti, and my relation to it, has always been one of the two biggest mysteries in my life - and certainly the most difficult to articulate. Finding words, images, and stories to try and communicate across the void that separates people's illusions about Haiti from the reality of living there has all but completely caused me to nearly give up on the whole matter. For many years I was able to tuck Haiti neatly away in my memory, like a problem I didn't want to deal with that I thought would go away. Much like we all tuck it away for long periods of time before the opportunity for sensationalist news coverage comes up, or the chance to use Haiti as supporting evidence for some absurd point we're trying to make. Haiti, though, keeps resurfacing, and as one friend mentioned to me... for some of us, things do not go back to normal, and Haiti is not forgotten.

(click here for more photos from the trip)

From the very beginning of the trip - gate E7 at Miami International Airport, I had one of the rarest feelings I've ever had: certainty. As I sat at gate E7 after a few short hours of rest on the floor at Gate E6, and heard the familiar flow of Haitian Creole rippling back and forth between passengers, punctuated by "oh oh"'s and "mezanmi!"'s, all the fear and tension that had been building up for months totally melted away. I had the rare conviction that everything was right. I was going home.

Upon landing and joining the medical team who'd arrived the day before from Costa Rica with 150 kgs of medicines in suitcases, I was promptly immersed in the feeling I am far more familiar with: chaos and sheer confusion. This continued for several hours until I gradually pieced together what was happening and what I was supposed to be doing. I arrived at 8 AM on Sunday morning, and was immediately whisked into a nearby church service in a Haitian congregation. Once I'd given up on figuring things out and submitted myself to going along with the worship, things seemed uncannily peaceful.

Over the course of the week with the medical team, we would see over 432 patients and the pastoral team shared the gospel in small groups of ten to about 150 people. We played soccer with a rough bunch from a nearby tent city as U.N. schnooks and American Airline flights screamed over our heads. They solidly beat us and won the soccer ball we promised them. The medical consultations and children's activities we did during the week went quite smoothly.

My first impression was that not much had changed. It still looked and felt like the Haiti I remembered, littered with a little more rubble and with the addition of the tent cities. The streets were still filled with familiar energy and shouts and smells and sounds, the bustle of marchans and the sing-song chorus of young guys selling papitas and bags of water. Life seemed to have returned to normalcy with surprising speed. The photo I took below is the image that sticks in my mind. As I talked with these three kids they casually hopped up to sit on the roof of a house that had been totally pancaked by the earthquake. The mangled buildings, the rubble, the ubiquitous tent cities... all this is now a part of the landscape. Life goes on. It's the "new normal."

But what about all that had been lost? I asked our translator this question, and with a flip of his hand he dismissed it all. "Vanity," he told me, "like the Bible says." None of this will stick around anyway. I heard a lot of things like that during the week that quite frankly, my faith is far too small to handle.

Thursday night, after I'd talked with the kids sitting on the rooftop now 3 feet off the ground, we returned from Leogane late in the day through Carrefour. On the way back we got into quite a fix. A torrential downpour opened up as we passed through Carrefour in the dark. The rain was coming in torrents; we couldn't see a thing, and the road had turned into a riverbed with a layer of floating trash swirling earily around our bus, lit by periodic blasts of lightning. Now, our bus had already broken down three times, and at this point the water level was nearly up to the floorboards. We were pretty much marooned in the center of a lake of reeking sewage, in one of the most dangerous parts of the city at night. The doctor was concerned about infections from all the pollution and sewage steadily rising, and the pastoral team decided we were under a spiritual attack, and started loudly claiming authority over the situation. I figured this was just a consequence of trying to drive through Carrefour too late at night in a downpour. Some people had the bright idea to sing, which had a much more calming effect on my nerves than the shouting. The driver turned back and found a higher road. Through the foggy windows I could barely make out the skeletal corpse of the national palace looming through the sheets of rain, lit ominously from below with a gaping hole in its center.

We made it back to the house safely, although much later because of the huge detour we'd taken. That was actually the only time all week that it rained. I have no doubt God was watching over us on that trip.

I learned something else on that trip to Leogane. Leogane is where the earthquake epicenter was, and the drive out there was one long stretch of total carnage. Rubble, gangly re-bar, dust, and a proliferation of tarps, for miles on end. During the day we did rural consultations and some leadership training with a church in that area. On our way out there, I quickly grew weary of photo after photo of carnage and destruction. At one point we crossed a large bridge and the pastor in front of me grabbed my arm and pointed at the riverbed below. "Look at all that pollution," he shook his head. "Get a picture of that." He started snapping photos.

I found something much more interesting going on in the seat next to me. The Haitian translator beside me and a pastor on the team who'd made it her goal to pray for each of our translators was praying along with him as he set some things right in his life. Had I been so focused on the polluted river and rubble flashing past the window, I might not have gotten to see this rather significant moment in Junior's life.

There are so many more stories from that first week - what it was like being a "minority" on a team of Costa Ricans, what it was like hearing about Haiti from their perspective, what it was like visiting a well-organized tent city and finding God there, sweltering in the heat of one of the tents. 60 pages worth of stories, in fact, which I later condensed to 20, then 7 for a formal trip report, and finally... to what you're reading now. I'll leave it at that, though, and write me if you want to know more. And on to part two...

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.

2010-07-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I've written any updates here, but if you've been following the photos I post on facebook, there is no shortage of adventurous news. However, let me re-post some old news here so that if you haven't heard from me for a while, you'll know what's been going on these days.

July 8-11 - La Montaña Christian Camps
Two weeks ago I joined the La Carpio kids once again for summer camp. A weekend full of fun activities, exciting games, muddy relay games, wet-cold clothes, and vibrant worship. We had a full media team of apprentice photographers at work, which means this year we will see everything from the kids' own perspective through the photos and video they took.

July 2-4 - 4 hour walk to church
The weekend before that I was invited along to help with children's activities at a Cabécar church located four hours inside of an indigenous reserve. We forded four tributaries and crossed the Chirripó river in a little contraption suspended on a cable, carrying in most everything we needed for the weekend. Church services were held by candlelight at night, as no public electricity or water reaches this far in. I'd learned a little about the Cabécar people by reading and talking to other missionaries, but to spend a few days with them was really fascinating. They taught me a few words in Cabécar but I forgot most of them... except for "Basanyo"... which means - "Smile!"

May 21 - No Artificial Ingredients
My cousin Mindy came to visit. We got off to a rough start as the beach was rainy and cold, and Mindy broke her toe while skipping gleefully down the shoreline. The rest of the time went pretty well, though, and we got to see Arenal blow out ash and "pyroclasts" (I paid attention in Earth science class) at one of its most active times of late. I'm not sure if Costa Rica's claim to be the Central American Switzerland convinced Mindy since she's actually traveled through Switzerland, but we did see some very beautiful places, including the feeding of the Jaguar and Ocelot at La Paz Waterfall gardens. This was also the inauguration voyage of Finky, my new mode of transportation that I'm hoping will get me in (and out!) of the more remote destinations of Costa Rica.

May 1 - 40 teenagers. 2 bathrooms. No electricity or water.
Last year I titled an entry about our youth group mission trip to Abangaritos: 40 teenagers. 1 bathroom. Well this year we had twice as many bathrooms. But no electricity or water the first day. A tree fell on a branch and cut power to the entire town, leaving us to shower and fill the toilets with water from barrels. It made for an interesting church service as well, by flashlight and candlelight. Every time I am privileged to come along on one of these trips, I experience something new and unexpected... and this trip was full of firsts as well. One of these was the chance to give a hand-crank powered audio player with the Spanish New Testament to a woman who is unable to read.

And more...
Hikes to holy places, a visit to fellow missionaries in the Cabécar area, spotting a blue-crowned motmot, stalking the resplendent quetzal, trying to cross the country in one day to catch the sunrise on the Atlantic coast and the sunset on the Pacific side (only to be foiled by a downpour that washed out the road under a bridge and delayed us several hours), our play-by-play update of an indoor soccer tournament in La Carpio, and my surprise at finding a Bondi-blue Mac in La Carpio. All these great adventures and more are in my facebook photo albums. Or, you can check them out from the new photo tab link above.

La Carpio 2.0

2010-04-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Last Friday was a landmark day in La Cueva de La Carpio! A year and a half after the computer lab was donated, the learning lab is now networked, connected to the internet, and climate controlled! This was a big step, opening a whole digital landscape of opportunities for the community. Friday we did a soft launch, and the room was full of teenagers late into the night as people opened their first e-mail addresses and started up facebook accounts. Antonio started us off with the first facebook status update from our newly uplinked computers. Jose eagerly sent me his first e-mail and started adding language student friends on facebook. Manolo and Roberto found Lalo's photo albums on Picasa and relived recent memories of soccer games and camp.
It was exciting to watch. A day of many firsts. But we discovered we were already on-line celebrities. For GOOD things! We found pictures of ourselves at camp, pictures of soccer victories, videos we'd created, programs we'd designed that were now shared with the world. A simple Google search will bring up lots of information about La Carpio... not all of it positive. But we were too busy seeing and reliving a bunch of fun memories to sift through all the "suceso" news reports. It was cool to see what our digital self-image had become... what our online identity was before our little computer lab ever crossed the digital divide. Our history was written on blogs and in Facebook photo albums of people who'd visited us. Our photos, videos, and programs we'd created in computer class preceded us on-line, and it was like opening a time capsule to relive those memories and open those projects again.

Our little computer lab can still be a place where we learn and create and explore new worlds. Some of us are at the point where we can probably administer the lab and repair the computers if they break. The rest of the community can use the computers now, too. In fact, we will probably be able to cover our operating costs and even put some money toward soccer camps.

Who knows where it will go from here! Things have changed a lot since these machines first got here a year and a half ago. We are thanking God for each new miracle along the way. Let's see where he takes us next.

The Setup

In August 2008, 12 computers were donated to help kids learn in a "different" way, with more interaction and visual stimulation. The computers were maintained as time and extra help was available, but as time went on many became infested with viruses which were causing obnoxious distractions and inhibiting the computers' performance. Just to give you a picture of the situation, I accumulated 598 infections of 2 strains of virus on one flash drive, from one computer. This would occur every time I used a flash drive to open a file for teaching a class.

Personal record: 598 virii on one flash drive

But hey, it's not a hopeless cause. Just gotta work with it. By July 2009, we had all 10 computers in the lab up and running, reinstalled from the ground up with fresh AV protection. The desktop was redesigned to give priority access to educational games and office utilities, but we left the old games intact. The educational games were mixed in with the others, so kids would start into them before they knew they were not supposed to like them. That was the end of "Phase 1". Each computer had to be redesigned from the bottom up each time, and if there were any problems or I needed to install or update something, it had to wait a week so I could return to the office and download what I needed from the internet.

Dissecting a program in Scratch

Photoshop class project

In August we completed the second phase in the process by installing a 16 port switch and connecting each computer to it. With the computers networked it was FAR easier to teach classes by sharing a folder from the server computer. Not only that, I came across a cool open-source application called iTalc, which allowed the server computer to control the rest of the computers, lock the screens and keyboards for lecture parts of the lesson, and even share the teacher screen to the rest of the classroom to guide them through the assignment. This was great for our classes, and even helped make it possible for fellow missionary friends Brian and Amanda Blalock to come teach Photoshop and art classes. For more information on computer classes, you can read the blog entry I posted back in August.

Brian and Amanda help out in a Photoshop class

There was no router, so each computer had manually assigned IP addresses. The manual IP addressing might seem like an unnecessary technical complication, but it was kind of cool because in December we helped out a fellow ministry at la quinta parada (5th bus stop) down by the landfill. Christ for City's Nuevos Horizontes has a similar setup with about 10 computers. They even had a/c and cabling... just lacked a router. Another fellow missionary (Henry Happ with reachGlobal) donated a router and the two of us went with about four guys from la cuarta parada (the 4th bus stop) to take part in hooking up their new network. My boss Mauricio came along as well so we could survey possibilities I mention this to point out several cool things... firstly, from the very beginning we've had a lot of groups working together to move things forward. I'm a big fan of this, as I think working together glorifies God. And most groups working in La Carpio are aware that each organization seems to do their own thing. So it was cool to have some cross-pollination going on. For the kids as well... I realized this was the first time some of them had been over in this part of their barrio. The second reason this is cool is because these kids are getting technical insight into technical aspects of computers that will give them a head start if that's a career they will chose to pursue.

Lalo and Mauricio discuss ideas for ways to get Internet into the valley. Turns out it was simpler than we thought.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

When the computers came back from their "hiatus" over the Christmas season, only about 5 of the 12 booted up. It had been six months since we'd freshly installed each one, and clutter was beginning to build up. But this time I was ready - I'd created a custom image on one of the machines that I hoped would transfer to all the others. Basically I created a cookie cutter to imprint the same settings on each machine, instead of rebuilding each one from the ground up. Thank you NNU technical response center training. Thankfully, it loaded correctly on 9 of the machines, which helped streamline the installation process. And yet, it still took me about a month to get all the machines up and running! Why?

With the time I saved on tedious installation settings, I now had more time to help the kids get the computer up and running. First we cracked open the cases and started diagnosing POST errors by swapping around memory chips and broken hard drives. Next, we walked through the re-imaging process by booting up onto a rescue disk and reimaging the computer with a fresh installation from a flash drive. Again, something that wouldn't take me much time, but this time I showed a few kids how to do it and then made them do the next one. By the end of those few weeks, some of them had replaced broken hard drives and completely reloaded an operating system. "There are other people here who have their own computers, aren't there?" I asked them. "You can fix them now, can't you?" "Yeah, but I can charge them," Jose told me. "Sure, if you want." He and Walter and Cesar helped me apply custom network settings on each computer after we'd re-imaged them.
As I write this I realize it sounds like every step of the process fit into a bigger picture. That's the benefit of looking back on everything, to see how things fit into place. But the reality is that a ton of time was spent on things that fizzled and never went anywhere. The custom network settings were one of those things, along with lots of documentation and budget proposals I wrote up that never turned up anything. I could rewrite this article and recount every failure and dead-end rabbit-trail we pursued, and it wouldn't sound the same. At several points along the way, however, reminders of how little had been accomplished became very discouraging. Walking back into the lab with only 5 of 12 machines working after Christmas break was one of those times.

Cadorsil and the ladies making wooden jewelry

At this point I we had a lot of exciting ideas for the computer lab, but everything was in limbo. I started to close off to new ideas and started thinking... I'll believe it when I see it. For the past few months, fellow language student Cadorsil had been doing a jewelry/discipleship class with some of the ladies in the area. She mentioned the possibility of our class creating a webpage to sell some of the jewelry on-line. It was a great idea, but I couldn't see how that would happen without internet connectivity. A few weeks later we visited ICE, the telecommunications company, about the possibility of getting DSL or cable. There was a huge waiting list and both agents we talked to politely explained the danger of sending technicians into the area. Cable internet was a no-go. And WiMax was unlikely because our building was kind of in a valley/hole, and even cell phones have problems at that level.

Manolo and Luis Carlos help Kevin and Marvin build the new entrance

A team came down from Texas seal off the room and make a new entrance more accessible to the public. All this was in hopes that somehow internet connectivity would be possible, which we really had no idea about. The team sealed off the room, built a new entrance, and installed an air conditioning unit in the lab. Sounds like a good idea, because climate controlled cool air and less dust would help prevent the type of problems we'd been having with hard drive failures. Smart guys who write huge books about globalism and the digital revolution often praise the ability of technology to be a leveling factor that gives anyone a chance. Maybe so, but the fact still remains that computers are not manufactured or designed to work in urban slums of the tropics, with heat, dust, intermittent electricity, and rough usage. You have to build up an entirely foreign, contrived environment around the computer just for it to work. Needless to say, the week after the team left the room was now sealed off like a greenhouse, and the a/c was not working. Lalo called the store where he bought the a/c unit and they refused to send technicians down into "that area" to look at it.
By Friday, March 6, everything changed. With the help of a friend of a friend of a friend, Lalo found a guy in La Carpio who worked on air conditioners. He immediately identified the problem and juiced up the a/c. Oh blessed arctic air, pushing the tendrils of heat out the ceiling of our computer greenhouse classroom. Friday morning the WiMax technicians went down with Lalo to see about the possibility of installing internet. They took one look up at the mountains surrounding San Jose and flicked their hand... no problem. The WiMax towers had perfect line of sight.
By Friday night, we had air conditioning, a sealed-off room with a special entrance, and internet connectivity. Let the fun begin.

Lalo's March 6 update letter

Speaking of miracles, today was a great day in La Carpio. It has been a dream/stretch goal for a long time to have internet in our computer lab. I wanted cable, but my experience with Amnet was more like Amnot. WiMax was our Hail Mary. We scored and everyone wins! Early this morning, we had our test/installation. I was worried, as WiMAX is wireless RF and we are in a hole. When the techs showed up they saw direct line of sight with the antennas on the mountain. I wish I had thought of that. In La Carpio, you can look down and see desolation or you can look up and see a thousand shades of mountain green cutting through a big blue sky. Psalm 19 “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of his hands.” Today was our first day ever of air conditioned internet. Expect new friends on the facebook. If you plan to come see us and have your own device, try WiFi in our kitchen and I’ll treat you to a cup of coffee.

Praise the Lord and Install the Internet Filter

I still wouldn't believe it until I saw it. We swung by an electronics store and bought a router to simplify the networking process, rendering all our tedious IP addressing exercises pointless.
I walked through our new entrance into a burst of cool air and a new small box that was now our portal to the world wide web. In about 15 minutes we had the first computer hooked up from our learning bunker, and Antonio announced La Carpio connectivity to the world by updating his facebook status. In about an hour we had the connection split between the five computers we had working. Our familiar faces wanted to give the new internet a test drive. There were a lot of firsts that Friday night that carried over into the next week. Here are some of the things that made an impression on me:
The first thing everyone ran into was that there was no homepage. No one knew what to do. So people opened up their internet browser, and then sat there. So, what do we do? How do I find friends? Music? Pictures? Games? How do I make a webpage? How do I get an e-mail address?
To our horror, some people went back to playing the old video games that were on the computer. "Do you realize that we have the INTERNET?" "So... what's it for?" I am reminded of my favorite explanation of the world wide web. A place where basically nothing happens.

First night with A/C and internet connectivity

We are valued

"How does any of this digital landscape relate to me?" One of the first things the kids did was start checking out Lalo's blogs and photo albums. They found photos dating back several years of soccer games, camps, mission trips, fun in the neighborhood. They found tons of photos of themselves doing fun things. You wouldn't think those photos came from a slum by the garbage dump from reading Lalo's blogs or looking at the photos some of the language students have posted.

Photos other people take of your neighboorhood

Most media reports coming out of La Carpio are all bad news. Academic articles do a better job trying to expose the inequity, but often end up repeating the same mantra as the media and objectifying and "issuizing" the community. The kids discovered their on-line identity was exciting and fun. The pictures and videos and fun memories were an awesome alternative to the news reports and statistics "describing" La Carpio.

Beloved Nelson, 1992-2009

"What's this say?" Cesar asks me. "Amado Nelson, 1992-2009", I translate. Beloved Nelson, 1992-2009 commemorates the life of Nelson under a picture of his smiling face. Nelson was a friend and relative of many of the guys first checking out Lalo's blog that night. He was gunned down the week before last Christmas. The local newspaper dedicated him a short paragraph in the "suceso" section. But Nelson's smiling face had a long history on Lalo's blog before he was killed. There were a lot of people that knew his name and were praying for him. And I think maybe Cesar understood that. His picture is up there too.

We are published

Not only did they see pictures of themselves posted on-line. They also saw their handiwork. Videos they'd created in computer class from camp in July. Photos they took at camp.

Jorgito asks Scratch to solve a riddle

Jocelin taking photos at camp

The programs we made in computer class in the "Scratch" program were posted on the MIT Scratch community website 6 months ago. Queso listens to his voice he recorded into one of the projects and cracks up at how high-pitched it was before it changed. These kids' projects had already become part of a worldwide programming forum for kids and students using the "Scratch" software. Scratch has an option to upload programs directly to the web, but I had deleted it months ago. That next Monday we went through and re-enabled the "Share" option, and a few kids uploaded their projects straight to the web.

We are still learning

"How do I find girls?" is one of the first questions I'm asked. I don't know if he means to chat with or to look at, but either way the question makes me uneasy. Most teaching about the internet and on-line safety should take place in the home. For several reasons, this is not going to happen. Lots of these kids are educated in things far beyond what their parents ever got a chance to learn about. We've gotta help with some of those first steps on-line. And we are still learning as well.
On Monday I installed one of the newest and most interesting filtering techniques I've seen - opendns. Everything on our network is filtered at the router by the DNS server, by peer-reviewed domain-name filtering. I like it because it's complicated... if you don't understand how that works, don't worry about it. If one of them figures out a way around it, I won't be frustrated; I'll be impressed. Also, sites are reviewed and blocked by real people and not keywords. And finally, the filtering process happens on computers that aren't ours, so are thinly-stretched processors don't take more of a hit. I already caught someone run into it. On accident, I'm sure.
Like I said, we're still learning as well. Next week the lab will convert into a small business model and try to cover its own costs, with some left over for soccer camps. Some of the teenagers can have a pretty cush job administering the lab - free internet, pay, and A/C? What more could you want? If the kids pay 300 colones ($.60) to rent a video game console down the road for an hour, maybe we can offer a better alternative here.

We're all doing something new

That first night a handful of guys set up their first e-mail addresses and facebook accounts. They found people they knew on-line - language students, missionaries, and added them as friends. They got tagged in photos. They learned how to chat. They wrote messages on people's walls. Manolo and Randall wrote thank-you notes on the walls of Stateside people who'd given to help them go to soccer camp. Jose and Cesar begged me to show them how to make a webpage, so we started a La Carpio blog and made our first webpages.
In very little ways, we took a few measures to try and give this Internet Café a positive twist. The internet filter is one way. Virus scanners and working computers is another way. But beyond that, each computer has a really cool screensaver with Bible verses in Spanish on a subtly animated background. A Spanish Bible verse pops up every 10 minutes (OK, I like the idea of that but I realize it might get annoying pretty quick). Each computer has e-Sword Bible software installed with a less cryptic name and a few versions of Spanish Bibles. There are typing lessons, educational games, art games, and office tools.

Looking at camp photos on their own computer

And whatsmore, I'm experimenting with different ways to use customized local art and input. After seeing the difficulty people had not knowing where to go from a blank homepage, I created a custom homepage, with links to suggested websites, tutorials, Costa Rican immigration information, where to open a new e-mail account, and a bunch of the photos, videos, and projects people have uploaded from the community. This is all housed locally on a WAMP server on the administrator's computer. The webpage also has an integrated forum so people logging on can post comments and anything they find important (basically like a facebook wall for the Internet café). Hopefully this will tap into some of the creativity the community has and give them a way to voice that and share it.
This is the first time I've watched a computer lab make the shift from being a black hole that money is thrown into to earning back some money to cover its costs. That, plus tight integration and service for the community seems like a pretty good idea. I'm excited to see how it goes.

10 Weeks since the Haiti Earthquake

2010-03-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

I have continued getting regular updates from friends and coworkers still in Haiti. The struggle in Haiti is far from over... it doesn't end when the news cameras leave, just as it certainly didn't start when they got there. The challenges facing us were there before the earthquake as well.

I'd like to share this update verbatim as a general review of some of the work MAF has been doing there. If I had enough emotional energy or clarity of thought to include personal thoughts I would, but those are lacking at the moment. Please keep the Haitian people, the relief workers, and all those outside the country missing their home in your prayers. And please pray for me as well.

[--- Beginning of MAF update -----

On January 12th of this year, Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake devastated the capital city with the epicenter was just 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince. The quake’s devastation was the magnitude of the 2004 tsunami, but with very localized damage. Therefore, as you know, most of the deaths and destruction took place there in the capital.

Yet, as time has passed, we see now how many of the remote communities around Haiti are also affected. Not only were these villages dependent on Port-au-Prince for their food supplies, an estimated 1.5 million Haitian people were left homeless following the earthquake. Camps of the homeless have sprung up everywhere. Many Port-au-Prince victims who lost their homes went to stay with equally poor relatives living in remote towns. Where there once was a family of five in a home, there are now 20 people. Towns that had 5,000 people now have 20,000, but these towns don't have more provisions than they had for the 5,000.

Most Haitians eat only one meal a day. Food boxes that MAF is transporting to these outlying areas contain humanitarian ration MREs (meals ready to eat). These high-calorie meals typically consist of rice and beans, peanut butter and crackers, and fruit slices, all providing a person with a day's worth of nutrition and energy.

Challenges abound. Haiti is no longer daily front-page news, which means the public won't read about the ongoing misery that still needs millions of donor dollars toward rebuilding efforts. And everyday tragedies still hit. On March 1, a volunteer nurse from a U.S. Christian humanitarian ministry died of a heart attack. MAF helped arrange for his body to be flown back to the United States. Then, this was one report this month from our MAF worker there:

As I tried to recall so much of what has transpired this past week…I could think of flagging down some doctors from Miami hospital and then somewhat commandeering an airport security truck to transport them to the tarmac. Upon arrival of the Samaritan Air R44 helicopter I could see that the situation was terrible. There were three small babies and one of them had already gone to be with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As they tried to resuscitate this little one the other two struggled to hang onto life. Before the week was out yet another one of the triplets had joined its sibling in Heaven.

We are still flying our 5 small airplanes and the families of our pilots are still under temporary relocation for at least another couple of months. In the meantime, let’s not cease praying for Haiti and for God’s will to be done and His name to be praised.

I’ll leave you with a touching “thank you” note we received:

MAF

I am not sure if this e-mail will get to the people that I am intending it to but I am going to give it a try. I am an anethesiologists that practices in Southern California. I was asked to go on a missions trip to Haiti after the earthquake because they were very desparate [sic} for anethesiologists [sic]. When we went to Haiti the MAF was not flying and we had to drive from the Cap Haitian airport to Hinge. At the time I was happy that the MAF was not flying because I was deathly afraid of small airplanes. We did several surgeries and saw a lot of sad things. We left Hinge on Jan 27th and at that time the MAF was flying again. When the pilots landed to pick us up in Hinge and fly us to Cap Haitian I was overwhelmed with feelings. The first thing the pilots did was shake our hands and say to us," God bless you guys". I am a grown man but the spirit of God welled up so high in me that I felt like crying. Your pilots were so kind, professional, and filled with the holy spirit that I literally had no fears to fly in their plane.

I had a great time in Haiti helping the injured people and doing my best to spread the word of God. But, when people ask me what impacted my heart the most I tell them about how awesome the MAF team was. You have a great ministry and my God bless you.

Sincerely,

Paul Phelps MD

---- End of MAF update -----]

Links to other groups I know still on the ground, doing what they do in Haiti:

La Carpio 2.0

2010-03-11T11:36:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was a landmark day in La Cueva de La Carpio! A year and a half after the computer lab was donated, the learning lab is now networked, connected to the internet, and climate controlled! This was a big step, opening a whole digital landscape of opportunities for the community. Friday we did a soft launch, and the room was full of teenagers late into the night as people opened their first e-mail addresses and started up facebook accounts. Antonio started us off with the first facebook status update from our newly uplinked computers. Jose eagerly sent me his first e-mail and started adding language student friends on facebook. Manolo and Roberto found Lalo's photo albums on Picasa and relived recent memories of soccer games and camp.

It was exciting to watch. A day of many firsts. But we discovered we were already on-line celebrities. For GOOD things! We found pictures of ourselves at camp, pictures of soccer victories, videos we'd created, programs we'd designed that were now shared with the world. A simple Google search will bring up lots of information about La Carpio... not all of it positive. But we were too busy seeing and reliving a bunch of fun memories to sift through all the "suceso" news reports. It was cool to see what our digital self-image had become... what our online identity was before our little computer lab ever crossed the digital divide. Our history was written on blogs and in Facebook photo albums of people who'd visited us. Our photos, videos, and programs we'd created in computer class preceded us on-line, and it was like opening a time capsule to relive those memories and open those projects again.

Our little computer lab can still be a place where we learn and create and explore new worlds. Some of us are at the point where we can probably administer the lab and repair the computers if they break. The rest of the community can use the computers now, too. In fact, we will probably be able to cover our operating costs and even put some money toward soccer camps.

Who knows where it will go from here! Things have changed a lot since these machines first got here a year and a half ago. We are thanking God for each new miracle along the way. Let's see where he takes us next.

Posted from el aula de La Carpio

1 month after

2010-02-16T06:06:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Well as one month has passed since the earthquake in Haiti, news reports are going to begin tapering off, but the restoration work carries on. Not only that, the recent news I've gotten from people still working in the country has been quite positive. Last weekend, at the one-month mark, the president called for prayer and fasting, and a considerable amount of worship rose up to heaven during those days. The attached photo is of people worshiping in the streets.

I hope you've been able to keep following the news coming out of Haiti. I have not had time to post everything I come across, but I've been pouring over reports nearly every day. MAF is still very actively involved, as well as the QCS school and a number of friends and coworkers there. To anyone who was able to give, and pray, THANK you so much! Below I've attached a summary of the supplies that were sent by the Nampa/Treasure Valley area through MAF and Hands of Hope:

Thank you for your partnership in collecting relief supplies to send to Haiti!

One week after the earthquake in Haiti the idea was proposed to invite the people of the Treasure Valley in Idaho to collect and deliver relief supplies to the people of Haiti. In 15 days the Treasure Valley collected over 45,000 pounds of medical, food, tents/blankets, personal and infant care items. MAF has partnered with Hands of Hope in Nampa to sort, box and palletize the donations.

On Friday February 19th a C-130 will fly the cargo into Port au Prince, Haiti from Fort Pierce, Florida where it will be off loaded and given to World Concern to distribute to the people of Haiti. World Concern works directly with local hospitals and three medical relief teams: MAP International, Northwest Medical Teams and World Medical Mission (Samaritan’s Purse). I will be leaving for Haiti on Wednesday February 17th. I have the privilege to welcome the plane with all of the donations on Friday morning and to follow through with the distribution of the supplies.

The individuals, churches, schools and businesses of the Treasure Valley in Idaho have given generously and given in abundance to meet and exceed our goals for supporting the people of Haiti. We are grateful for the part that each person has played in this project.

73 pallets (average size 40x48x45)
45,107 pounds (22.5 tons)
$470,180 estimated value of the supplies
950 estimated hours of volunteer time

Of the 73 pallets:
36 – Medical Supplies
16 – Food
13 – Tents/Blankets
8 – Personal/Infant Care

grace and peace,
Becky Lee
Mission Aviation Fellowship
Manager of Volunteer Ministries

Lots of Parties to choose from

2010-02-07T19:17:00.001-08:00

It's been quite a noisy day today. You'd think there was some huge, important sports game going on. Well, somewhere in the world there may be, but here in Costa Rica, it's election day.

Which means major media coverage for the past few days of the 4 main candidates running for presidency. But most interestingly, it means the streets around my house have been swarming with activity from all over the place. Cars fill the streets, slowing down to honk on every corner, where people are sitting with the colors of their party (or whichever party gave them free flags), screaming and waving back at that cars. There are colors everywhere - flags, banners, bumper stickers. And a crazy amount of noise. The voting location for this precinct or district is a school 2 blocks away. Which is why I've been serenaded since yesterday afternoon with honking and yelling and an inordinate amount of cars parked on my street. And now the fireworks start.

Everyone seems pretty psyched about these elections. Even the kids get to give it a practice run. I have yet to understand why a single car sports the colors of all four political parties. Perhaps you can vote for whoever you want, but the more flags you have the cooler and more politically active you are. I personally have a yellow and red flag that proudly trailed behind me on my bicycle. I'm not sure who it is for, but it fell off of someone's car and I decided it matched the colors of my bicycle nicely.

I was pleased that one of the candidates had a rather honest campaign slogan - "the lesser evil." Besides being truthful, it's pretty catchy. I would suggest more presidential candidates adopt similar slogans, but unfortunately that guy didn't do too well. Judging from the word on the street and the quantity of green and white flags, I think by tomorrow Costa Rica will have its first woman president, Laura Chinchilla.

Here's someone's take on it on Youtube.

The GATR ball

2010-01-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

A few updates:

1/19/10 - MAF has set up a communication center at the Port-au-Prince airport, utilizing a GATR inflatable satellite system. Some 16 relief agencies are using the system. (The photo is of David Hoffman and the inflatable GATR satellite on a practice run in Ecuador).
1/19/10 - MAF resumed flying, carrying a flight of medical relief supplies and a trauma team to Jacmel. However, fuel is running low.
1/20/10 - At noon a Kodiak plane was dedicated and subsequently began the journey to Haiti.
Track its progress here
Watch/read the news report here

Please pray for:

The health and safety of the Haitian people struck by this tragedy. Also for them to unify in overcoming it
The safety of the relief workers, including the MAF team there

How to Help Haiti

2010-01-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

One way for local nampites (all you in the Nampa/Boise Idaho area) to help get supplies to Haiti. Click the image to see it larger.