August/ September Newsletter

The last two months have been full of activities that have worked to solidify Pura Vida Church in the community and its new location.  From inaugurating the park, to surf contests, from hosting the annual Christian Surfers National Leaders Training to initiating a new believer’s discipleship program.  In between we celebrated Elias 7th birthday, Costa Rica’s Independence Day as well as the Free Methodist National celebration of missions.  Luckily Kyle was feeling much better so we made it through all these activities in one piece and her belly is still growing beautifully.

The park inauguration was a hit, with lots of friends from Florida here to help!  We raised over $500 to cover some of the expenses of the park, not to mention providing a super fun day of games and food for the families of Esterillos, this is the second family fair that we have held and it gets better every year!

The annual Chrisitan Surfers National Leadership training was an amazing event!  We had Cal Fisher, director of the Americas area, here and it was a great time of training, restoration, and a renewed vision for Chrsitian Surfers Costa Rica.  Dennis was able to pass the directorship to an amazing team headed by Damian Boza.  Already Dennis is enjoying working alongside Christian Surfers, but not being in a leadership capacity.  Now there is even a chapter in Esterillos, and Dennis is not even the leader!

Pura Vida Church and Christian Surfers did their first event together in September, a surf contest to celebrate Costa Rica’s Independence Day.  It was one of the best events ever because we had so much help!  Local surf shops, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, surf schools, radio stations, surf magazines, and many more all helped out.  It was a one day contest with over 120 contestants and over 300 spectators.  It ran smoothly with live music, great food (sold by the local school), a yo-yo demo, great prizes, even a professional MC from a surf radio station.  The event somehow was announced not only in the national newspaper but also on the national evening news (we still are not sure how that happened).  The next day we had 12 new people at Sunday’s worship .

As a church of mostly new believers Pura Vida has been lacking a good curriculum to solidify people in their faith systematically.  Dennis finally found a book he likes and it has taken like wildfire!  He has four disciples currently working through the book with him and five more waiting to start.  Pray for these new believers and that the time they are taking to build a strong foundation in their faith will provide healthy Christian workers for Costa Rica.

  • This month we will be traveling to Santa Barbara and then on to Hawaii to attend the Christian Surfers International Conference.  Please pray for travel mercies and kid withdrawals as we leave the kids with Kyle’s parents for 10 days.
  • Pray for the church and our house in our absence.  We have great leaders in place to care for everything but still, be in prayer!
  • We will be celebrating the annual conference of the Free Methodist Church in Costa Rica this month, pray for renewed vision, and for wise decisions to be made by the national and international leaders.
  • As usual at this time of year we are faced with fundraising fears.  Pray that we are given wisdom as we make decisions regarding our missionary status and funding options for the coming year.  We are currently at 86% funded for 2013 but we need to be at 100%.

 

Thank you all for your continued love and support for our family and Pura Vida Church in Costa Rica!