Ciudad Valles, Mexico

One week from tomorrow I will be heading down to Mexico on a mission trip, and I am looking for a prayer team that will support us in prayer throughout the whole trip and even for a little while once we return. I would be honored if you would consider being a prayer partner for me and for my team. You can click on the letter to enlarge the photo and read the letter.

Muchas Gracias!

La Pura Vida

Here's a picture recap of our time in Costa Rica/Nicaragua. The Costa Rican slogan is La Pura Vida [the pure life], and it's easy to see why - the country is filled with lush rolling hills and mountains, quaint towns and friendly people. It was a great experience!

Mark sitting in a park in San Jose, Costa Rica, the day after arrival.

A couple days after we got there, we did a little exploring in the hills around Cerro Chirripo, the highest point of CR. It was SUPER beautiful, and since we got up at 5am to catch a bus up there, it felt like we got to explore for a LONG time!
PS: this is a banana tree.

We walked this road for awhile and eventually ended up in Cloudbridge Nature Reserve. But the whole walk was this pretty. Really.

We eventually found this waterfall in Cloudbridge. One of many there.

Mark "rock climbing" on the wall of our hostel in San Gerardo de El General.

All the buildings in Granada, Nicaragua were painted sweet bold colors like this one.

The courtyard of The Bearded Monkey hostel in Granada. The center is open, but the sides have a roof. The doors across the way are the bathrooms. I'm taking the picture from the balcony by our room.

Here we are on the beach in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.

We spent most of our time in Nicaragua with Josh and Kari Jackson, who just happened to be in Central America the same time as us. It was a blast to have friends to hang with for 4 days in the middle of our trip.

Mark and I went to see sea turtles lay their eggs...while we were waiting, we got to see a beautiful sunset.

Here's the turtle laying her eggs. They wouldn't let us take flash pictures of the turtles in the dark, so this is what we get to remember via picture :).

Back in CR for a few days before we left, we spent a day in Monteverde, CR doing a zip line canopy tour. We get to zip through the trees on these lines. Our trip had 11 lines...the longest being a half mile and over 400 ft. in the air!

Here's Mark waiting to get launched.

Outside the zip line place was a pretty cool hummingbird garden.
Does this scare anyone else? This is how the hot water happened in a lot of places in Costa Rica. I don't know about you, but I was always taught that electrical wires and water aren't a good combo...

Our last two days in CR were spent white water rafting. The first day we ran El Rio Pacuare, filled mostly with class 2-4 rapids. Half way through we got out of the raft and hiked up to this waterfall and pool we could swim in.


This is Mark sitting in the waterfall...if you look closely, you can see his arm and leg sticking out of the rushing water.



Day two we ran the Pascua section of El Rio Reventozon, pretty much a consistant class 4 and class 4+ rapid. When I asked the guides how to say "rafting" in spanish, they looked at me and said "rafting" [said with best spanish accent].
This is a picture of our guide and a couple others who paddled back into a big hole to see if they could flip. They did.




And alas, we are now back in the QC, where the tp goes in the toilet and the water is okay to drink [but not from the toilet]. :) It never feels like pictures can capture the fullness of what you experienced, but it at least can give you a taste of what it was like.

Until Next Time....




Oh...PS: check this out!