jason sick..the mosquito net fits perfectly over our bed though. thanks mom!

this is the road we walk back and forth on to Yata where we do community outreach. its 8 miles round trip.

this is the whole school right after the parade

Paulina, a student from Las Amalias, Janet and Keila, two teachers before the parade
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carrie working in the garden planting watermelons

jason hanging clothes to dry that carrie washed in the river

this is right before we went to church. it was so cold when we first got to the school!

this is the plane steven wilson flew us 3 hours into the jungle in to get to the school.

carrie and i with ximena and eliazar, the couple we stayed with in santa cruz.


Classes have started and campus is buzzing with students. Carrie has class on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. So far my classes have gone really well! Science has been fun because we have been learning about the scientific method and doing some experiments. One really neat experience I had happened on Sunday. I was talking about using the scientific method to show that the Bible is the inspired word of God and I was running out of time. We were looking up different prophecies and seeing how they were fulfilled even though they were written 250 years before they happened. I said well I had other examples but we are running out of time so I will skip to the end. But the students objected. They said we can go a little longer we want to hear the other prophecies! What kids do you know of that would ask to stay over in class to keep learning!! It was so cool. Some of the students are really low in math, while others are pretty bright, which will prove to be a challenge. The students are all really nice! One girl in my class’s name is Paulina. She is from the indigenous tribe in Las Amalias. She came here last year for the first time to study and had to learn Spanish because in her tribe they only speak Seha. She had to learn how to use a bathroom, use toilet paper, wash her clothes in a river, and overall good hygiene. She is super sweet. The other day I was washing clothes with her and she was talking to me and she asked me if I had ever met an indigenous person before her? So I asked her if she had ever met a “gringo” (white person) before us here. She said she had seen a little girl once but was scared of white people at first. In her village there is no high school and normally the kids get married after 8th grade and continue living in their village. Las Amalias, where she is from, is where they have started an outpost mission project. They just finished building a church and a house up there and one mission family from here has moved up there to live with them and teach about good health practices and most importantly about God. They say they have to repeat things a lot and it is like teaching little children. We had another cold front come in this week and Carrie got sick as a result of it. She has had a fever and has been a bit weak. Jason has been working with the accounting and found out that we need $400 a week to feed everyone on campus, which is only a dollar a day per person. This month we received $500 to live on for the whole month. So pray with us that God will provide for our needs throughout this month and that the kids will see how God provides. The garden here has been producing tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce. We have another missionary couple that are going home and another that are stuck in Santa Cruz with visa problems so we are very low on teachers right now. Several classes just are not being taught and we don’t know who is going to oversee the garden. Jason has not yet had class, because on Friday we went to town to celebrate their independence day. We walked the 4 miles into town because the truck was not fixed yet. We hurried into town to wait. Someone had died in Yata so we had to wait till they were buried before we could begin the ceremony. We then marched into position before the heads of the town along with another local school. We listened to several national anthems and little speeches and then marched around in front of them. Luckily by the time we were done the truck was back and working so we could ride back in it. The truck part that was broken was fixed in town, but what Enrique, the driver, did not know was that the truck did not have any oil. Once while he was driving it, it just stopped working. He prayed and it started back up and made it all the way to Yata. Praise God that the motor did not burn up and they were able to add oil in Yata. Over break some of the students went to Las Amalias on a mission trip and we have been hearing all about their stories and some of them are really awesome. It was obviously a really neat experience for the students and made several want to go back and be missionaries. I have been getting to know the students better and talked to one boy this week who is a senior, his name is Jhunior. He was telling me that his parents did not want him to come to school here. He has been living with his grandfather. He does not know how many siblings he has because his dad has slept with so many different people. He decided to come anyway and says his first mission field was when he returned home to his grandfather’s house during summer vacation. His grandfather gave him a really hard time about his new faith. He stayed strong and returned the next year. Since then he has started a Bible study with his great grandmother in town and wants to be a missionary. He says if someone asks me why I am a Seventh-Day Adventist. He says it’s not because everyone at the school is but because he is a child of God and the Holy Spirit is working in his heart. What a testimony to the mission of this school! This past week my work day is Tuesday afternoon and I was working in the banana fields with the girls digging trenches which by the way is a ton of work! While we were working we reviewed the scientific method, solved math problems and memorized a Bible verse. There was probably seven girls total that were in hearing distance and participating. Jason worked in the soon to be rice fields. Right now it is just jungle and the kids go out there and just start whacking everything down with a machete, trees, plants, and weeds, whatever is in their path. Then later we will burn it all and plant rice there. We are trying to become self-sustaining agriculturally. This week we are starting two weeks of consecration for the teachers. We will have worship each night and the students will be there to hear and keep us accountable to what we hear. Pray with us that lives will be touched as a result of this time of worship and study.