Boots, Patron Saint Fiesta, New School and English fiesta!

The girls love to play outside in the yard in the mud, in the rocks, riding bikes and making friends!

 We see these boots all over town because they are perfect for all the rain and mud!

Last Sunday we made a car pilgrimage to San Juaquine to celebrate the feast of St. Joaquin and Anne. Patron feasts are special events in Costa Rica and each church has a fiesta when their patron saint has their feast day.

Each church who pilgrimaged brought their patron along. Here

we are following our patron Our Lady of the Angels.

Even the cows on the side of the road wanted to join in.

A beautiful view on the way back to our house. 

Tomorrow Donovan and some of the girls will be going with parishoners back to San Joaquin to bring the Our Lady of the Angels statue to our parish for the celebration of our patron who is also the patron of Costa Rica. They will ride the 10 KM to the other church and walk back. We expect to have hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims in Coopevega tomorrow!

The girls started school last Monday. It was so cute to see how excited they were to go for their first day of school. Not only was it their first day of school in Costa Rica, but for all of them except Hannah it was their first day EVER in a school (all have been home schooled). We hope that this will be a great way for the girls to learn Spanish and make friends. Both are happening already!

Felicity cutie pie! 

Grace excited and nervous all at the same

time! 

Catherine working on homework. 

Yesterday we were in Florencia at an elementary school for their English fiesta. Donovan was asked to be a judge for the English spelling bee, we were entertained by various class presentations and we were able to share a short testimony with students about being a family in missions. The national religion in Costa Rica is Catholic and students take religion class in public school. Yet, for many their religion can be more cultural than personal.

Donovan's arm is in a sling so Catherine helped hold the word 

cards for him to read to the contestants.

Gabriel is always the most popular missionary.

The principle of the school held him for 2 

hours and even got him to take a nap. :)

Students in the lower grades doing a dance.

Here we are with our friend Roy (his wife Myrna 

is our Spanish teacher). He is an elementary school 

English teacher and he invited us to his school for the

fiesta and to share our testimony.

Have a blessed week. I hope to make posts on a weekly basis on Fridays. I know I haven't been so consistent with this so I am giving myself a weekly deadline! We would love to hear from you. Send us an e-mail or comment on the post. You are all in our prayers!