Our Mission Right Now

The last time we posted was all the way back in November of 2017 when we were leaving Costa Rica and coming back to Kansas! So much time has passed and so much has happened. We are so thankful for our time there in Costa Rica and miss our mission and our friends dearly! It was such a beautiful place with so many wonderful people! Costa Rica forever holds a special place in our hearts.

Here is a quick re-cap of the last year and a half:

2017
November - We traveled back from Costa Rica and left our beautiful home in the midst of a threatening hurricane. Thankfully it did not cause many problems for Coopevega (our little town) but did provide some heavy rainfall. With the storm looming we had hours to pack and leave instead of the week we had planned for. This provided an unexpected blessing of staying with Pablo and his family for several days before leaving the country.
December - We arrived at Big Woods (FMC homebase) to join other missionaries from all over the world in our annual Year-in-Review. We were so blessed to see old friends and make new ones.

2018
January - We traveled to California to visit with Blair's family. We attempted to find a job and house in Kansas from California (this proved unsuccessful).
February - We traveled back to Kansas and stayed with Donovan's parents while looking for work and a place to live. Donovan was hired at the YMCA and we moved into a rental house.
March - The girls started school at the local Valley Center public schools. While cleaning and preparing for the baby (Joseph Paul) Blair fell and broke her ankle on the bottom step of the stairs in our rental house. It was a long and painful process as Blair was 8 months pregnant and could not put any weight on her foot at all for 7 weeks. Thanks to the blessing of family and friends we were blessed by babysitting (for Gabriel, then 2) and meals for our family.
April - Joseph Paul was born April 22! Blair had her ankle boot removed and started physical therapy for 6 weeks.
May - July - In July we moved into another home closer to Donovan's brother and his family. We spent many hours preparing, painting, fixing and moving in.
August - Hannah started Freshman year at Bishop Carroll (local Catholic High School) and the rest of the girls joined Maize Virtual Prep School at home.
September - October - Everyone got used to our new home, new schools and new schedules.
November - Our wonderful friend Catherine came to visit and helped us with a project giving Dominic a Star Wars room makeover which included an Alexa so he could use voice commands for his tv, lights, etc.
December - March - This was the hardest winter our family has had so far! We experienced illness upon illness on a weekly basis for months! Donovan's brother and his family also had the same hardships and thankfully Dominic made it through this season of illness fairly well considering. We began a Parenting Toolbox class (more like a support group!) for parents and adults at our parish in Wichita. It is an opportunity to share practical, real life examples about parenting our children by creating Catholic Culture in our homes and communities. Donovan also joined got involved with the Catholic Youth Ministry at our Parish.
April - May - Hannah was confirmed! We celebrated Joseph's 1st Birthday! School finished up for all the children.

May 25th: As I write this today we are celebrating our 16th year of marriage! God is so good and we are so blessed!

A picture from our dating years!

Time flies by so quickly!

Enjoying his swing in the backyard.

Happy 1st Birthday Joseph!

Playing at the park.

Catherine got her braces off!

Gabriel likes to play Mass!

Catherine made them vestments, hosts and
the precious Blood.

During our illnesses, Gabriel had RSV and coughed so hard
he got an eye hemorrhage.

Hannah joined choir and swimming this year!

From our first day of school in our home school classroom.

We continue to try to be present here in our ministry state side. Looking over this year and a half it reminds me how long it sometimes seems to take to start over again. Thank you to all of those who are continuing to donate to our mission fund. This allows us to continue to give donations back to Costa Rica and the Philippines through our other missionaries. We are praying for all of you and ask that you continue to pray for our family, Dominic's family and the mission God has for us.

Our family is hoping to attend a Healing Prayer Retreat this July. This opportunity was opened up to us through FMC and is put on by Elijah House. Some of our missionaries have experienced this training and healing and have highly recommended it to others. In all of life's gifts, blessings, trials and hardships we have realized the importance of inner healing through Christ and our need for it. We hope this will be a blessed and healing time for us and help us to bring back this healing prayer ministry to our mission here at home.

Bailey Family Newsletter

Here is our newest Newsletter that will be arriving in your mailbox in early December.

Peace and joy in Jesus! We write to you today with our hearts full of gratitude for all the gifts the Lord has blessed us with. We apologize that it has been so long since our last newsletter! We have very exciting news to share with you. We found out in August that we are expecting a little baby Bailey due in April of 2017. Blair is currently 19 weeks pregnant and finally feeling much better. The first 3 ½ months were very difficult with 24 hour nausea. All the children are very excited and awaiting a new sibling!

                The last time we wrote to you was in May as we were in the States visiting for 6 weeks. Time flies and we can’t believe it’s already been almost 6 months since we returned to Costa Rica. When we arrived back we jumped right back into the mission with a mission trip in our Parish town of Santa Rosa. It was a beautiful experience to work together painting and cleaning the Pastoral Center, sharing with the students in the high school, and holding prayer meetings in the church in the evenings. There was much fruit that came out of this trip.

Giving a testimony during our evening Prayer Group in the
Church in Santa Rosa.

We returned to Coopevega and continued with our prayer meetings, home visits and work projects. We were blessed to be able to be a part of a work project in the home of our friend Don Fabio who suffers from heart problems. Donovan was able to hire a man to help him build a bathroom attached to Don Fabio’s home so he wouldn’t have to continue using the out house that was very far from the house. Walking is difficult for him with his heart condition. Thanks to some donations we received we were able to build this bathroom.

Starting the bathroom...

and almost done! He also put in a small shower
area at the end of the room.

                Upon returning in June from our visit in the States we thought that we would be here in Costa Rica for awhile, years possibly. About 2 ½ months ago we began feeling promptings in our heart that God was calling us to something. At first we kind of ignored these thoughts but they kept coming back in prayer and in our hearts. After we talked about what we were feeling we realized that we were both having the same promptings separately.  So we took these to prayer and continued praying for over a month. After talking with our Director, Joseph, and asking for his guidance and prayers we decided to have a family retreat. We took 3 days to pray with scripture and share what the Lord speaks on our heart with one another. Even the children participate in this sharing. We felt confirmed in this retreat that indeed the Lord was calling us back to a special mission in the United States. We will be living in KS very near to Donovan’s brother who has 9 children. Two of his boys have Muscular Dystrophy and we really feel that the Lord is calling us to be with them right now helping in any way that we can.

Dominic at his Confirmation with Bishop Kemme, Diocese
of Wichita & Melissa, his Confirmation Sponsor and
Donovan's sister.

Saying goodbye to friends is always difficult!

                We will be returning to the United States on December 1^st for the FMC annual Year-In-Review (YIR: many of our missionaries from around the world gather for a retreat and commissioning Mass of the new Missionaries). After YIR we plan on spending Christmas in San Diego with Blair’s family and then returning to Kansas to be near Donovan’s family. We don’t know how long we will be back in the United States but we do hope to be able to return to Costa Rica in mission again. We are sad to leave all of our friends and “family” that we have made here but we know that wherever we are we are missionaries. We know that God is doing great things here in Costa Rica and we are so thankful to be able to see the fruits of this mission in the growing joy in the local church here. We know that God still has many great plans for the missionaries who will be here. The Geerling family will return in December after YIR and another new missionary family from FMC will be arriving to this mission post in January!

The Brupbacher Family will arrive in Coopevega
early next year!

As we will be out of foreign mission for a time, but still in mission in the U.S., we wanted to explain how your donations are handled. If you, our mission partners, would like to continue donating to our family’s mission fund we will still receive a small stipend in the U.S around the amount we received here in Costa Rica ($1,000 monthly). The transition back will incur extra expenses as we are traveling from Costa Rica to Louisiana and then back to Kansas.

What that looks like:

Ø  Bus Tickets to the hotel near the airport $25

Ø  Hotel Room & food for 1 night              $140

Ø  Plane tickets to Houston                         $1,428

Ø  Rental Van to FMC in Louisiana & food   $130

Ø  Housing for Year-In-Review                      free

Ø  Food for Y-I-R                                           $125

Ø  Rental Van to Kansas                                 $300

Ø  Hotel for 1 night & food for travelling      $160

Total      $2,306
               

Would you please consider making a special one-time donation to help with the extra travel expenses we will have in December returning to the U.S. and back to Wichita?

                We will be praying for you all and your intentions. Please keep our family in your prayers as we prepare to leave Costa Rica and return to the States. Please also keep the new family, the Brupbacher’s, in your prayers for their transition into this mission post and for the Geerlings as they return for another year. Our wonderful friends Pablo & Yalile (the family that first welcomed us to Costa Rica) and another friend Lucrecia, who helps in our mission, would all like to visit FMC early next year. Lucrecia feels she may be called to be a full-time missionary! Please keep their families and travels in your prayers. Please also pray for this transition time as we look for a job for Donovan, a home to live in and a vehicle (we are hoping to find a 12-15 passenger van as we don’t fit into the standard 7 passenger minivan anymore!).

Our family in May 2015 right before leaving for Costa Rica.

May 2015 Our first day in Costa RIca with the Rigioni's.
The hardest part of leaving is saying goodbye to our
               new family the Rigioni's. We will miss them so much!

Last week saying goodbye to friends. The kids have grown
so much!  Lucrecia is behind Hannah wearing yellow.

We hope to be able to see you when we return!

In His Mercy,

Donovan, Blair, Hannah, Catherine, Grace, Felicity, Gabriel, & Baby Bailey

                

Off and Running...

We were very blessed to see many of you on our visit back to the States in May and June. Thank you all who spent time with us, prayed for us, gave us donations, came to a talk, helped us or hosted us! For those we did not see we are sorry we missed you!

My (Blair's)  mom came to Wichita to visit us for 3 weeks.

Blair's dad drove from California to visit us
for a week.

Grace received her First Communion on
the Feast of Corpis Christi at our Parish
St. Jude in Wichita, KS. Fr. Mainzer was
so welcoming to our family.

Gabriel and Kimberly at Grace's

1st Communion. They love to spend

time together. It's so adorable!

As long as he has a banana it doesn't matter if
he's in Costa Rica or Kansas! This boy
LOVES bananas.

We got to visit and pray with Angie, Donovan's cousin
who is fighting cancer.

We celebrated Grace's 8th birthday!

We celebrated Catherine's 11th Birthday.

Flashback to 2002! We celebrated our 14 year anniversary
on May 25!

Got to hang out with our friends the Frascos!
Always a fun time!!!

The girls got to see their friends.

Gabriel mowing with Grandpa Bailey.

Our trip back to Costa Rica started early Tuesday morning, June 21^st when we drove a rental van packed with our things, and the donations we received, and drove to Houston. We took a flight from Houston to San Jose, Costa Rica and arrived about 1 am. After gathering all of our bags and going through customs we took a taxi to our hotel about 10 minutes away. 

Getting out of the rental van to the airport in Houston.

Waiting in line at 1:30 am to go through customs and security.

And still a sweet smile!

After driving from Louisiana and flying to Costa Rica we were very tired. We arrived at the hotel about 3 am and unloaded our bags into the lobby. We were given our room key and told we were on the third floor and there was no elevator! Donovan, Hannah & Catherine carried all 21 bags up the 2 flights of stairs and then we all went to bed. The next day we had to carry everything downstairs and then load into another van for the 2 ½ hour drive up the mountain to Florencia (where our friend Pablo lives).

Preparing to load up again for the drive back to Florencia.

Always beautiful sights driving
through Costa Rica.

 We arrived at his house and got to see Jason (our good friend from Intake 2013). He had been in Costa Rica helping to plan the next short-term mission trip with Pablo while we were in the States. We all got into our car (which was waiting for us at Pablo’s house – thank you Geerlings!) and Pablo’s car (along with all the luggage) and drove 2 hours to our house in Coopevega. An unexpected treat was that the dirt road to our town had been repaired while we were away. The drive that usually takes 1 hour and is very bumpy was only 45 minutes and much smoother! We finally made it back to our house and enjoyed a wonderful meal with Pablo, Jason and the Geerlings.

Our first time getting to see Jason since
 Intake 2013. It was such a blessing to
have him as part of our mission trip team.

The Saturday after we returned was the start of our 2^nd short-term mission trip in Costa Rica. Again it was a blessing to have a group of young people here. We spent our days working in the Pastoral Center in Santa Rosa (our parish town about 1 hour away). When not on the mission trip we normally attend Mass weekly in our chapel in Coopevega. There are 3 priests who serve the Parish of Santa Rosa which is a hub to 42 other communities (Coopevega being one of those).

A lot of the work project was painting and
cleaning.

We gathered at the local high school each day for songs, 
prayers and to play and get to know the students.

We also held prayer meetings each night in the church in Santa Rosa with singing, testimonies, teachings and prayer. It was a blessing to us and the community! One of my favorite moments was hearing the group sing Oceans in English while a group of local high schoolers were singing along in Spanish. It was so beautiful! 

I was so blessed to have my friend Lucrecia
join us for the entire mission trip. Lucrecia
lives in a town near ours and comes to our
house to practice English and help us with
our Spanish. She also jumped right into the
mission with us and comes along for home
visits too!

We prayed over people for their needs each night in the church.

Here our group poses with some of the local community.

Pablo and his wife Yalile welcomed the group into their
home for fun and food. Pablo and his family love volleyball
(he has coached for many years).

We gathered in his house for praise and worship.

A prayer we used on the mission trip
 (thank you Fr. Mainzer)!

We returned to Coopevega for some time of rest after the mission. We settled back into our home and began sorting all of the donations we received from the States and from the mission trip. We received so many school supplies, clothing and shoes that are really blessing the mission here.  We are praying for the help of the Holy Spirit to guide us to the people who need the things we have. We are able to take items to people when we visit them on our home visits (we read scripture, visit and pray for their needs).

This past week our families had a beautiful home visit with Don Fabio. While we were in the States he had a heart attack and spent some time in the hospital. It seems that he doesn’t have the option of getting surgery because the access to the treatment he needs is harder to get here and there are too many people who need it. 

To get to his house is about a 30-45 minute
 walk. It was really beautiful and a fun little
 adventure for the kids. 

When we arrived his face absolutely
 lit up. He had the best smile!
 He was so happy to have visitors. 

He lives with his wife and their 2 grandchildren. We were able to pray over him for healing and I told him that we would be asking for your prayers as well! So please keep Don Fabio in your prayers for a miracle of healing of his heart. We are asking the intercession of Saint Anthony and the Blessed Mother. We were able to bring the family a small bag of Costa Rican staples (rice, beans, sugar, coffee) and some school supplies for his grandson.

Our celebrations for the feast of our chapel patroness, and the patroness of Costa Rica, Our Lady of the Angels, started last  week. One million people make a pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Angels Basilica in Cartago, Costa Rica each year on her feast day August 2^nd.

Sunday we drove in caravan to bring the
image of Our Lady of the Angels to our
neighboring town in San Joaquin.

We celebrated the feast of Saint Joaquin with Mass
and yummy food.

Monday night began with a Novena and we have the special blessing of receiving Mass everyday until our fiesta on August 2^nd! What a blessing for this community as we only have Mass once a week usually (and for the neighboring towns sometimes its only once or twice a month).

All of the kids made stick horses for
the "horse" race at the church. It is a
memorial of the humble people who many
years ago would travel aroudf the town on
their horses on the Feast of Our Lady of the Angels.

I said, "Smile Gabriel." :)

The Lord continues to stretch us and ask us to be uncomfortable. We pray that we will all embrace the opportunities He gives us all to grow in virtue and holiness. And yet in the middle of it all He also greatly blesses us in ways we don’t expect.

We hope you all have a blessed week! We are praying for you and thinking of you. Please keep our families in your prayers as we start a 3 day retreat tomorrow.