Hello friends.
Here
is my November summary. It has been a
busy and productive month. We have been
blessed by so many people and my prayer is that we would pay that blessing
forward in huge ways.
Application for Residency:
Back in September I met with a local immigration lawyer to
determine what it would take for our family to get temporary residency status
in Costa Rica. Getting this status would
allow us to stay in the country and not have to leave every 90 days to reset
our tourist visas. It will also allow us
to open a local bank account, which will give us more flexibility with paying
bills as we will not have to do everything in cash.
After talking with the lawyer I discovered why no other
missionaries from 6:8 had ever followed through and applied for residency. The cost is prohibitive and gathering the
necessary paperwork is difficult, if not impossible, to do from here. I am blessed to have the mother that I
do. Ginny/Nana/Mom offered to do all the
leg work and get new copies of most of our birth certificates and a new copy of
our marriage license. She then had to
bring all of these to the CT secretary of state’s office to have them ‘Apostilled’. This certification is required by Costa Rica
in order for them to accept our documentation.
We also had to get our fingerprints taken and sent to the FBI for a
background check. Assuming that comes
back clean ;-) then my mom will have to get those papers Apostilled and sent
down here.
The lawyer’s usual fee + the Costa Rican application fee is
usually close to $2000 per person for this process. The lawyer is familiar with what our ministry
does in Costa Rica, so he cut his fee almost in half. That still left us with $1,050 per person to
come up with. We prayed about it and
decided that should God want us to stay here long term then it was something that
we needed to do. I had never heard
specifically of GoFundMe.com until about 1 week before we made the decision to
go for residency. I wrote up the details
describing why we needed help with this funding and created a campaign. I really thought that we might get a small
portion of the money in which would help as we tried to come up with the
rest. Did I mention how blessed we are
by family and friends who are supporting us in many ways? In exactly 1 week we surpassed the goal of
$6,300!! Thank you to everyone who
donated, wrote an encouraging word, prayed for or shared our cause. I met with the lawyer last week and gave him
the bulk of the paperwork and he is confident that we will not have to leave in
January to once again reset our visa.
Praise God!!
Visit from my mom and dad:
My folks came down on November 1st for a week-long
visit. It was great to have them here
and to have them experience a little of what we have been called to do down
here. They also brought 6 suit cases
full of great stuff. 2 of the cases were
for other missionary friends from Hartland and Simsbury CT, who are also
serving in Costa Rica. The other 4
contained treasures for us. Some
Christmas presents, some personal items that we did not have room for back in
July, and 4 puzzles! I have really
missed my puzzle collection so it was great to have a chance to work on several
of them during the week with my dad. We
got to bring my parents out to Campamento Roblealto in Heredia, where Yvonne
and I first heard God’s calling back in 2011.
We also got to travel out to the Children’s Ranch and stay overnight in
one of the ‘almost finished’ team houses.
It was really cool to show them the property and let them see first-hand
what I have been focusing on for the last 4 months and where my family will move in 2015. Their visit ended all too quickly, but we
know there will be more in the future and we hope to visit the Estados Unidos
in spring or summer of 2015.
Children's Ranch:
We are making steady progress on this project every
week. I have been coming out with 3 or 4
Ticos every week for a day or two at a time to work. I am actually sitting on the front porch of
the first team house writing this blog.
Victor and I spent the day crawling under the 2 houses installing all the
drain pipes to complete the plumbing in the 7 bathrooms. Tomorrow we will install the water line and
the drain to the new kitchen sink. There
are 3 other guys with us this week working on the drywall. We have our first team of the new year coming
to stay and work at the ranch in January.
This group is from Copiague Christian Church in Long Island. We are super excited about this team because it
contains Yvonne’s Uncle and Aunt and 2 of her cousins. This will be the first missionary group that
will fully use the new team houses.
I have also met with a professor of architecture and 22 of
his students and they are in the process of creating a master plan for the
ranch. This process has been going
slower than I would have liked, but that is normal for down here.
We are also very close to actually getting 2 shipping
containers delivered out to the ranch.
These were purchased back in April but they could not get over the river
until the dry season. We are in that
season now, so we will try again.
If/when we get these containers delivered we will turn them into 2
secure storage rooms with a large covered area between them. This space will be used to park our tractor
and any other equipment we acquire. We
have held off on purchasing a much needed tractor due to the fact that we
currently do not have a secure place to park it. Please keep this project in prayer as we are
relying on God for everything. (funding,
construction, house families and ultimately the children).
We love and appreciate you all.
Humbly His,
Rob
