Costa Rica

I must admit that I haven't been a very successful blogger so far (2 posts in 1,5 years), but thought I'd give it another shot. With Facebook and Twitter, we just write a line or two, but sometimes I feel like telling a bit more. So if you're interested in what's going on in my life, my heart and my head, here we go:

Costa Rica was a great experience. I got the invitation to go just some weeks before I actually went, and I thought it would be impossible at this time. I presented the invitation to the elders of our church (my employer) and let them decide. I thought that they would say no, but they were all for it. So I decided to go!

Costa Rica was the 20th country I've gone to, and the 15th where I've had the privilege to serve the Lord, in worship or teaching/preaching the Word of God. What a beautiful country it is! Reminded me a lot of Hawaii where we spent our honeymoon 7 years back. Didn't really have time to see a lot since the schedule was very busy, but among many of the experiences was seeing an anteater in the backyard, fireflies for the very first time in my life, a spider in my bed, seeing an iguana killed with a machete and a gun, hearing monkeys in the distance, eating coffee beans fresh, plus much more. I love doing missions trips. You get to experience a lot of new and different things, but the main thing is definitely the spiritual part, preaching, worshiping, teaching, ministering. Got to do it a lot this time! Taught about 16-17 hours about thanksgiving, praise and worship, and led worship 2 times. If the Lord wanted me to do just this the rest of my life I would gladly do it. To see God's children get a deeper understanding about praise & worship is worth it a hundred times over.

It's Thanksgiving week here in the US and Thanksgiving Day is just two days away. When I was in Costa Rica teaching the young students about praise and worship, I spent quite a while just speaking about foundational things. One of them is thankfulness and thanksgiving. In the end of the week when I asked what had been helpful for them, many of them stated that the teaching about thankfulness and thanksgiving had been very helpful, even life changing. One of the things I asked them to do, which I've also done in other places when teaching about this subject, was to write a list of things they are thankful for. (You'll see the creativity of one of the students in the picture to the right) In one of the sessions we just spent about half an hour only thanking God for His goodness in our lives. Many broke out in tears (including myself just listening) as they gave thanks to God.

Psalm 100:4, Amplified version says "Be thankful and say so to Him." I think that pretty much sums up what thankfulness and thanksgiving is all about. Having an attitude of gratitude, and also expressing it. May we all live like that, then we glorify and honor God with our lives, and besides, we will be much, much happier and content.

Have a great week!