Happy New Year!

This year was a new New Years celebration as well. At my church, they have a New Year's Eve service. 8pm starts the praise and worship time, 9pm starts the preaching, 10:30-ish starts the testimony time (of what God has done in the last year), 11:30-ish starts Communion, then between 12 and 12:15 it's greet the people around you, wish them a Feliz Ano Nuevo, and bless them. Finally when that is all done, it's time for food! It was a fun time.

I went to the service with Shirley, Krish, and Doug, then while there, spent some time with some new friends.

As we greeted everyone after the new year, one of the pastors here, who is the dad of my somewhat adopted family here, told me that I didn't have to feel alone because I was with family there. And that is a true statement. If I couldn't be with my parents, siblings, and extended family members, I knew I was in family with my brothers and sisters in Christ in Costa Rica. Having made many new friends over the last couple weeks, it was a fun celebration.

I hope you all had a great 2008 and have an even better 2009! We never know what the year will bring, but keep searching God's face and no matter what you face, it will be a good year!


Side note...for the next couple days (Jan 1-4) I will be helping with a youth camp for my church, please be in prayer for this as I only know a handful of people going, my Spanish is far from perfect so as I explain games and answer questions I hope I understand, and camp here is a little different than the camps I went to back home, so I really don't know what will be happening. There are about 90 people going to camp (this is a camp through my church, so there are 90 people from my church with only a few from outside). About 20 of the people are leaders and the other 70 or so are 12-25 year olds who are participating in the camp. Thanks for your prayers!