Hair Cut

I want to start by saying that I have not had much time, or made much time to check blogs or to blog blogs in the last little while. Things here in Costa Rica have been busy, but really good. I am typing with mud and tape all over me as we were doing the drywall in the house we are building this week. Anyway, back to the post.

I have not had time to do much, but yesterday I did make time for a hair cut. My friend Mario and I went to see Julio the barber and it was the greatest most enjoyable hair cut experience that I have ever had. He started by taking the clippers to my head and cleaning everything up. Then he went in with the straight blade by the side burns and on the back of the neck. After that, he styled my hair the way I wanted it and began cutting. He was fast. The scissors never stopped moving and I was in and out of the chair in 10 minutes. The whole time I was wondering how I was going to post this to give it the credit it deserves. So, if you are ever in Heredia, Costa Rica go to Julios and get your hair cut for a whopping $2.50. I already can't wait to go back.

Costa Freaka Rica

Well we are into our 1st cycle of teams in Costa Rica and so far so good. The church is from Marysville, WA and we have worked with them since 1999 in Mexico with Mission Adventures. It is great to have them here as they are good friends and a great team. There are 23 of them all together and are here till the 29th of June. Our schedule is very busy as we are building a house in the day time for a family and we have meetings at night from 6:30 till 10:00. The building is going great so far. Today we are going to finish putting up the walls and start on the roof. In the meetings we are challenging the students to "Wake Up" and find out what God's call is on their lives. We are talking a lot about different social injustice issues and what our responsibility in that is.

The weather here is very consistent. It is beautiful and sunny all day until approx. 3:00 and then it just dumps down rain until about 6 or so. As a result, we are leaving for the work site at 8:00 so that we can get a good amount of work in before it rains. Please continue to pray for us and the girls (Emma and Abby) for health, safety and that they have a great missions experience with us.

As always, we appreciate you and your involvement, to whatever extent that may be, with us and in our ministry with YWAM.

Thanks.

Phil, Amy, Emma, Abby.

Non-dairy coffee creamer

I have been wanting to post this for a while now, but have not made time until now. So here goes. I have been frustrated here in Costa Rica with the non-dairy coffee creamer. 1st of all, it is non-dairy and it is creamer. How does that work? I don't know either. Secondly, the coffee at the YWAM property is good, but they make a lot of it at one time so after a while it is not very hot. My frustration is that non-dairy coffee creamer does not mix well in non-hot coffee. There is nothing worse than having cream colored, or as the Crayola crayon company so wrongly called it in the 80's, flesh coloured chunks of non-dairy/powder floating in my coffee. OK, there is worse things, but this is definitely not good.

My solution to all of this, keep putting non-dairy coffee creamer in my warm coffee and thank the good Lord it is not Starbucks.

Why I miss the hose.

Lately I have been missing the hose that most Asian countries put in the bathrooms by the toilet. I grew to love the hose during my time in Cambodia as I was sick for a couple of day's and had to use the toilet a lot. The hose saved me from chafing, chapping and cracking. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the hose let me explain. Instead of using toilet paper on your bum after a poop you spray yourself with the hose. It is very clean and yes, your bum gets and stay's wet. But that is fine as you are hot all day anyway so a wet bum feels kinda refreshing.

Anyway, being down here in Costa Rica, a country that I love, I am missing the hose. Costa Rica, like a lot of Central American countries does not have a hose by their toilets. In Costa Rica you use toilet paper and when you are done you throw it in the trash bin beside or in front of the toilet. This used to be kinda gross to me, although I understand why they do it, poor plumbing, but after Cambodia and not having to touch my bum, the idea of putting my paper in the trash on top of others paper is getting to me. Anyway, it was on my mind so I thought I'd share.

Phil.

"White people wear sagging pants too."

This is great. Check it out. Sagging Pants

Wireless in the jungle

Two day's ago my family and I arrived in Costa Rica. I am so glad to be back here. It is good to see my friends Alvaro, Terry and Josh and it is good to finally be in the place that we have been preparing to come to for months now. Earlier this afternoon I was sitting in the class room typing on my lap top and a crazy rain storm came out of no where. The sky went dark and it started to pour. It felt so strange, like I was in a movie or something. Have you ever seen that Sean Connery movie Medicine Man? It was like that, but with a Mac Book Pro. I was sitting in the middle of the jungle, it was pouring rain and I was surfing the web wirelessly.
Another thing that was bizzar is that while we were meeting a bird slammed into the window and the cat came and got it and pretty much did what Sylvester tried to do to Tweetie Bird in all those Warner Brothers cartoons. It was sad, but that is the way nature goes I guess.

More later.

Off to Costa Rica

Tomorrow our family is off to Costa Rica for the summer to partner with and help start Mission Adventures training there. We have been taking teams to Costa Rica for the last 5 years, but this year instead of running the training portion of the trip in Seattle, we will be partnering with the Costa Ricans and running the training there. We will be working there for 6 weeks and hosting 83 participants from three different youth groups from Canada and USA.

Our first week there we will be working with my good friend Brandon from Marysville, WA. We will be building a house for a family there. Here is the email that I received from Alvaro about the family. "Hey Phil, here are some pictures of the old house, Memo and other guy are making a mess as you will see in the picture, what we are going to do is to leave the half walls that we can re-use, and they will also build a new floor. Also in one of the pictures you can see the lady and her 2 daughters, by the way she have 14 kids, amazing isn't it? That lady is leaving with her daughter of 26 years old, the girl works but per month she gets paid like $130 USD. and her mom, the owner of the house works only sometimes when she cooks bread and sells it. We also talked to the Mayor of the city the house is in and she was very open Arturo & I talked to her, she was very open and gave us all the permission to build the house". I am very excited to be a part of this families life.




This summer l will also be speaking on the Mission Adventures program in Los Angeles and Ensenada, Mexico. Amy and the girls will also have some time in Canada with family as her older brother and his wife are having a wedding reception. It will be busy, but we hope to see lives changed, our marriage grow, Abby walk and Emma learn spanish. Good times will be had. Please keep us in your prayers and we will keep you updated. Thanks.

One more thing that I wanted to mention. I was reading my friend Chris Whitler's blog and I was blown away by what he is doing in their ministry.

The Grey House

One large project that we've been working on the last couple weeks is the potential purchase of some property for YWAM Seattle. (Not US buying the property, but YWAM buying some property!)


Here's the link to the page on YWAM Seattle's website that details the purchase, including a flyer that hopefully most of you received in the mail. If you haven't received it, and would like to, we can get one in the mail for you right away.

The website gives many details, but we also wanted to communicate personally what this house means to us... This house we're trying to purchase has been a place where we have invested many hours over the last 4 years. This is the house where all of our students stay when they go through our Discipleship Training School. We've had many meetings there, eaten countless meals, and had lots of meaningful conversations with both students and staff. For more details on the program we direct, feel free to check out the Urban DTS page on the YWAM Seattle website. We've been responsible for most of the content, and it does a good job of summing up what our primary roles here are all about.

YWAM Seattle has been renting this house for 4 years, and we believe that now is the time to make some steps towards purchasing the property. We (both us personally and YWAM Seattle) love this neighborhood and are ready to put down some tangible roots here. If you're interested in hearing more please let us know.

We've been busy designing promotional material, planning open-houses, and meeting with potential donors. You can be praying for us this Thursday evening as we're helping host an open-house for some potential donors. This has really been a big step of faith for us as an organization, considering that we're quite small and we don't have much extra money. We'll keep you updated on the process. Thanks for your prayers.

Check this out.

Poo Poo Head

So yesterday I went out with my good friend Bubba to a Me Without You show down up on Capital Hill. The show was great. It was the 1st time I had seen them play, or even heard their music. One of those unexpected surprises. One cool thing about them is that their tour bus is a crappy old Grey Hound bus that they converted to run on veggie oil.

So, everything was going good until I got back to the car and saw that some poo poo head backed into me. I wasn't so much pissed that I got hit, I was more pissed that he or she didn't leave a note. Not even a "sorry I hit you, I'm not going to leave my name, but I just wanted to acknowledge that I did it." That would have been fine, not the best, but better than the cowerdly thing they did in just taking off. The other thing that bums me out is that the van was a gift from our friends Tom and Tracy. We want to take care of it as much as we can. So, now I have a hit and run on the back of the van and one on the front. It is going to cost $450 to fix. My deductable on out insurance is $500 so it isn't even worth going through them. I am probably going to leave it for the time being. If I am going to spent that much on my van I will do it on the brakes. If you know a good auto body guy for free or cheap though please let me know.