Back From the North!!!

Hi There!


Well we are back from our trip to the northern part of Costa Rica!

It was a great time with lots of new things to see and do. It is very rural at the northern part of the country, lots of jungle and all the things that you would expect to find there! Below is a picture of the back yard of the ranch where we stayed. It is absolutely beautiful country with lots of rolling hills and mountains. Right out the back door and across the yard is a larger than life volcano called Miravalles





The people in the villages were extremely friendly, not a car went by with out some one waving or shouting out a greeting. The closest town to where we stayed is called Fortuna, if you look it up on a map you will see that it is close to the top of the country near the Nicaraguan border.


The place where we stayed is on a ninety four acre parcel that is used as a base for teams that come from all over the globe. The teams are comprised of all different types of people who come for various reasons. Some are there for adventure tours, others to help out in the local community, others are there to do practical ministry with the churches or community groups. If you go to the web site http://www.banyanresources.org/ click on "Going The Distance Ministries" and then click on "Costa Rica Project" tab you will see the lay out of the property, the projects that are in the works and what this property is intended to be used for, it is a great project!! (You can click on the above link and it will take you directly there!!)




The first day there we toured the property and saw many different animals and amazing sites. Above is a picture of an animal called a Kinkajou . We were very fortunate to see it as they usually only come out at night and are very shy, many people who we talked to who lived there had never seen one. We were walking through the property with Jeremy our new found friend, when he spotted it running along the ground and then taking to a tree. We ran along following it as it leaped from tree to tree at amazing speed. At one point it stopped high up in the canopy of the trees and gave us a clear shot to get this picture.

You may have noticed that we figured out how to get the pictures incorporated into the body of the blog rather than to the side only. This will allow us to keep the pictures up with each blog and then change them each time we post. You can click on "older" posts or "newer" posts and read the earlier or later blogs and see the pictures that were attached to them, this will be handy if you have missed one or wanted to go back and view previous pictures.

Here are a few pictures of some of the things we saw when we were on our short trip. In this region there are lots of spiders, big bugs, huge frogs and toads, snakes, vipers, iguanas, lizards of all types, parrots, birds of every shape and size including toucans, anteaters, armadillos, kinkajous , tigers, ocelots, jaguars, and the list goes on!!

If you were having this guy for supper he would probably feed about four!!










This is a very big bug, he was about four inches long!! Notice the pincher's on the front of his head.





Well we will be signing out for now! We will update you and let you know what we are up to!!

Blessings!!

Doug n Gayla

What's Up?

Hello There!!

Well we are settled in and staring to develop a routine!

There are new teams arriving here on the base all the time! There is a team of eight people here from Nashville that arrived yesterday, they are doing a full renovation on the kitchen and bathrooms in the main lodge. There is another couple and their family that arrived late last night, they are here to work with the Mission Adventures Ministry for approximately five weeks. There is also a couple and their family coming for the summer months to work with the ministry here as well!

Gayla is keeping very busy helping out in numerous areas! She has cleaned out and set up the little store here on the base and is over seeing its operation. This store is used by the teams that come and go as well as the base staff, the funds from the store help to offset some of the day to day costs of the base. She is also involved in helping with kitchen duties and with the children of the staff families, in future she plans to be helping with their school field trips and other day to day activities.

I have been doing numerous things over the weeks: fixing up and organizing the garage, fixing the bus, car, chain saws, lawn mowers, working on the property and getting it prepared for the teams that are coming, keeping the goats and chickens, building pens for the goats, etc...

It has been a long stretch since we have had a day to rest so we plan to take a few days off and go to a place called Guayabo, which is up towards the northern end of the country. We met a great fellow from there who invited us up for a visit if we could find the time. He works with a ministry that is called "Going the Distance", you can check out their web page at http://www.banyanresources.org/ , go to the Costa Rica Project tab. So if you are trying to contact us it may be difficult, we will attempt to check our e-mail as much as possible so please drop us a note! We are planning to be gone from Monday the 18th of June until Friday the 22nd of June.

Since the last post we have had two new additions to the goat family here! When I went out in the field to check on the goats and make sure that all was O.K., I found one of the Mama goats had just delivered a brand new kid! I was there just a couple minutes after the event and it was a great expierience getting the little one up and feeding. Two days earlier the same thing had happened, we went out to the field to check on the goats and there was a Mama with a new kid. Both of the new ones are doing fine!

We will update you when we get back, please keep the e-mails coming we look forward to every one of them!!