LIVING "FULLY"

A happy time with friends and fine food.  

Living fully is the way we know Margie...not only in Costa Rica but wherever she is.  This winter she is doing just that and many times the fullness includes great conversation, game playing, tutoring, and keeping the library in good order in addition to sharing around the table.     Margie writes:   

On the social side, every noon time those of us (about 10 or so) here in the dorm join together in the kitchen, pulling out whatever foodstuffs we might have with which to be creative, and we have a wonderul, lunchtime "banquet" in the dining room all together, laughing, chatting, eating, telling jokes, sharing! Also during this past two weeks there has been living amongst us and studying here a wonderful group of 10-12 American Bible Society translators who are from Guatemala and Mexico. They were wonderfully open, fun, sharing people with whom I now have new friendships as I have learned about their families, their villages, their work, their faith, their incredible knowledge of how to bring a heretofore unwritten language spoken for centuries by thousands of people in Mexico or in Guatemala but now reduced to written language and with the Bible as the principle literature to be now read by those people! Amazing work!! 

In another note she introduces us to her new friend. (imagine that!!!)     Here is am with my new young friend Juan Carlos--yes, we are having lemonade and cheese crackers for a mid-morning snack in the kitchen (once again FOOD) of the dorm...but Juan Carlos is a "serendipity" friend I met last year as I strolled daily along the city street between UBL and the school aps.  He is a 24 year old young man who is here by himself (with no family connections) from Nicaragua--one of the many immigrants from Nicaragua who have come over the border into CR to find work---Juan Carlos was working as a night guard standing outside a little Chinese restaurant one block away from UBL...and he and I just "struck up" a friendship!  I feel quite a bit like a GRANDMA for him---he comes to visit me every so often now when he has a day free from his guard job!  This was this past Thurs a.m. when he "knocked on the library door" of UBL (so to speak).   He gives me a strong abrazo (hug) like he needs a grandma here---and I have learned about his VERy impoverished life growing up in the isolated countryside of Nicaragua (Latin America's next-to-the-poorest country).  Juan Carlos has had virtually NO formal education, is illiterate in Spanish, so we have gotten for him a book for young adults like him so he can teach himself to read and write with very little "teacher" help.  Hallelujah! 

  Blessings abound for me in just such friendships---!!!  I'm pretty sure he'll be coming regularly to visit me on his day off---and now he (and I) has bought for himeself a nice little cell phone so he can keep in touch with his adoptive mother and brother in Nicaragua---he is a pretty lonely young man here as you can imagine, and we both felt it was really important for him to have a phone to be "connected" with folks!  

There has never been any doubt that Margie was placed in Costa Rica for all the right reasons.   She is such a gift to the school and the students and they are truly God's gift to her.   Serve well dear friend.   Love big.   May your strength  continue to match your heart to live fully.