And then there were two!

That’s right.  One trimester of language school at CINCEL is officially over.  I am now 1/3 of the way to knowing all there is to know about the Spanish language (if you believe that- there is a deposed Nigerian prince in need of your financial assistance).  I am off to a pretty decent start though.  The language school is meant to give the missionaries a solid start to their lives in Latin America so they can do ministry and continue to develop their language skills in the country of God’s choosing.  I definitely think it is doing that.  I am able to understand what someone is talking about roughly ½ of the time so I am excited about that.  Of course, more often than not their comments are of a simple variety:  

“What would you like to drink/ eat?”

“How are you doing today?”

“That will be 6500 colones.” (The Costa Rican currency is around 500:1 with the US dollar, so 6500 would be roughly $13.00)

“Did you see that guy just now, he was REALLY tall?”  (This is said more about me than to me, but I still count it.)

The point being, if they want to talk about politics or anything more than the daily norm, I am lost.  But considering where I was, I feel like I am coming along well and anticipate the more complicated stuff to come in the next two trimesters I am here.  

It is a bitter sweet time though.  On the one hand, I am very excited we have finished 1/3 of the stay here, that I am learning the language and we are that much closer to Mexico.  I am also excited that several friends who just graduated are now either in the states making final preparations to move or already doing the work in the country God has called them to.  But, that same excitement brings some sorrow as we had to say goodbye to thirteen different people that I was just barely starting to get to know.  The amazing people I have become privileged to call friends are now scattered throughout North and South America with a great chance that I won’t ever get to see some of them again.  While there are a few minor negatives about being in Costa Rica instead of Mexico to learn the language, I am forever grateful for the fact that I am able to build this network of friends and colleagues while here. Several of our friends are still here, and several more will show up in January.  Many of them will leave in April with more coming in May.  It is a world of hello’s and goodbye’s while at CINCEL, but one I am thankful God brought me to.

Meet the Teacher, Part 1

Over the next few months, we are going to try to interview each of our four teachers so you can get to know the lovely women who are teaching us Spanish.  This is the first of the interviews.

"Thankful."

To change things up, we figured we'd let you watch us for five minutes instead of read about us for five minutes.  I know you're "thankful," and we are too. 
As if you couldn't tell, this was our first and only attempt at filming this. 

Hunting: A Love Story

If you aren’t a fan of hunting- don’t get bored.  There is a twist in this love story.  Keep reading!!!!

In case you were unaware, I love hunting.  Since rifle season for deer is quickly approaching in Oklahoma I figured it is time I make a post about hunting.  I know- it’s shocking I made it through two whole posts without talking about hunting; but you know what they say- third time is a charm.  I miss hunting.  I miss the cold air blowing through my facemask/ stocking cap.  I miss the sound of acorns falling from trees and hitting leaves on the ground.  I miss the adrenaline rush I get at the sound of a squirrel climbing through the trees as it crashes through the silence of the woods and tricks my ears for a few moments into believing a deer is walking toward me.  I miss the sound of an actual deer walking through the woods and the immediate realization of how dumb I was for thinking the squirrel shaking the dead leaves in the trees sounds anything like a deer walking through the leaves on the ground. 

I miss the heart stopping beauty of seeing the deer pop out of the woods into view for the first time; the sense of anticipation as I decide whether it is a deer I should shoot or not.  The enjoyment of watching the deer that aren’t “shooters” walk around, eat, pick up the faintest of noises I can’t even hear and swing their heads around so quickly I don’t even see them move- all in the event of danger being nearby.  The exhilaration when I do decide to shoot a deer.  The fact that whether it is with bow or gun, every move must be so calculated as to not make a single sound, because if I do I won’t be able to move for 2 minutes as the deer stares me down trying to figure out where the noise came from.  The jubilation in my heart as I make a shot that I am positive is a good one and that somewhere in the woods is some delicious meat God has blessed me with waiting for me to go collect.  The satisfaction I feel when finding the deer, knowing I have successfully harvested it.   I miss all of it.

The work involved in getting the deer to my vehicle, taking it to a place where I can process it and the extensive work involved in butchering the deer….. I don’t miss that as much. But the taste of deer steak; the tender, delicious, mouthwatering, perfectly seasoned (in my opinion) deer steak.  I miss that for sure.  I miss deer hunting the most as it is the most delicious type of hunting as well as the most bountiful (in terms of amount of meat from each animal harvested).  Even though I haven’t done it as much lately, I miss duck hunting.  Season hasn’t started yet, but I miss pheasant hunting as well.  I will miss the annual trip we take every first weekend in December and the “guy time” of that weekend. 

I miss other things as well, but most of those I still get in quantities.  I miss my family, my friends, and my familiar surroundings.  But, I still get to talk to my family and friends, and am becoming familiar with these surroundings.  I get no cold weather, no hunting, and no time to sit in the woods and be part of nature (which is a huge part of the appeal of hunting).  I miss it.

What is most amazing of it all though is how little I miss it.  There are days that are worse than others, but overall, I’m doing well.  God is amazing.  I am not sure what I expected exactly, but I expected it to be worse.  But God is gracious.  For a variety of reasons, I am fine with not hunting.  The biggest of which is this:  God has called me.  He has called me to this place.  He has called me to be a voice in the darkness.  He has called me to proclaim his death and resurrection: his love for the world.  I used to have a thought in the back of my head of, “why would God call me to a place where it is HIGHLY unlikely I’ll be allowed to hunt?”

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”   

If you know me very well or are friends with me on Facebook (Cory Wantstogohunting Hogan), then you know I love hunting.    It was a large portion of my life, and one could easily argue my life revolved around hunting as much as possible.  But I choose to lay that down for the sake of Christ.  When I willingly give up that which is temporary to introduce other people to that which is everlasting, He is gracious and makes it much easier. 

Don’t get me wrong- I still love hunting, still miss it, and will schedule vacations to visit family so that I can at least spend one morning in the stillness of the woods, but Christ’s call makes giving up my former joys easier.  He replaces them with other ones, joys that are more permanent and pressing- joys of the Lord.

"Learn Spanish" they said. "It's easy" they said.....

Most of my life when it came to someone talking about learning Spanish, they would always say it’s easy.  “All the letters only make one sound,” is a phrase I’ve often heard.  Well, for the most part they are right.  The vast majority of the time there is only one sound for each letter.  Learning to read Spanish is pretty easy as a result. 

Learning to understand what you are reading…. Well that is a bit more difficult.  You have to memorize the meaning of a ton of words and grasp the sentence structure.  It is difficult, but do-able.  It definitely helps that several words sound quite similar to English words; for example, “contento” would be happy (content).  “To deduce” would be “deducir.”  Having those cognates strewn throughout what you are reading makes understanding what you are reading significantly easier; still difficult, but easier.  

However, to understand what someone else is speaking to you……  Well that sometimes seems impossible.  We recently learned how to break apart words into syllables.  It was more or less the same as in English, so I picked it up with relative ease.  Then we started discussing how, when words end a certain way with the following word beginning a certain way, you couple those words together and say them as one.  One example is that to say “my sister loves” you would say “mi hermana ama.”  But since the first word ends in an “a” and the second starts with an “a” you would say only one “a.”  “mi hermanama.”  Also, since “mi” ends with a vowel sound and “hermana” starts with a vowel sound (the H is silent) it would be said “miermanama.”  While this occurs in English speech as well, people aren’t taught to say it that way. I can’t help but wonder how on earth anyone is supposed to understand this language when you have an insanely limited vocabulary and people only say half of each word anyways!  A phrase I have learned though, is “que dificil es hablar en español.” (How difficult it is to speak Spanish!)

“El libro está en el estante” (The book is on the shelf).  How would this sentence broken into syllables?

1.        El   li   bro   es  ta   en   el   es   tan   te.

2.        E   li   broes  tae  ne   les   tan   te. 

Answer number 1 makes perfect sense to me.  Answer number 2 is the correct answer. 

Overall I am doing fairly well in class and it is coming fairly easily, but after learning what I have so far it definitely explains why I could hardly understand two words of what people were saying when I would hear people talking in Spanish.  Angela has made it to the point of understanding Spanish as a second nature, and I am sure I will too.   God has called me to be a missionary in a Spanish speaking country so he will provide the ability to minister effectively….. but that seems like a difficult undertaking at the moment for sure.

This just in from the news desk: Life is different in Costa Rica

Once we arrived in Costa Rica, I quickly learned one thing: the way of life is different here.   I know, I know- my skills in observation are astoundingly deep.  More than learning life is different here; I learned how quickly we adapt to those differences.  The most immediate example of this difference is that walking is a way of life here.  

I have been to churches in Oklahoma that have shuttle systems for the people who have to park on the outskirts of society at the ends of the parking lot.  You get picked up by the stretch limousine of golf carts (a cartousine if you will) and driven like royalty to the front door.  You get to wave at all of your friends while you ride by as a king would wave at his peasants from his chariot.  I am not knocking that in the least.  But, it is interesting that my apartment is basically at the edge of a large Assemblies of God church parking lot.  The walk is about the same as at large churches in the States.  While I was in the States, I would have been bummed that I had to park on the edge of Pluto (which is now, and forever will be, a planet!).  Especially as there was no cartousine to charter me back to civilization.  I used the cartousine before and I’ll do it again.  However, for now Angela and I decided we wanted to attend a different church, so every Sunday we walk half a mile to the bus stop, ride it for about 15 minutes, walk another ¼ mile to church, and then repeat the process to come home.

In the final few months leading up our departure from the United States, we lived in Mustang, Oklahoma.  My sister was about ¼ mile from my house, the snow cone stand about 1 mile, and a grocery store just under 1 ½ miles.  If I went to any of those places, I was driving.  If I needed to go to get something I had left at my sisters, it was necessary for me to drive there, because I only had 30 minutes before I needed to start doing something else.  The ONLY reason to walk to the snow cone stand is because we had an evening free, the dogs would enjoy the walk, and Angela wouldn’t feel as unhealthy if she walked two miles to go drink 2 cups of liquid sugar rather than driving.  But to walk to the store was just idiotic.  Why on earth would someone walk that far knowing they are going to have to walk back carrying a whole bag of groceries?

Now that we are in Costa Rica, the nearest grocery store is about ½ mile away from where we live now.  Even if we had a car, it would be ridiculous to me to even think of driving there.  I will walk a half mile there and back, uphill both directions (downhill both directions too), carry the groceries all the way back during my hour break between classes, and not even think about it twice.   It is common practice for the entire city.  Granted, the roads are not as nice as Oklahoma.  To take a taxi at the wrong time of day here could mean it will take 30 minutes to get 1 mile as a result of the old road system and massive influx of traffic since they were built.  It is true it probably is quicker and easier to walk for the short trips than it is to take a vehicle.  But, even when congested traffic isn’t a concern, it is interesting how quickly my mind has changed from “why would I not drive there?” in the United States to “we would only be on the bus for a mile.  Let’s just save the $1.50 bus fare and walk.” 

I feel like I’m supposed to reveal the epiphany I had as a result of this post…I guess this is it.  We as people take advantage of the conveniences our life affords us.   There is nothing wrong with that.  Everyone does.  Unfortunately- for Americans, many times that means life has afforded us the ability to be pampered.  I am not saying we are lazy at all.  We work hard, we are just pampered.  From only walking 39 steps and then a short drive to be at the grocery store to being able to buy canned diced tomatoes at that store (ask Angela about that), we live a pampered life in the states.  It is interesting to see life outside our box.

Cory