Happy New Year

Hello Dear Friends, We hope you were all blessed with a great Christmas.
We wanted to share with you a little bit of what the Lord has been doing in our lives.

We were able to go to the States for Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful blessing to have our friends and family around us. We had truly missed "home". The funny thing is that we are so comfortable here in CR that we started to miss it a bit as the weeks went on. We were glad to be back!

We recently decided to get an apartment of our own in town. We have been soo blessed by our landlord and his wife. It turns out that this man knows my grandfather and most of my family from back when they were teenagers, so there's almost an unspoken bond that we have now become family to them. We were able to have a great community dinner on Christmas day at their house and we got to meet all of our neighbors...about half of them speak English...imagine that!

We are so grateful to our family who so graciously opened up their home to us, but as you can imagine we are soo happy to be on our own.

Our apartment is 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, very safe and in a great location. We can walk almost to anywhere, the closest is the grocery store, bakery and the farmer's market! 
We can't wait as we prepare for the arrival of our first guest Elena. She will be here on January 2nd.

May each of you be blessed with an amazing new year.
We look forward to having you visit us. We love you! Vane and Ryan

FOR PICTURES OF THE APARTMENT CLICK HERE!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100119697058163.2389748.23204109&type=1&l=2825f5847c

2 Months and counting!

It's crazy to think we have been here 2 months. Although our attitudes have been tested many times God remains faithful and continues to stretch us.

My mom came to visit us about 3 weeks ago, it was wonderful to have her here but at the same time it was much harder than I expected. I don't know if it is because part of me HAS to block out “that” emotional part of myself because otherwise I would miss everyone very much. If I sit and think about all the things I have left behind I wouldn’t be able to move forward…and that’s what it’s all about right now…moving forward.  I’m excited to have our own place with our things which are currently stored at the Griffin’s…I think this will help me really know that this is our NEW home!

I’m ever grateful for today’s technology. I’m able to “see” my nieces and nephew, family and friends. I know that 16 years ago we could barely call Costa Rica (from Georgia) b/c it was so expensive (Skype is free…find me under Vanessa.martin31)

On my last post I shared with you about the Cabins at the Volcano…well as of right now it doesn’t look like that’s the direction we need to take. Initially we were kind-of heartbroken, it just seemed like a good plan, something we could really enjoy doing. After all, the owner and his family’s request was something we could not meet…we saw this as God’s way of saying…“no, this isn’t it”. I’m not gonna lie it was hard getting that answer. My friend Marvin said “if it didn’t work out it’s because whatever God has will be much better”. I’ve taken those words to heart and we are trusting that the Lord will show us the next step soon.

I love how much Ryan has embraced the C.Rican culture and truly loves it here…I also love that sometimes he just forgets how we are no longer in the States! 

“It'd be nice to find a McDonalds right now”...just came out of Ryan's mouth.

You see its 7:30 on Saturday night and we are heading home from the beach… there are no Drive-thru’s in sight and we’ve not had McD’s in 2 months! (I just "googled" as the nice co-pilot wife I am and there aren’t any for at least an hour).

We got word of another facility near the beach for potential business for us. (This time we are learning to be guarded and not to get our hopes up.) It took us two weeks before we could arrange a time to go visit because Costa Rica was hit with a tropical depression that caused a lot of flood damage and landslides blocking roadways, etc.…it was pretty intense. I had never experienced anything like it. Ryan was pretty happy since he loves the rain. :P

Finally, last Friday we loaded up and headed towards the port in Puntarenas, we took a ferry ride across the Gulf of Nicoya and not long after we found ourselves in the remote roads of Gigante…a small town on the bay. We had a wonderful visit, the property is absolutely beautiful! Met some really nice people and started to formulate a plan of action…one we need to present to the owner. The place is set and ready for business; our job would be to bring the people in. Please keep us in your prayers regarding this opportunity.  We don’t know what the outcome will be but we are expectant…God has a divine plan all we are trying to see it to completion. 

 We sent a small survey out to get some feedback in preparation to our meeting next week. If you would like to take our survey please click this link: http://freeonlinesurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=5002xsja280nyss982419

Remember the McDonald’s comment? Well, on the way home we missed our exit. We took advantage of the opportunity and drove to Santa Ana, a very “Americanized” town we recently discovered and love!

 The question of the night became…Wendy’s or McDonalds? With no hesitation we went with McDonalds! 

We would love to hear from you! We love you! V&R 

Abuela's Birthday Yesterday!

Georgia's Southern food in CR by Vanessa

Ryan's Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Blue Dot-Home base  Red Dot-Beach Villas

  

Pieces of the Puzzle

Hey Guys,
Sorry it's been a while...things have been moving pretty fast (and slow) around here and I've been too caught up to write. So here it is…
I would first like to thank God for his continuous reminder of LoVe and mercy to us! Ryan and I have been able to count the times the Lord has provided for us in the past few weeks. I can't believe we've been here almost a month! I think it’s gone by fast...I wonder if Ryan agrees.
As some of you may know we have our own car! We were able to purchase a Toyota 4Runner, it’s a manual transmission...which means I haven't driven yet! I'm thinking this week I’m going to have to put on my big girl panties and give it a try. Just to give you an idea of how long it takes to do anything around here, we purchased the 4Runner on Wednesday September 7th and we weren't able to go back and pick it up until the next Wednesday while we waited on all the paperwork to get done. Moreover, the dealership lost part of the paperwork so we had to ride to Alajuela with the owner to redo part of it. Haha!

Last week we celebrated Costa Rica's Independence Day on Sept 15th. There were so many things I'm sure Ryan thought were crazy but to me it was as if I was a small child re-living my childhood memories. At church on Sunday they had a whole service dedicated to Independence Day...there were plays, singing the anthem, clowns and folkloric dancers. The night before on the 14^th we walked down to the town square to watch the “Lantern Parade”. The legend says that when independence was declared from Guatemala they went through the rest of the Central American countries with a torch telling the people that they had gained their independence…The cool thing was that this is a reenactment that is done every year. At the end of August someone starts traveling with a torch stopping at every capital and from there others bring that original fire to their town squares, our fire arrived on wed 9/14 at noon. It was quite the commotion. All the little kids are encouraged to create their own original lantern…thankfully it had poured earlier that day -not that night (like its happened before many times) and the parade was a success!  The next day the whole town was in Party-mode, we made our way down to the streets and watched the beginning of the school band parade, it was so HOT! We waited to see my aunt and her school march in front of us then we escaped the Heat!

We finished the morning with an authentic Costa Rican Meal :Olla de Carne: Soup…yep you heard it was hot and we had soup…this is the kind of soup you just don’t pass up! It was delicious! Thanks Grandma!

Ryan’s birthday was the next day; we took a little getaway trip to La Fortuna de San Carlos; a beautiful town at the foothills of the Arenal Volcano. We packed our car and took our old faithful map and got underway. It was a wonderful site…the 2 ticos were free to go, funny how a car can make you feel powerful for a second! J We traveled THROUGH the mountains and valleys of the beautiful CR country side…yes there’s a direct highway…but why would you pass up the opportunity to play “miss the pothole”, the small country roads are much more entertaining. J 35 minutes before our arrival we made a pit stop at KFC for a pre-birthday celebration…it was the best KFC experience of my life! J As we continued to drive into La Fortuna we were met by the amazing view of the volcano…it was breath taking.

At that moment we realized that this town could possibly become our new home…you see what I've not yet shared with you is that this trip had 2 purposes... 1. A birthday getaway and 2. a job opportunity.

Ryan and I have been patiently waiting on the Lord to reveal himself to us. We are ready to take on this new phrase of our lives; we want to do something for others and even for the community. We had been looking at properties to purchase, but of course everything is quite out of reach for us right now. At the beginning of that week I made this declaration: “ I'm going to find a job before the week is over”. A week later it feels like an answered prayer.  Here is the story…

La Fortuna is a well developed area thriving on tourism. My uncle Ever’s cousin owns land there: 3 acres to be exact.  1 acre of the property has 8 bungalow style cabins…and not to make the story very long they are looking for someone to lease the property and get this little resort on its feet again. Remember when I told you I would tell you later about the business plan we were writing….well that was it. We were looking for land to build cabins to use for tourism and retreats; I just never imagined such opportunity in a “well known” area of CR. Although things are not set in stone…God has supernaturally open doors we never imagined. I'm beyond impressed by the God I serve! There is soo much potential here that we cannot wait to get started! It’s a risk we are willing to take, believing that God made a promise to us…FOLLOW ME AND I WILL GIVE YOU THE DESIRE OF YOUR HEART. We are learning that giving up our “normal” American lifestyle has been hard and it even continues to be but the reward is bigger. I think life is based on seasons…right now it’s our season to “leave and cleave” to God and each other. We ask that you keep us in your prayers; we have a meeting this Wednesday!  

We had an awesome weekend! We enjoyed the beautiful view of the volcano and the thermal waters of the hotel, enjoyed a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant “La Choza de Laurel” and a pit stop at the Cataratas(waterfalls) del Toro . A road that made the back of your neck stand up! There were no railings and it was just big enough for our SUV to squeeze between the rock face on one side and where the road had collapsed from earthquakes on the other.  You could look out the side window and straight down a cliff, sometimes more than 400 feet down.  Lori and Reg we thought about you as we made our way through every turn…

We hope you have your passport ready…the cabins await you!

With love, Vane & Ry

Laughter :)

Sometimes all you can do is laugh! We sure have been doing lots of that around here lately...

I think Ryan and I know most of the boys inside jokes and we even came up with a few of our own... I say we are doing pretty well!

Chicken chops! Yep, that's right, chicken chops...it was a poor menu translation we took to liking, so now if we eat "chicken breast" we call them chicken chops! :)

************************************************************************

The Birthday Odyssey:

My GA driver's license expired yesterday...my goal was to get it changed to a CRican license on Monday so we could be done with it (I had 2 options: change it over before 9/1 or let it expire and take the driver's ed course and the driving test) I was determined to get things done before it expired....I’m not ready to drive in CR yet... :) I spent all day Monday getting the documents necessary.
On Tuesday, A friend of mine drives us to "the DMV" in San Ramon, a town just outside of Grecia....to our surprise they were having a county fair in honor of Saint Ramon....the offices were closed for the day, we figured we would take advantage of the drive and visit around the area.

Not exactly how I wanted to spend my birthday...but Wednesday morning at 7:30 am ANOTHER friend comes to pick me up, and we head back to San Ramon...Ryan knew better and stayed home this time...

We get there only to find out that the license transfer I need is NOT done there!!! HAHAHAHA!! They send us to the capital, San Jose, a 40 minute drive in the opposite direction... Laughter! That’s all we can do! Things are different; it makes no sense to get mad about it...all we can do is keep moving forward. Good news, after a 3 hour process I now have a Costa Rican License....now if I could only drive a stick shift! PROBABLY a story for another day!

After the whole morning "Odyssey", my girlfriend Marjorie took me out to lunch! It was a sweet time...

Later that afternoon Ryan walked me down to the nearest nail "salon" as my birthday present. I got to be girlie girl and paint my nails and toes! (if you know anything about me...you know this makes me very happy) :D Best part it only cost $6 bucks!

I will never get tired of thanking the Lord for my sweet family. Later that day we had a family pizza party at grandma's house...all the boys came home from College to be here for the birthday party. Grandma baked a cake for me...and even my parents were there with us through Skype...(as mom put it "she wanted to be in on the commotion") We told jokes and laughed a lot, ate pizza and sang happy birthday...it was a birthday I will never forget.... I was sweetly reminded that I got my laugh from my grandma...that loud kind of laugh with a bit of a snort at the end if we laugh way to hard....yep, that was the kind of laughing we were doing last night...

It's not about the presents....it’s about the love. I know for a fact that my heavenly father loves Me! He tells me every day.

Pizza Pizza

A family Affair

Pretend crying

In the works

Notice Mom on Skype on the PC

Singing HB

Uncle Ever

Grecia

Our New Home

Grandma and Grandpa's Garden

Monti's Peppers! :)

My Tico Ryan

My Grandpa is a boot maker! Handmade-old school!

*************************************************************************
On a more serious note, once I week I will be sharing with ya'll our prayer needs. Please don't feel obligated, we know a handful of you are praying for us and we wanted to share more detailed prayer points!

Here are a few things:
-Continued prayer for our immersion into the CRican culture.
-Easiness for Ryan to understand the language and retain all the things he's learned and learning.
-Healthiness: we are being very CRican drinking "their" water and feel just fine! :)
-Clarity of God's vision for our lives...we started writing our business plan. (more on this later)
-Direction in regards for a job for Vanessa in the mean while.
-A wonderful deal on a small SUV, which we are looking to purchase pretty soon.

****************************************************

As Ryan continues to work on the language, now I defiantly cannot talk about him in Spanish! HAHA!! Today we will meet Ryan's Spanish teacher: "Teacher Ana".

...looking forward to seeing what the day will bring.
Happy Birthday Elena!

We love you!

The Martins

Las Aventuras de Vane

Hey guys, 

It's funny how sometimes something drastic has to happen to value our life. 
FAMiLY is something we should never take for granted yet it seems to be the 
thing we neglect the most without recognizing it. 
Today I'm grateful for the wonders of technology and the easiness it gives us to 
Skype with our loved ones far away. We've been able to talk to our family, 
helping us feel "close" to them from miles away....

As I was washing dishes today,  the title of today's entry came to me: "las 
aventuras de vane" (vanessa's adventures).  

You see right now one of my duties is to keep Ry informed of...life and it's 
current events! Haha.... 

Yesterday we went to get new SIM cards for our iPhones, one would think this was 
a quick process with no complications...well in reality it is...well if u 
understand the system! :) for some reason I just could NOT understand. We must 
of been there for what seemed like 45 minutes... Ry would look at me and say 
"well, what's the deal?" and all I could say was "I'm sorry I can't explain it 
to u bc I don't get it". :). Imagine his frustration... I remembered reading in 
my morning devotion, "if u need me call my name." As soon as I said the name of 
Jesus everything  became immediately clear and I got it.  Now I know it wasn't 
about the phone plan.  It was about my NEED to call on Jesus!  It was just his 
sweet reminder to me. 

Later that day we went to "Walmart" ( it's a Walmart owned company). We were 
like children in a candy store. It's not very large ( maybe like the size of 3 
baby stores put together) but it has a large selection compared to  other 
places. We got a few things we needed and a few more we wanted..Ry got Oreos and 
I got a few of my childhood snacks.  funny how somethings make our heart smile. 

********  ********

Today we were able to set up our Costa Rican bank account, God answered our 
prayers. We were treated with patience and respect as u can imagine all the 
questions we had. it also helps when ur uncle knows a guy at the bank! :)
I can't complain about anything. God has promised to be good to me and I've seen 
it over and over. 

Our adventures will continue as we make new memories. We live with my aunt 
Ileana, her husband Ever and their 3 sons, Andy, Daniel, and Jonathan..all 
awesome young men in college who love the Lord! I love how special they have 
made me feel. I love how they will all four (3+Ryan) will pick on me, we all 
have a good time. There's lots of laughing going on around here...especially 
when I forget how to say things in Spanish... The latest one was spider. Yes, I 
forgot how to say it... So now at random times of the day I shout out "araña", 
so they know I remember! :)

Spider at Grandma's garden!

A few yrs ago---ry, andy, jonathan, daniel

Find me on skype at Vanessa.martin31

Love u guys! Vm

New Chapter-Page 1

Hey Guys, 

Wow what an awesome day!! God was TOTALLY in control of today!! everything went soo well. 

Check-in at the Atlanta Airport is always fun!! HAHA but we made it...can u imagine us with 7 bags (5 gorditas---big bags) and only 4 hands to carry it all....thankfully we only had a fall out once...(when we were getting on the train all 5 of the gorditas fell off our pushbuggycart-thing and went all over the place...kind strangers...(mostly men with 1 carry-on)  were quick to help and off we went again. Ry and I were just glad to know the bags would be turned in momentarily at the counter! :)

I'm so blessed! Although today was sad at times, I know i will definately look back on today and know that it was a great day!

We are here in Costa Rica...we don't know what exactly we are doing, but God does. HIS Plan is better than mine, so today I chose to embrace that.

The temp is about 68* F, opened window, fan blowing......................happy!

Pictures coming soon!

Good night!

Las 5 Gorditas

Turn my sadness into Joy

When u really think about it at times change requires u to make selfish decisions. And once u make those decisions it doesn't necessarily mean that following through with it is going to be easy. I'm not going to lie, TONiGHT I'm struggling. I can see myself in CR, yet right now I can't bare the thought of saying bye, getting on the plane and being happy about leaving my family and friends behind.   I pray that Jesus makes my heart feel better, right now and the next days to come. I want to be happy, to enjoy being around the ppl we love and excited about those we are getting ready to see. Transitions are hard... But this one has to be the hardest. I imagine it's a struggle of 2 desires... The will to follow God in the way he's asked or the desire of my human nature to not rock the boat and stay here...out of selfishness? Fear?
But as I type this I'm reminded that my treasure is in heaven and that I do...really want my life to count for his kingdom.

I'm blessed that I can call my sweet husband to come cry with me, it reminds me that it will be a team effort. To be each others cheerleader when times get tough.

Keren and David, I love u with all my heart. I will miss seeing your babies grow up... I will miss our conversations and late night card games. But I know that our love will keep us together (and Skype). Please Don't let ur babies not know their auntie vane, that is one of my greatest fears. I love u.

Emotional night but still trying to count my blessings through it all.

Ticos TRUSTing God!

Thanks for checking out our blog!

I decided that this will be a great way to share with you about our New Aventura!

For those of you who are wondering why "Ticos", well it's what people call Costa Rican's... instead of saying "poco"(small/a little) ...we say poquitico... as in just a little, little bit... For example: my name is Vanessa, then it goes to Vane, then Vanessita.  Ticos add "ita" "ito" to everything! Now we will work on making Ryan 100% TiCO! :)

Wow,  I can't even believe we are less than a week away from being in Costa Rica (CR). It's like a reoccurring dream we've had..one day in the near future we will be moving to CR..now it feels like a reality.
Words can't describe the anticipation in our hearts! Could you imagine moving to a place far away from everything you are accustomed to?! One thing we cannot take for granted is having family waiting for us... my sweet family.  Now it's time for us to be there to rebuild relationships with those whom I've lost touch with or... those we don't even know. My (immediate) family has been in the states for 16 years... that's a long time to not have birthday parties or even Christmas with my family in CR.  It's all about to change!

Ryan and I are truly trusting God in this new step in our life. We do not have anything figured out or some big eliaborate plan.  All we know is that God has asked us to GO, to seek him and to give him all that we are and HE promised to take care of us, and as a reward he was going to answer our heart's desire! Pretty Cool! Huh?! ..TRUST....

We fly out Wednesday night (8/24) !!

Looking forward to sharing our stories with you.
We love you!
<><><>  <><><> <>

CR-the Road to Poas