Con mucho gusto

We had our first Spanish tutoring session with Senora Nidia today.She is an excellent maestra. We were taught many words relating to food (which is extremely important in my mind :)). We also learned many common Spanish phrases. For example, in Costa Rica, when one says "thank you," the other person usually responds "con mucho gusto," which means "with great pleasure." I like that. This seems to be better to the much more common "no problem" which I hear more often than not in America. Senora Nidia is an excellent tutor and we hope to be conversational by the time we leave Costa Rica in February.

We dug into the books today and catalogued the entire collection. This included stamping, labeling, monogramming, and placing a checkout card in the book. The ISBN numbers are also being entered into the computer system. Here are some of the great kid's books we worked with today. You may recognize the covers from your collection, Moms and Dads! Lisa and Kristin,
the library staff, ensured that all the books were appropriate for the age levels at the school. Sometimes, the Spanish equivalent of American books contain elements, pictures, or other features which are not appropriate. The ladies did a great job of sorting through any questionable titles. There were very few out of the 300 or so that will supplement the library.

We sat down at the end of the day and talked through some more ideas for making the library a top rate area at LPDV. De-humidifiers are desperately needed to maintain the condition of

the books. There may be opportunities to provide additional shelving, and we may be cleaning out one or more areas to house additional teacher resources in order to free up space for more children's books in the library. As always, there are many more projects than there is money and time. As my friends in Mexico used to say, "poco a poco." Little by little, they would say, keep on fighting the good fight, and doing good works, and the Lord will bless and shower favor on these precious institutions.

POPS is the local ice cream shop in San Antonio de Belen. We just had to visit there last night and sample their delicious flavors of ice cream (helado). Pistachio, dulce de leche, and chocolate brownie were all very delicious!

Vickie and I actually cooked arroz con pollo, platanos, frijoles con salsa Lizano, and it didn't turn out too bad. Costa Rican food is delicious, not spicy, and agrees with our American digestive tracts!

God bless you all back home! Thanks for your prayers! We can feel every one of them down here, and God is going to do some neat things. Time for more tutoring.

Bill

p.s. Here is a final picture of our children with Kristin, the missionary and librarian at the school.