Rachel in her own words

Hi Everyone,

First off, I would just like to thank you all for your prayers and support as I am settling here in Costa Rica. God has been doing some really amazing things and he has been opening so many doors for me here. I would have never imagined that I would have so many doors open that I would have to pray about which ones to walk through!

Through my ministries, God has really been teaching me to be more of a leader and to step out from the sidelines and take on more responsibility. I am working WAY out of my comfort zone but it is teaching me to not only learn new skills, but to depend on God. I´m also realizing that I am better at some things that I never would have tried. So what exactly am I doing here?

For the last month I have been working in a Children´s home as a English teacher 3 days a week. The director originally told me that I would just be an assistant to him in class to help with pronunciation. Well, I arrived only to be told that I was the teacher and thrown into a class of very energetic kids with only a few minutes to improvise a lesson! This has been a real challenge for me as not only am I learning how to teach but I´m learning how to work with kids that come with so many issues. The majority of these kids were abused and abandoned by their parents. Most of them were old enough to remember it. They crave any type of attention whether positive or negative. So you can imagine what its like trying to not only teach, but teach in a second language. God has truly been good to me though and has given me the strength and patience to teach.

I am also working at a children´s feeding centre in a nearby neighborhood helping with the kids during the bible lessons, washing dishes and handing out food. Two people are leaving soon and it appears that I will be doing yet more teaching to the younger kids. With a bit of extra support last month, I was able to contribute to the cost to install electricity in this building. Thanks to everyone who contributed! The feeding centre is also used for bible studies in the evenings for men and women in this community. This is what I do on Saturdays.

Although I only have 4 set days per week of work, I am finding that God is filling those other days every week. I have been doing a bit of everything from helping with construction to translating for missionaries and missions teams. This week I will be helping with a missions team in Orosi with some translating and other odd jobs.

One door that has opened and that I am praying about, is the opportunity to work in the slums with a local church. I will be meeting with the pastor next week to see his ministries there. I am really excited for this because my heart and vision has always been to work with the poor and to just serve. This pastor´s church is right in the slums so its exciting to think that pretty soon I might be a part of this amazing ministry.

I will end off by asking for prayer in different areas and believe me, it is very much needed:

1. Please pray for the childrens home. They are currently running 4000.00 dollars short every month and have been operating on loans. This has been very stressful for the director there. Also pray for me as I learn how to teach and pray that I would be patient and loving.

2. Please pray for me. As I am surrounded by so much need, sometimes it is so hard to not be able to help in a financial way. Pray that God will give me discernment on which ministries to help with my time and also that God will move the hearts of people who can help in the areas that I can´t.

3. I have applied to a missions organization. Please pray that I will be accepted quickly. The process can take months before and if I am accepted. I know that this would open doors to much needed support financially and it would give me the ability to give tax deductible receipts.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well, and I would love to hear what is going on in your lives as well. Thanks for being such a blessing to me and to my ministries.

God Bless,

Rachel Garber

Rachel's ministry update

Back in April (it seems like so long ago now) I shared our daughter's move to Costa Rica to carry out independent ministry. Now, after two months in country, Rachel reports that ministry opportunities are multiplying to the point that she has to pray about which to accept. One of the reasons for this is that a surprising number of North American missionaries in Costa Rica don't speak Spanish and therefore welcome her help in their ministries.

At this time Rachel is scheduled for 4 days a week working in a feeding centre and teaching children in an orphanage. In addition to that she will be interpreting for a short term mission tour group which is being hosted by one of her missionary contacts.

An established missionary, Keith Britton, has this to say about Rachel on his blog at http://keithbritton.blogspot.com/ (the caps are his):

THIS PAST MONTH I WELCOMED A NEW MEMBER TO GOD IN ACTION MINISTRY, “RACHEL GARBER“.SHE COMES TO US FROM “HIGHLAND MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH” IN CALGERY ALBERTO, CANADA. TO SAY SHE IS JUST A BLESSING WOULD BE AN UNDERESTIMATE. SHE IS A WONDERFUL BLESSING THAT GOD INSPIRED TO COME HERE TO BE ON MISSION WITH HIM IN COSTA RICA TO HELP HELP THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES THAT LIVE IN POVERTY OR WITHOUT PARENTS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HIS LOVE AND MERCY AND GRACE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS.

WHAT IS REALLY COOL, IS THAT SHE ALREADY SPEAKS SPANISH AND HAS ALREADY BEEN TRANSLATING FOR ME. (I CAN SPEAK OK, BUT HAVE A HARD TIME UNDERSTANDING SPANISH). AS OF NOW, SHE WILL BE HELPING AT LOS QUIZAROS (WERE WE FEED THE CHILDREN) EVERY SATURDAY AND TEACHING ENGLISH AT AN ORPHANAGE UP THE ROAD FROM MY CENTER IN CORONADO ON MONDAY AND TUESDAYS. SHE CAN ALSO HELP ME ADMINISTRATIVELY, RACHEL HAS OPENED HER HEART TO SERVE GOD WHEREVER HE IS.

SHE IS AN INDEPENDENT MISSIONARY LIKE MY SELF, …PLEASE WELCOME HER TO GOD IN ACTION MINISTRY ON MISSIONS IN COSTA RICA.

......and strikes back!

I am typing this with 3 fingers of my right hand, primarily to occupy my mind during T3 withdrawal (a decision I am beginning to reconsider). The good news is that I no longer have nausea, the bad news - well let’s just say that I have good minutes and then I have bad minutes. But since I am writing this anyway, I’ll share it to let those who are interested know exactly what happened. By the way, thank you very much to all who have left their prayers and wishes for us. I really desire your continued prayers, especially for Diane.

Diane and I were involved in an accident on our motorcycle at about 6:00 pm Saturday. The situation really blindsided me. We were going 55 kmh west bound in the the left lane of 16th Ave NW a few blocks before Home Rd when a car travelling ahead of me in the right lane slowed down and waved out a guy who was waiting to pull out from a driveway on the right. He peeled out across the westbound lanes to make a left on 16th, saw me and stopped dead across my lane.

I had 50 ft to react. Couldn't go right, there was that car stopped in the right lane, couldn't go left, there was oncoming traffic. All I could do was hammer both brakes and wait. My front wheel locked and we went down and just had enough time to bounce and tumble once before I slammed into the car. Diane missed the car and rolled to a stop beside me. We were both conscious but groaning.

Diane had multiple fractures in her right tibia, just below the knee. I understand the joint is uninvolved. She will need surgery for that once the swelling subsides, as well as to replace a chip out of her cheekbone. The small mercy in her case is that I had bought a Kevlar jacket for her just before the accident, so she was spared from road rash.

I hit the car facing backward as I rolled along the pavement, contacted its front tire around my right shoulder blade, broke that as well as 5 ribs both front and back. The tumble itself blew out my left wrist, tore the flesh of my right pinkie finger clear away from the bone and gave me road rash on both arms and knees.

I’ve rerun the accident in my mind and wondered if there was any way I could’ve/ should’ve avoided it. But I don’t know. I usually watch for those scenarios when I drive and try to make eye contact when I see someone waiting to pull out, If not, I will slow down. But in this case, we were in the second lane out from the curb with traffic in the lane between us. The vehicle of the “considerate” driver who waved out the other guy was also screening him from my vision and me from his. The other guy of course was wrong to trust her wave and not look for himself, but the ironic thing is that the person who is most at fault for this will never be charged. Does she even know what she did wrong?

As I was lying on the operating table, the surgeon leaned over and said, "What were you riding?"

"A Vulcan 750"

"So are your riding days over?"

"No."

"Well if you are to continue riding, I suggest you get a newer and larger bike. That model is a little small to be riding two up."

I kid you not, those were the doctor's orders. But I'm taking that under advisement for now.

The Midlife strikes

In February when Diane and I were in Maui a shortage of rental cars on the island forced us to rent a motorcycle as an alternative for the duration of our stay there. For 10 days we rode around together on 2 different Harleys, a Buell and a Vulcan. It was a blast, Diane actually got to feel comfortable riding on the back and for me it brought back memories of an earlier time when for 2 1/2 years I went almost everywhere astraddle a 1969 Honda CB450.

The 450 was a sweet machine. An engine size of 450cc may not seem like much today, but at the time it came out it was the largest Japanese bike available. It had a top end of 104 mph (109 with the wind blowing just right) and cruised quite easily at 80 mph. Its only drawback at such speeds was the engine vibration which travelled up through the handlebars and rendered my hands numb after an hour or so. (This was before the days of counter-balanced, rubber mounted engines.)

Some have criticised the CB450 as topheavy, but I found it to be not only agile but very well balanced and stable on the highway as well. I once had a catastrophic blowout of the rear tire at 60 mph on the 401 near Windsor, Ontario. The flapping tire caused the bike to yaw uncontrollably up to 45 degrees from the direction of travel, first to the left, then to the right and then to the left again before I slowed down enough to pull off and stop. Each time the rear end threw itself from one side to the other, the motorcycle amazingly seemed to self-correct its steering without any conscious input on my part. (Or was it the hand of God? I guess I'll find out when I get to heaven!)

Such hair raising moments aside, I enjoyed every mile I rode the 450 - all 14,000 of them. I finally sold the bike in 1978 when Diane and I moved out west, and aside from a six month period in the 90's I have been off two wheels ever since. Until Maui, that is.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that I got the motorcycle bug back, and started shopping for a bike after we returned from Hawaii.

I decided that I was too old for this:

and that I was not yet old and fat enough for this:


Besides, the price tag on both models was a little rich for my budget. So I settled for something a little more age-appropriate:


This is a 1986 Kawasaki 750 Vulcan. It is a light cruiser now out of production which was a standard for about 20 years and is now considered somewhat of a classic. It's a good way to go for a used bike - proven reliability and parts are easy to get. It cost me all of $1,900.

Like me, it was in its prime 20 years ago but has been reasonably well maintained. When it was rebuilt 8000 km back it was bored out to more like 850cc, so it may have improved on its designed top speed of 124 mph. It is unlikely however that I will ever find out if that is so. (I will make that concession to age - or to the wisdom which comes with age!)

The motorcycle handles well though with Diane on pillion I find it wallows a bit on the bumps and wanders slightly on a tight curve. I'll try tightening the suspension which should fix the first problem. I not sure what I can do about the latter however. On the cruiser frame the centre of gravity is a little further back than what I am used to, and at 483 lbs I'm guessing that the bike is not quite heavy enough to offset the effect of Diane sitting over the rear wheel. As a result, the front wheel is just a little light, hence the wandering.

The carburetor flattens out somewhat at 7000 rpm, which is not surprising since it has sat for 3 years. Taking it apart and otherwise servicing the bike will be a weekend project once tax season is over.

Then I'll be able to try its legs.

One flew away.....

Ten days ago I returned from a week in Costa Rica, having flown down to accompany our youngest daughter Rachel in her move to that country. Rachel will be serving there with one or more local missions in outreach to the poorer people in the slums around San Jose. She doesn’t plan to return in the foreseeable future.

This move has been a long time coming. When she was a child, Rachel gravitated to the missionary stories in the church library; she had no notion of becoming one herself, but such books drew her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was not until she went with her church youth group to inner-city L.A. on a short term mission trip that Rachel began to get the idea that such service might be for her.

In her high school junior year Rachel asked us for permission to go to Latin America on a student exchange. We put her off until graduation, but when she finished school she hadn’t forgotten. Rachel worked a year, and then with her savings and a newly arranged line of credit she launched out and went to Costa Rica to study Spanish in a home stay program for nine months.

Upon her return from Costa Rica, Rachel worked for another year and then enrolled in the Calvary Chapel Bible College in Lima, Peru. During this time Rachel felt a growing, newly definite sense that God was calling her into missions. It was not so much an aspiration or an ambition so much as an imperative, an undeniable sense that this is something that she must do in obedience to God’s Spirit.

In reponse to this, Rachel began working singlemindedly to pay off her debts upon her return from Peru last April. Her goal was to become free to go back to serve in Costa Rica on a full time, permanent basis. She largely succeeded in reaching her goal and now she has followed through.

In doing so she is going against the grain of conventional thinking. Rachel has no training other than the year in bible school, no sending mission (she is being supported directly by family and friends) and no firm arrangements at the other end. She also has had to come to terms with the knowledge that any marriage hopes she might have (and she is a normal young woman in this respect) must take second place to God’s call for her.

Rachel also has been discouraged at times by the voices of our comfortable Christian culture: “What are your qualifications?”; “Why do you need to go away? There is so much to do here”; “What about a career? You need to think about your future” and perhaps most insidiously, “The era of Western missions is over; don't go, just send money”. (Rachel says that when she first encountered this thesis in K.P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions she became so angry that she threw the book across the room.)

But what Rachel does have is our wholehearted support. We are very proud of her decision to put God first in her life, we trust her ability to discern His call and we know that whether or not she is specifically supposed to serve in San Jose, she is walking God’s way and He will steer her right.

Still, it’s not easy to see Rachel go. As our youngest she is the one we feel most protective toward even at the age of 23. And she is a young 23, dewy-eyed and innocent looking. No one would know to look at her that at 19 she traveled alone in a dodgy part of Nicaragua, or that she made her way at age 21 through bandit-infested jungle to visit the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon.

As the time approached for her departure, I became more and more aware that in the busyness of our arrangements we would have very little quality time together. I therefore asked Rachel if she would mind if I flew down with her. “Since this is to be your future”, I said, “I want to be the one who walks you down the aisle into your new life.” And she agreed.

We flew out on a red-eye flight March 30, arriving in San Jose about noon. We rented a small third world style SUV called a Terios and spent the next four days at Manuel Antonio beach on the Pacific coast and driving around the interior before ending up in the Orosí valley near Cartago Thursday. During these days Rachel and I walked and explored and prayed together. We talked perhaps more than we ever had- about her dreams and her feelings and how God had brought her to this point. It was a precious time and passed all too quickly.

On Friday we spent an hour wandering around Desamparados looking for the place where Rachel would be staying. Our job was made especially difficult by the fact that Costa Rica has very few street signs or numeric addresses. All we had to go on was the vague description “700 metres south of the playing field close to Dos Cercas.” We spent all of our time looking without success for these two landmarks, until in our random driving we stumbled on the condo complex itself. Only then could we backtrack on the directions to find the playing field and fix its location so that we could find the home again the next day.

That night I treated Rachel to a fairly sumptuous meal at the Outback steak house in Escazú. We were both aware of the irony that the price of this feast was a quarter of what would be her monthly budget for living expenses (Rachel is adamant that she will live according to local standards). Say farewell to North American affluence!

The next morning I brought Rachel back to her new home at which we met the woman whose apartment she would be sharing. Yahaira (sounds like Elvira) is quite friendly and invited us in to chat for a little while. When she asked Rachel in Spanish if our family was Christian I found myself giving her an impromptu testimony of faith.

Our introduction stretched to include the serving of a crepa and coffee and the review of Yahaira’s family pictures (one can’t decently rush these things in Latin America, even with a plane to catch), but the moment came when I could delay no longer. I gave Rachel a hug and a kiss and that was that. Our little girl was on her own.

Primeval Sin

On my flight back to Calgary early Sunday morning I sat beside a businessman who was flying in to to see his sales rep in the city. As we landed he said "My salesman will be here to pick me up".

Since it was 1:30 am and there were plenty of taxis at the curb, I thought that was a little over the top on the salesman's part and commented "Wow, that's dedication".

"Well, he knows what to do to keep his job in a recession."

My neighbour must have read my mind, because after a pause he continued in an attempt to justify himself: "In these economic times things get a little more primeval."

I'm not sure what the man meant by "primeval" but in the context I gathered he was describing a Darwinian order of relationships based on raw power: dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, etc. In other words, he was pulling his employee out of bed at an ungodly hour rather than pay a $25 cab fare - just because he could do so.

I could only shake my head at how foolish and shortsighted this fellow was. Did he really think that his employee could not make him pay for this in some other, more significant way? Many employers really do not understand how often their people go the second mile for them unasked, and how poorly the business can operate when they stop doing so. And they forget that grinding the peons will only make the good ones flee at the first opportunity. But sin is like that. It's not only wrong in itself, but it's self-defeating as well.

I retrieved my luggage and walked outside to catch a taxi. I was going to stay at my son and daughter-in-law's for the night, but since I could get my own ride I didn't wish to disturb their sleep.

Jesus believes in you

The lyrics below were written by our son a few years ago. The title may raise a few doctrinal eyebrows, but if you read it through you will see how it makes perfect sense. The song encourages us not to have faith in ourselves, but to have faith in God's purpose for us and in the sufficiency of His Son's life in us.

Jesus Believes in You

He kneels down to wash their feet,
They know not what he sees
The night before He dies,
The next day to be crucified
And they wonder why
As He looks up at these men,
They are broken, imperfect reflections
But He doesn’t just see them as they are
He looks on past the scars
Sees who they can be,
When He dies and sets them free

Jesus believes in you,
Jesus can see right through,
He sees past the pain
Past the guilt and shame
Jesus believes in you

After the deed is done,
After Satan thinks he’s won
The disciples run away,
Hide in fear and shame
Peter was one of them
Back to the nets he went.
What kind of man was he?
Denying his Lord times three

Jesus believed in him
Called him to feed his sheep
He looked beyond his pain
Past his guilt and shame

Jesus believed in him
Saw who he could be
That in His name
Peter could set men free
Jesus believed in him

So what are you going to do?
When you screw up, without a clue?
Will you turn your back and run?
Or will you stop and face the Son?
Will you dwell on your shame?
Or will you find hope in Jesus’ name?
Look and see the truth
Jesus sees life and Him in you
Jesus believes in you

- Carl Garber, 2006

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant...

II Cor. 3:5,6