4/2/05

Hi Everyone,

Both John Mark's family and my family spent time with our son Nathan is the last two weeks. We loved some pictures of him & of course, hearing about how Nathan is doing. We are very proud of him & feel like he is well-grounded in his thinking & just a really nice young man! We look forward to seeing what God will do with him and what type of work he ends up doing. We know that Nathan is the kind of guy that would like to have a friend/companion to go through life with so we are praying hard that he will be patient until God brings along the right type of person for him.

This has been a pretty ordinary week. My head is full of past tense conjugations in both preterito & imperfecto. It'll be amazing if I can remember them with any speed & use them correctly! Christine left on Thursday afternoon for a weekend camp. It is quiet around here without her but she will be back Sunday afternoon. After having our Friday night & Saturday morning meetings, John Mark & I headed to the mall for a little shopping (sandals for rainy season) and saw "Spanglish". We were pleasantly surprised by the theme & the decisions made by the main characters.

John Mark & I have decided that we need to get serious again about a little more weight loss. We have been eating out more frequently, especially for lunch, and that, combined with fewer low fat choices & sugar free foods, snacking between meals, & a bit less aerobic exercise than before have all taken their toll. It's always tough to cut back because food is such an easy & relatively cheap source of entertainment! You can pray for our self discipline.

John Mark writing:

I started with another Spanish teacher for phonetics on Tuesday. My classmates range from a Chinese girl who is nineteen to a volunteer coordinator who is in his late fifties, so anybody would fit into these classes!

I found out that an old researcher friend from the IMB is available to come to Panama to help do interviewing of the Chinese, so as to understand their world view. He sounds honestly excited about this project, which is amazing considering how many of these he has done through the years. Hopefully, that project will help us to develop an appropriate Church Planting Movement strategy.

Last week we had a great visit from a retirement age couple from the Denver area. They are Vern and Doris Olson. Vern has started over 40 churches in the mountain states and is originally from Aurora, Nebraska. He and Doris have been married for only two years. She spent many years in Hong Kong doing Cantonese ministry. They have just finished a short term ministry in Panama with the Cantonese Chinese community there.

They shared many interesting and informative stories about their time in Panama City. The first weekend they were in Panama City they joined the Chinese church for several activities. The group gathering Friday evening eventually grew to 30, waiting about an hour for the good Chinese meal while the Olsons mingled among them, visiting, answering questions, and getting acquainted. Most were young people. Not all were Christians. Most are “displaced people”, with complex problems. A young fellow Vern counseled had quit his job 3 months ago wanting to go to Bible school to train to serve the Lord, hoping someone would support him! His wife is not with him in this and their marriage is in crisis.

Unemployment in Panama is high, leading to much thieving and robberies. Chinese businesses get targeted most because they are known to work hard and save their cash. In contrast, if given a raise, a Panamanian worker may stay home from work until he’s spent the extra money! The robbers know where there is likely to be money! A young Chinese mother came to church a couple of days later with her lower face covered. Robbers had burst into her shop for money. Though she held a baby in her arms, they shot away her jaw with a rifle so she couldn't call the police! Now, 7 years and 19 surgeries later, she is still embarrassed to show what is left of her face!

After some radio interviews in Chinese, the Olsons and several of the Chinese believers went out visiting in the Chinese community. One young mother had come to a relationship with Christ through the loss of her husband two years ago to cancer. As a single mom she supports her two daughters by working in a beauty salon. She has to give half of her pay to the owner of the shop and business is poor. Doris and some of the Chinese ladies went to give her some business--$6.00 US for a haircut! One of her daughters, 8 years old, has a rare blood disease so needs a blood transfusion every month to stay alive! So many heartaches! Life in Panama is tough for many. The Olsons and the church talked and prayed with her boss who wants to be a Christian and has prayed to receive Christ but feels he can't go to church because of shady business he’s involved in—a massage parlor to give work to single moms abandoned by their husbands, who still have children to support. Prostitution is involved. They make half. For a year he has tried to sell this business to pay off his mortgage on the place! He feels his reputation is too bad to come to church until he can get rid of this business. The Chinese community here knows his connections and “my coming to church would hurt the reputation of the church”, he said. “I will come to church and make known my desire to follow Jesus when I can get rid of this business”. Heartaches!

I know this prayer request is a bit unusual but would you please pray that this seeker can quickly sell his prostitution business? He is also divorced—his Chinese wife didn't like Panama so returned to China. What should he do about the Panamanian woman he’s living with, has a child by, and is his partner in the salon business? Sin weaves a tangled web but Jesus CAME to set captives FREE!

As a side story, our favorite Chinese restaurant, located a few blocks from our home here in San Jose, is run by a family named Tan. We had gently witnessed to them and left Spanish/Chinese tracts at their place. Last Saturday afternoon our missionary friends in San Jose prayer walked the area and we stopped and asked if we could pray for them. Surprisingly they were excited to have us pray. On Easter morning we were talking to our Chinese pastor about the family and he said, "Oh, I know that family, the Cantonese church led them to a relation with Jesus last week!" Stephen Leung, our Chinese pastor, is planning a study furlough at seminary in Louisville, KY next year and is hoping to do more research on reaching Latin Chinese for Christ. He has been a wonderful encouragement to us. Pastor Stephen suggests that we consider trying to start a Mandarin work in Panama City, as all of the existing Chinese churches are Cantonese.

Thanks for your prayer support,

John Mark

4/10/05

Today we had a wonderful service at the Mandarin Baptist Church here in San Jose. Pastor Leung was dressed in a bright red robe and baptized two adults as an outward sign on the inward relationship that they have with Jesus Christ. Is this important? You bet! Pastor Stephen wanted use to understand that Christianity is a relationship not a religion, so he proceed to drive it home in THREE languages besides his native Cantonese! Why baptize people wearing a RED robe? Because red in the happy, joyous color of blessing in Chinese culture. Pastor baptizes people "face first" rather than backwards as I have done it in the United States. As our son Nathan says, "It's all good!"

We are now in the last two weeks before the end of this, our first trimester. Our little "mentes" are full to bursting with all of the sentence patterns & verb conjugations that we have been learning. Its a little strange to be back in the mind set of final exams/tests at our age. We are weary & ready for the two week break between trimesters. We have Monday off for a national holiday. If you're interested in the history behind the holiday just do a little research on a dude by the name of Walker who tried, unsuccessfully, to lead a rebellion in Costa Rica with a bunch of mercenaries. At any rate, we are happy to have an extra day off of language study!

NOTE: Juan Santamaría Day. The 11th of April is the day Ticos commemorate the death of their national hero, Juan Santamaria who heroically died in the Battle of Rivas against William Walker's troops in 1856. The week-long celebrations include band parades, concerts and dancing. And of course, there is much food and drink, including all the typical favorites.

All of the IMB missionaries at the language institute have an oral exam at the end of each trimester. They are affectionately known as "opies", which stands for OPI (oral proficiency interviews). I had mine yesterday, Friday, & am happy to have it over with. It is always a little intimidating to speak into a tape recorder. The interviewer asks lots of open-ended questions & wants you to elaborate on the question, using as much vocabulary & sentence structure variation as you are able to. They last for about half an hour. John Mark will have his on Tuesday afternoon. I know he would appreciate your prayer support on that. As I type, someone in the neighborhood has their stereo system cranked up & is listening to "How Deep Is Your Love" by the Bee gees. How odd!

John Mark's parents are coming to visit during our two week break. So far, we have a trip to the beach at Punta Leona & a trip to Volcan Arenal planned. I'm sure we will make some additional day trips & jaunts around the San Jose area while they are here.

A cultural aside: Our roof is made of tin, like many other peoples' and therefore, it makes quite a loud racket when the neighborhood cats wander across it in the middle of the night. We pretty much ignore the noise now but we had some pretty nerve-wracking moments during our first few nights in San Jose, imagining that burglars were scaling our roof.

We are pleased that Christine is enjoying her guitar lessons and is practicing faithfully. She did some baby sitting this week & had two sleep overs this weekend so life is good! She had a term paper due on Friday so she is relieved to have that chore over with. Nathan's freshman year at Kearney is drawing (no pun intended) to a close as well and he is seriously considering taking a full load during summer school if he can find enough applicable classes. We shall see. . .

That's about all of our news from San Jose for now. Take care & keep in touch. . .

Cheryl & John Mark Hansen

May 12, 2005

Today I want to contact Chang Siu Mui who served as a short term missionary in Taiwan is working in South America with Chinese and we are hoping to get insight from her and Paul & Aurore Trinh on how to best reach the Chinese in our region for Christ. The Trinhs like Siu Mui are multi-lingual and have been based out of the Dominican Republic. We would love to work on a team with them in the future. I am hoping to go to Panama City next month with my language teacher.

Cheryl and I started teaching a Chinese high school/college class at the Mandarin church here in San Jose, Costa Rica. We prepare our lesson in Spanish, English and Mandarin. We don't know from week to week whether language will be the best to use in the class as some of these folks have lived here all their lives and others have been here for just months. I have three hours of private tutoring in the morning and your mother has 4 hours of group classes at the school. Tonight we will visit at First Baptist of San Jose. It is a downtown and the pastor came to our house and invited us to come and join them.

We are joining a weekend outreach in Barranca, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, May 14-15. This is a busy port city on the west coast of Costa Rica. The national pastor/church planter with whom we will work is recuperating from his heart attack and still wants us to come. He’s got a big heart.

We have training at fellow missionaries' (Mark and Pam Grumbles) house Friday at 1-2:15 pm (except for those in school – teenagers). Christine and several other teenage MKs will join us for this outreach. Leave El Parque del Bosque (the big park west of our house) at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, May 14. We will saturate with prayerwalk and gospel tract distribution all day Saturday and also invite to an outreach movie that night. This area has already been saturated previously with the Gospel of John. We are the “SECOND WAVE.”

Christine is doing well considering she is in the fourth school in year! She has made friends here in Costa Rica, but sometimes is "odd man out." A new girl just came a few days ago and Christine and she hit it off well. This is great news. She still enjoys Annie Grumbles, also. Christine is taking guitar and is doing very well! She has started to grow and is 5'4" now, she may get as tall as Cheryl yet. I am glad that she and her girl friends are going on this GO project.

John Mark

5-22-05

NEWSFLASH - the Hansens are alive & well in Costa Rica!

I talked to Nathan Saturday morning. He was going to host Amanda Morse's parents at Kearney yesterday. Nathan has been dating Amanda for a couple of months. They continue to enjoy talking on the phone each evening while Nathan is in Kearney and Amanda is working at a Greek restaurant in Omaha. He is half done with two classes this short semster as the first session of summer school only lasts for 4 weeks. I think he enjoys his music class, but finds the astonomy class really challenging. His teacher is from Nicaragua. As I understand it, Nathan's first session ends on Friday, June 3rd. I believe he has May 30th off, but I don't know how busy he will be with studies that weekend. I will let him speak for himself. Nathan is thinking about coming down to Costa Rica in August.

Here is the newsletter Cheryl put together yesterday:
_________________________________________________________________________

The last few weeks have been a blur of finishing up the last trimester of language school, traveling & "hanging out" with John Mark's parents for 10 days, attending a 2- day storying conference, helping a new family of missionaries get settled in, jumping into our second trimester of school, and going on a weekend missions trip to Barranca. We could write an entire letter about any one of those events ( & probably should have) but we seriously doubt that your "trasero" (bottom) would last through that lengthy a newsletter in one sitting. Therefore, it will have to suffice to hit a few high points to bring you up to date.

We were pleased with our classroom grades and the results of our oral testing after our first trimester & feel like we are well on our way toward our language goals. John Mark is working privately now with his language teacher, Harold, at home for 3 hours every morning. It is intense but John Mark is making good progress. Cheryl likes her new teachers very much. They are very well trained & prepared for class each day and have lots of creative ideas. Cheryl feels like her conversational skills will really grow this trimester.

John Mark's parents are extensive travelers so they probably didn't see much that they hadn't seen before but they were game for about anything we suggested. They tried the ocean waves at Christine's insistence and waited around in the dark to get a glimpse of the lava from Volcan Arenal glowing red. Grandpa even tried the water slide at the pool! Not bad for a 72 yr. old! Grandma survived 3 stitches to the chin and a marathon session at the local beauty shop. They attended both Spanish & Mandarin
church services with us. Christine ventured out a couple of times as tour guide for her grandparents & discovered that she CAN do it.

We had five new IMB families arrive in Costa Rica to begin language study this trimester. Those of us who were already here were assigned as Big Brothers & Sisters and helped them set up housekeeping, find their way to the grocery store, hire maids, etc. Hooray! We are no longer the "greenest" missionaries on the block. In addition, Christine is enjoying a new girl, Keverly Dyson, who has just arrived.

Several of our long term missionaries in Costa Rica put together an abbreviated missions trip for we language students. Since we can't miss language school, they fit it into a Saturday-Sunday schedule. We left early on Saturday morning for the town of Barranca, which is near the west coast port city of Puntarenas. Together with the youth & some adults from Iglesia Bautista Barranca, we prayer walked during the morning and distributed gospels of John in the afternoon, inviting people to a showing of the "Jesus" movie that evening. We saw some decisions for Christ that weekend, enjoyed praying with people, were encouraged to see a number of people reading their gospels of John in the neighborhoods, enjoyed meeting & fellowshipping with the people at Iglesia Bautista Barranca, and got an "up close & personal" look at living conditions & the hurts in peoples lives. It was time well spent.

Nathan had another great semester at Kearney & decided to hang around Kearney & take 9 hours of summer school. It may work out to fly him down here for a bit sometime this summer- we're still seeing what will work best. A young lady from Omaha who is a recent Christian is occupying much of Nathan's attention this summer. We are happy for him & praying HARD! We understand that he is meeting her parents this weekend. . .

We met the pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista-San Jose through a mutual contact & discovered that he is from Panama & has an interest in work with Chinese in Panama City. We have begun attending their Thursday night service in central San Jose. He has been the pastor of this church for only a short time but we like his vision for the church and his understanding of the neighborhood that the church is in. It is a business district during the day but has low income housing & is considered a dangerous place after dark. Pray for our safety as we (John Mark & Cheryl) take taxis to & from the church on Thursday nights. Also, we are teaching a Sunday school class for youth at the Chinese church on Sunday mornings. It is an interesting mix of cultures & languages. They come from Taiwanese homes or Tica homes and most use three languages in varying degrees of proficiency. We generally use Mandarin, Spanish, &
English during the lesson, depending on which kids are there, to make sure everyone understands the lesson. Its pretty wild! Pray for good communication & building relationships with these kids. Not all are
Christians.

Last but not least, Christine is going to be spending 16 days in the States. She leaves for the States on May 27 and will spend some time with each set of grandparents and some time with her friends in Norfolk as well. She will fly with another missionary family who is returning to the States for their daughter's wedding. Besides spending time with friends & family, Christine is hoping to do some clothes shopping. She will fly back on June 12. The rest of the summer she'll be in a kids' intensive Spanish program each morning.

That about brings you up to date with us. Thank you for praying for us & for lifting up our language study. There is no way around it, its just a long hard process! Our love to all. . .

John Mark & Cheryl Hansen

5-31-05

How can we pray for your ministry and family?

Language school-wise, this has been a pretty uneventful week. I heard an interesting fact in conversation class, however. Did you know that in Costa Rica, by law you must be Catholic in order to be president? Interesting! This is how my week in conversation class is scheduled :

Mon.- describe my weekend
Tues. - present a magazine or newspaper article to the class & discuss
Wed.- prepare to discuss an assigned topic
Thur. - present a 25 minute bible study/devotional
Friday - interview people in the community about a topic & report their answers to the class

The part of language study that I don't like is being in a group class. For me, it brings out emotions like competition & comparison that I don't like & that detract from the joy of learning the language. When we studied Mandarin in Taipei, we had individual tutors so I never had those kinds of feelings. I was on my own learning schedule & it was just me & the teacher. In a group class there is the temptation to compare yourself to other people & get worried if they speak a little faster, remember words that you've forgotten, or use a sentence pattern that you screw up regularly! You can walk away feeling defeated when there's really no good reason to. Also, I'm enough of an introvert that I prefer talking to another individual rather than giving a report in front of a class. But. . . since I'm making good progress in Spanish I can't really justify an individual tutor. That's an ongoing thing that you can pray for me about!

We have a fair number of robberies & armed street thefts in the neighborhood we live in. We try to be careful but there really isn't much we can do besides pray for God's protection. This stuff happens in broad daylight, to groups of people, sometimes with a weapon, sometimes without, so its very hard to guess how to avoid it. Our language school is supposed to be arranging for some training for the students as far as security issues are concerned. Fortunately, for our peace of mind, its hard to imagine it happening to you so you don't think about it alot!

Stress: We all feel stressed at times. God is gracious in that we don't all get super stressed at the same time over the same things! Usually one or two of us are doing well when number three is stressing out so we can pull them back in & let them vent a little. Our lives have a familiar pattern to them again now - which relieves a little stress. We choose our adventures when we're up for it & follow our routine, ie. going to certain restaurants, movie theaters, malls, etc. the rest of the time. Having Nathan here for around 6 weeks this summer will be somewhat stressful but we are looking forward to it regardless. My parents are coming for 10 days in August ( after Nathan leaves) which will also be stressful in its own way. We'd appreciate it if you kept us in your prayers during those times, especially!

Nathan will finish his summer school classes by June 30 so we finalized plans for Nathan to come from July 4 - August 17. We're not sure how much "stuff" he wants to do while he's here but we are exploring options for missions trips, language study, traveling, & of course, just hanging out! John Mark & I will still be in language study Monday - Friday so we will not have the freedom to travel, except on weekends. We are looking forward to his visit.

We put Christine & her girlfriend, Kaitlyn, on an airplane for the States on Friday morning. She felt completely confident even though this was her first time flying without us. I admit we were not nearly as confident & plied her with lots of last minute advice on how to hang on to a passport for 12 hours! Needless to say, the trip went well & she is now in the care of her grandparents for a few days. She returns on June 12, which means that we are childless for two weeks. Hmmmm. . .

John Mark is planning a 6 day trip to Panama from June 23 - 28. He will be traveling with his tutor, Harold Mendoza, and Harold's mother & adult sister. John Mark will be poking around Panama City meeting with a variety of strategic people while Harold & his family will be attending a family wedding. You can be praying that John Mark has discernment as he talks with people & gains much valuable information. We want this to be a valuable language learning activity as well.

The Thursday night service that John Mark & I attend at Primera Iglesia Bautista - San Jose is fun because most of the people are from the Limon area & have a Carribbean background. They rarely use their English with us but when they do, it has a fun Jamaican lilt to it! The part of the service when we partner with others & pray is always terrifying for me - lots of unusual tenses & pronouns. Pray for me!

That's about all of the news from here for now. . .please include us in your prayers, its what keeps us going.

John Mark & Cheryl