Dick Francis

It’s sometimes difficult to think of a topic to write about for these bi-monthly e-mail updates. I usually try to take advantage of holidays as well as strange creature sightings to provide fodder. But what do I do when there are three holidays in a row as well as a close call with a scorpion?

Valentine’s Day is always good inspiration for an update, but many of you already received an e-mail from my dad commenting on this holiday. So I won’t bore you with a repetition of its history. I don’t have much to say about President’s Day; except I’m sure those of you who have the day off are sure thankful for Washington and Lincoln sharing the same birth month. Mardi Gras could be an interesting topic because I have lots of good memories of getting a few days off when we lived in Louisiana. I feel like I have used scorpions enough for my updates, so there is no need to tell you about that. (Except to say that it was very big and very near my foot!!)

So what shall I share with you today?

Dick Francis died yesterday. Although I never met him, he was a great friend of mine. Of course he never knew I existed, but his books have kept me company on many vacations, flights, and lonely Saturday afternoons. His books were predictable. The narrator always fell in love with an unlikely woman; he always got beaten up at some point, but always solved the mystery in the end. Equine themed mysteries, my favorite place to read them was up at our cabin looking out at the two horses next door. I would snuggle into a sleeping bag and watch the fog roll in as I devoured the latest Dick Francis. Now I know there are only two more of his left for me to read, and I’m kind of sad.

Of course I need to find the books first. Sometime soon I will go to San Jose and scour our used book store for the final Dick Francis books. I will save them for the moment I can truly savor them at the cabin and celebrate my final moments with my good friend.

I don’t think I will be getting up there for a while. I will be traveling to Ecuador on March 1st to participate in training four new International Teams missionaries. Also in March I will be in the US to visit family, returning to Costa Rica in April. Also in April, it’s my great hope and desire to travel to Africa with Catalina to investigate the possibility of her joining the team in Kenya. Finally in May I will be traveling to California to be at Suzie’s, my current roommate, wedding. Maybe after all those flights, I will settle into my sleeping bag and devour Even Money and Silks.

What author or book is your guilty pleasure? Will anyone else out there miss Sir Francis?

Park and Shop

Does anyone outside of my family remember a game called “Park and Shop”? It’s a board game from Milton Bradley, and the goal is to move your car and pedestrian pieces from home to a parking lot. Then you must move your pedestrian through town accomplishing several errands before returning to your car and heading home. If your pedestrian landed on an unlucky box, you might have to pick a card that would add another item to your list.

I played this game often at my grandparents’ house and from it learned how to plan out my errands in the most effective way possible.Unfortunately, my skills failed me yesterday.

This week I am house sitting for my parents while they are in Mexico. Really I am dog sitting, but I guess the house needs to be taken care of as well. Yesterday I went down to San Isidro to do several errands. Within the first few minutes of my walk, I realized I had already made a strategic mistake. I was headed to the post office, when it would make more sense to start at the butcher’s. So I turned around, and headed to the butcher first. Then I began to walk back to the post office only to realize that I should have gone to our little super market right from the beginning. Oh well, adding it on now would only make things worse. Post office to mail 80 letters? Check. Vegetable stand for ingredients for tonight’s stroganoff? Check. Walk four blocks past my taxi stop to the super market to buy other odds and ends? Check.

In all I had to walk 13 blocks to finish all my errands. If I had thought through it all correctly, if I had used my park and shop abilities, it should have taken me only 9. I fear my mom would have been disappointed in my park and shop abilities yesterday. But really, she shouldn’t complain; I’m taking care of her dog. :-)

Christmas Turtle Watching

There are only 100,000 or so female leatherback turtles left in the world. Thirty-three of them came to Playa Grande last year to lay their eggs. Each turtle comes six to seven times during the breeding season. Each time she lays 80 eggs, of which only a fraction are fertile. Of 1,000 eggs laid, only half will reach adulthood. Leatherback turtles eat jellyfish and other sea creatures and can grow to weigh over 1,000 pounds.

I happen to know all this because on December 27th Krista, my mom, and I went to a national park to turtle watch. We were not guaranteed to see anything, but God allowed us the great privilege of watching this giant marine reptile lay her eggs on Playa Grande in Guanacaste. The turtles come thousands of miles to lay their eggs at night on the beaches where they were born. They come anywhere from three hours before high tide or three hours after high tide. That is why we found ourselves playing games at the national park at 7 PM; there was a good possibility that we would have to wait there until 1AM.

Fortunately we were called out to the beach around 11:30. For two hours we took turns with another group of sight seers peeking at the turtle as she dug and redug a nest, laid her eggs, and covered them with sand. As she laid her eggs, we also had the privilege of watching another turtle swim toward the beach and begin climbing up to dry ground. We finally got back to where we were staying around 1:30 in the morning, sleepy, hungry, but content.
As the Christmas season ends (I still need to take down the Christmas décor at my apartment), the journey of the turtles makes me think about Mary and Joseph traveling far from home to return to Joseph’s familial home. Of thousands of babies Jesus’ age, only He survived. And now we wait for him to return.

Waiting for turtles, a bus, or an appointment is hard. We keep looking at our watches. We keep wondering, “When will it show up? I’ve already been here too long. How long will I wait?” We get anxious. We ask ourselves, “Did I get the wrong day? The wrong time? The wrong place? Did I already miss it?” And when it (whatever it was) shows up, we are so relieved we almost forget how long we spent waiting.

Is that how we are waiting now? Anxiously looking for the coming of the Lord? I know that I am guilty of being more impatient for my bus to arrive than for Jesus to return. Let’s take some of those waiting moments to remind us of how we should wait for Jesus to come back to earth. This time to take us with Him.