That we make much of Jesus

As a mom, I generally know where my children are. One loves being next to me, stepping on my feet, sitting in my lap or running laps around the house. The other two are currently into wrestling, swinging on vines like Tarzan, playing or chasing baby goats. It's wonderful! However, for a while now I have felt like I don't know where some of my kids are.  I am not talking about the boys but the children yet to be adopted into our family.  Since getting our residency our hearts and efforts immediately went to figuring out the next steps for us to adopt locally in Costa Rica.  I have at least two more kids that are not in my home yet, they are somewhere in Costa Rica but I don't know where they are and that is hard because this Momma wants her kids to be together! For right now, God has asked me to wait on Him.

We have two more rooms in our house that are empty. They have paint, tile, a fan and the trim is done. We were calling them the new rooms because no one is living in them. One night Josh and I  were  sitting down at the table talking about light switch covers and out came the words, "The girls room need some." We looked at each other and teared up. They are now referred to as our daughters rooms. Or as Judah likes to say, "This is my sisters room. Now let's go to my room."

Currently we are still waiting. We are have completed the first of many steps in the process.  However; there are still so many unknowns and uncontrollable things. It is easy to get frustrated and overwhelmed just waiting for an email or phone call. Yet, I know that God is teaching us something, and it is worth it. We have seen so many answered prayers already, from meetings arranged, friends translating, kids being watched, our marriage becoming stronger, the boys begging us to get their sisters home, encouraging words, and the lists goes on. Adoption is not about us. Adoption is a beautiful picture of the Gospel.

Over 4 years ago Josh wrote a blog on adoption and the gospel.  He also has the opportunity to teach on  adoption when teams come down to help. He talks about the earthly struggles that come with adopting; paperwork, time, tears, the unknown, the letdown either pre-adoption or during the adoption process and the financial cost.  The cost is something that we had a hard time swallowing. Why was it so expensive? Why was there so much waiting? Why doesn't God allow it to be easier? And then God....(always, right?) gently reminded us, "Do you realize how much it cost me? It cost me my Son." (For more on this check this blog out The cost of adoption )
Josh ends the message by encouraging the students, adults, teachers, doctors, lawyers, construction workers, and retiree's to actively be a part of adoption.  Whether that means to physically adopt, financially give, or sacrifice time for families that are adopting, we all have the opportunity to take part.  Adoption is not about us. It is a beautiful picture of the Gospel.


We would like to share with you a few things that we are praying for in the adoption.

1. Sibling set of 2
2. At least one girl
3. Timely meetings, paper work and so forth.
4. God prepares us and our kids hearts for this big family
5. That we make much of Jesus
6. Provision of finances

Since we are adopting as Costa Rican residence we are able to adopt domestically.  This comes with a much cheaper price tag.  However, we are in need of some additional funds.  We project that it will cost around $10,000 to complete the process. It may be a little more or less.  We are also looking for additional monthly financial partners as our monthly support has dropped in the past 3 months.  If you would like to partner with us in this kingdom building/ family building opportunity please visit the link below to give a tax deductible gift.  If you have any questions or would like to reach out to us please email me and Josh at allimcarthur@gmail.com and joshmc6@gmail.com.

For a one time gift click HERE

You can visit 68ministries.com and select McArthur family to find how you can give monthly.



Turn our eyes upon Jesus, look full into his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

We want to tell you something

It’s been over two months since we got our residency. And there are days that we still can’t believe that it happened! A week after we heard the news we had a smile that just wouldn’t go away. So grateful!

Last week we picked up our cédulas, basically cards saying that we are here.

Thank you for praying with us as we waited for the news. Thank you for rejoicing with us. Thank you for partnering with us and giving finically to us as we travel over Costa Rica getting important paperwork filled out and filed.

Having residency opens a couple of doors for us. Living Waters Children’s Ranch can begin the process of being approved by the government to be a suitable foster care facility.


There is something else...we should be able to now adopt a child from Costa Rica! We have always wanted to adopt and feel very strongly that God is calling us to do so. We have been encouraged by PANI (Child care services) officials to pursue one of the two options at a time.  So with a lot of prayer and considerations we have decided to dive into the process of adoption.  We are beyond thrilled and excited about this opportunity.  There are many hurdles to overcome but they are nothing for God.  He has been preparing us for this for a very long time.
We have a meeting next week to meet with a lawyer to get some more details. We need prayer for clarity, wisdom and guidance as we work through this.

The boys are very excited! We are very excited for all that God has planned for this family and the children that will one day be here and can join in the chaos.

Good news

So much has happened since the last blog update, sorry about that, we are trying to fix that. If you aren't on the email list please let us know and we can add you. Thanks!

Wanna hear some great news?

The first house is move in ready and we move in today!
Praise God! We can't thank you enough for your prayers, finical gifts, for coming down and working in the rain and humidity to work on the house. What an amazing way to see the body of Christ come together! There is a team here from Georgia who is finishing the final touches and cleaning it from top to bottom. God knew that we needed people with energy, strength, and bringing down someone to install lights and doorknobs. It's those little things of seeing God's fingerprints.

Hopefully, we can sit down and write out a little more detail on the past couple of months. God continues to work in amazing ways!

Prayer requests:

• We are still waiting on our residency but I know that God has that taken care of too. We need that approved before we can move forward with PANI. 
• The busy summer starts at the end of this month. Pray for the teams that are coming down and that God would work wonders in their hearts and life. 
• The interns that are coming to work alongside the teams, Josh and I, Colleen, Charles, Spencer and Neil. Pray for endurance, strength, grace and safety. 

We are so thankful for you all. Praying that God continues to work in your life as well. 

The beginning

I grew up in a Christian home.  I had awesome parents who served the Lord with their life.  My Dad was a pastor of a local Florida PCA church.  I learned what it was like to be a Christian and how a Christian was supposed to act and I became a master of it.  All the mean while my self-righteousness was the leading cause of the chasm between God and I.  When I was 18 God severely shook my world and began to reveal to me my hypocrisy and self-righteous life that I lived.  In the summer of 2006 I had opportunity to serve God in Costa Rica for a few months. This was an amazing time for me but I knew that God wanted me to further my education of Him. When I came back my Dad mentioned checking out Eternity Bible College.  Even though it was across the country I got excited about the adventure of leaving the nest and pursuing God on my own.  At the time EBC wasn't accredited, friends told me that I should go to a school that was accredited.  My desire was to pursue God and His call on my life even if credits were not officially recognized.

The life changing adventure

Within my first week of attending Eternity Bible College I knew God was going to rock my world. God used the professors to quickly break down what I knew about the Bible from years of Sunday school classes and began to rebuild my foundation with His story.  The more I learned about Him my relationship with God became more intimate.  The professors were intentional with their lectures and even more intentional with their relationships.  I not only learned more about God but what it was like to be intentional with God given relationships.  I was surrounded by a group of leaders who were passionate about following God and telling His story.  The leaders of EBC knew that God was calling them to do something crazy by giving students an affordable life changing education.  Even though many doubted the sustainability of such an idea, they went full steam ahead preparing students for a lifetime of ministry. Unintentionally, the leaders of EBC faithfully pursuing their mission from God, even with known difficulties, helped build in me a faith that is not based off things that are safe and secure but rather dependent on God.  This has helped me tremendously as I lead my family into many unknowns in the mission field.

The Adventure continues

I am currently writing this from Horqueatas de Sarapiqui in Costa Rica. Over two years ago God called me, my wife Allison and our three children to help start a family based orphanage for boys with 6:8 Ministries.  We are currently in the construction phase of the first family house.  My wife and I hope to be moving into this home early this year and receive the first child by then end of 2017. The vision is to have ten family homes that can host four to eight orphaned boys.  Our vision is to raise these young boys into godly men who will go out into their communities and raise a family in light of the family life modeled for them.  This is a huge project that will take many years.  These children that will be coming to us will not only get a family, but a mom and dad that models grace, forgiveness, love, an understanding of sacrifice, and English (great for future employment) and Spanish education.

By God's grace He has called us to build and maintain relationships with local Christians in the community as well.  We have been able to support a local church ran feeding center. Throughout the year we have short term mission teams and a group of interns come from the United States to help with the various projects. My wife and I are able to model and use the things that we learned at EBC for them like living intentionally, trusting God in His projects that are way bigger than ourselves and devoting our lives to God without hesitation. I also use the bible education that I received not only for personal edification but also in teaching others of His glorious grace during our chapel times when teams are here.

It has almost been 10 years since I first began my education at EBC. Alli and I feel so blessed to have had the season of learning and growing.  The time spent at EBC was a key factor for who and where we are today.

The Funeral

The funeral procession began at the Catholic church and ended at the small community graveyard.  This was a new and interesting experience for me.  I felt many emotions but could not help but be thankful that God had given me the opportunity to be a part of Miss Anna's life in the last couple of days. The whole community came out to grieve with the family.  After the viewing of the body they took her to the grave and lowered the casket into the ground and buried her.  I remember the deep sound of the first shovel full of dirt hitting the hollow casket and feeling a sense of sorrow.  There is no better picture to the end of life than a burial.  My heart hurt for the family.  I was sadden from what her family had told me days before that she had rejected the gospel.  However, standing there I was reminded how the grave could not keep Christ, that He rose and conquered death.  Before we get to much further let me rewind to the beginning.

 One of my favorite things to do with missions teams is to go into our small town and pray for our neighbors. Last week I had the opportunity to take Riverside Baptist Church.  I wanted to go find Miss Anna who had been terminally ill with cancer. After a sweet time of praying for many of our neighbors we went to her house. I had been a few times before to pray for her but this time it was different. Usually she was by herself sitting in her rocking chair. This time we were greeted at the door by her family and Miss Anna was laying in bed looking very ill. Honestly, I had never seen someone that close to death. The family looked sad and tired. Her daughter wanted us to pray for her and told us that Anna didn't have faith in Jesus. So some of the team prayed with her and witnessed to her.

 I felt an overwhelming desire to go and get food for the family even though I knew Anna couldn't eat anything. So we left and went to our local store and picked up groceries for them. Upon us entering the house I didn't think Miss Anna would really care about the groceries since she could not eat so I passed her room to go give the groceries to the family.  Her daughter stopped us and brought us back to her room and began pulling out all the groceries to show her what we had brought them.  Miss Anna's face went from downcast to smiling.  In fact this was the first time I had seen her smile.  I will never forget that moment.  Four days later I got word that Miss Anna had died. I don't know what happened spiritually for her in those last days.  I do know that she heard the good news and saw the hands and feet of Jesus.

One of the many things that God has taught me over the  years living here  is that we as Christians tend to over complicate ministry.  Often times we would rather sit around the table and talk about what it would look like to do ministry.  When what God is asking us is to just go! We will most likely make mistakes and will have to re-adjust accordingly, but that is okay. John Piper once said something like, "often times our approach to missions is similar to when someone is at the firing range who is just aiming and never taking the shot. He is afraid to miss rather than aiming, firing, re-adjusting, and firing again."  We didn't have a plan to go buy groceries for Miss Anna. We didn't know how God was going to lead us but 

we just went.  God used us and He received the glory.  

We feel so blessed to be a part of what He is doing here.  We don't always know why things happen the way they do.  Or why things take as long as they do but one thing we are positive of we are actively moving forward for God's glory.  Thank you for everyone who has partnered with us financially to make this all possible.  We have made a lot of progress at the ranch and Lord willing we should be obtaining our residency soon.  This is the first step to get children at the ranch.  Costa Rica is very slow in their  process but they are not outside of God's timing.  We meet with PANI (Costa Rica's version of CPS) November 14th to go over LWCR plans.  Please be praying that we get residency soon and the meeting with PANI goes well.

Thank you everyone!

Riverside Baptist Church

Caleb and his older friend praying together at our partner church's feeding center.

Our friends from city came out for the week.  It was so much fun!

I was sick for 2 weeks and the older gentlmen (Chai) gave me some deep tissure arm and hand massage.  I felt better within a day.

We had an awesome visit with Alli's parents.  They took us on a great adventure to La Paz waterfall gardens.

The Busy Months

A lot has changed  over the last 4 months while living at the Living Waters Children's Ranch! We are excited to see what God has done by the progress of LWCR and local ministries.

LWCR is located in small rural town of Buenos Aires, Horquetas. It's a rural farm town. It has two major grocery stores, a local school, a couple sodas (mom and pop traditional food stands) 2 churches, a catholic church, a huge soccer field, and three speed bumps. For the most part everyone knows everyone.

There has been major progress on the first family house. The siding is completed, the walls are up, electrical and water are running, and the floors should be laid soon. With the help of teams and finances the first house is almost completed. We should be able to move in before Christmas! How exciting and praise God! 

As great as it has been to watch the first house come to completion we are even more awed by how God is allowing us to develop relationships locally.  Initially we felt somewhat distant from the community but God opened the doors and introduced us to some very amazing people. One of the biggest allies and help so far has been our neighbor Grettle.  She has a huge heart to serve God and has been an awesome blessing. She often surprise visits us with homemade tortillas.  One of our other neighbors Ricardo has helped tremendously with introducing us to local pastors and other key people in the community.  Earlier this summer Josh was walking around town with some of our interns and ran into him.  Ricardo said that his daughter was getting married that night and invited us to come to the wedding. We were surprised that his daughter would allow him to invite people to come last minute but we were thrilled to attend our first Costa Rican wedding.

The busy months started in April for us this year and ended in the middle of August. We had close to 300 people and 15 churches come on a short term missions trip this since April!  Since we are now living at the ranch the whole family was involved and had the opportunity to meet everyone.  It was a very busy time with lots of ministry opportunity. Many people who came on a trip had life changing experiences all the while sharing the love of Jesus. 6:8's Facebook page has several videos from the teams that came this summer. Click Here to see a promotional video shot by Lantern Vision of the Mandarin Presbyterian mission team.  It gives a great glimpse into our world.  

We were blessed to have 10 interns help us this summer.  They were a vital part to our challenging summer months. I really enjoyed watching them rise to the challenge. I feel blessed to have been there as they grew in Christ, worked hard, poured into teams and formed relationships with locals.  Their love for others and Christ was contagious to me.

As a family, we are doing well. We really enjoy living out here on Living Water Children's Ranch. The kids really loved having so many guest here.  One of their favorite things to do with the team was to pray for them before they left or ate a meal.  However, often times the prayer went from sweet to silly but it was a great to see them participate.  We met so many amazing people this summer that have encouraged us.  We know that many people are praying for us and love us.  God grew us a lot and we look forward to the new adventures he has in store.  

Thank you for being patient with us as it has been a while since our last update.  By God's will we will have more time and opportunity to write more frequently in the following season.  Below is our prayer list.

Please pray for us as we enter a new

season. It will be crazy, I'm sure, but a normal crazy will be nice. 

Pray for us a we continue to build relationships in Horquetas. 

Pray that our understanding of Spanish continues to grow and that we become fluent. 

Pray that the remaining finances come in to finish the first family house.

Pray for us we raise personal support. (God has faithfully provided but we have lost some support)

Pray for Alli, Caleb and Micah as they start homeschooling.

Pray as we meet with local congress people and Child protection services to get official approvals. 

With the help of 10 teams this summer we moved 60 tons of rock to build our erosion prevention wall on the river.

The boys in all their glory taking a photo with Harvest ministries before they left.

Water Balloon fight with our neighbor.  Thanks Karl!

Alli learned how to gut and prepare chicken

Oh the looks!  Driving a tractor full of guys through town on our old John Deere

The sky was on fire.

Thanks to FBC St. Petersburg and the local church we passed out 600 pairs of shoes for people in need.

Slothing 

         

                                      Standing in the living room of the first family house. 

                                  

          Miss out being able to see through the frame but there's walls, sheetrock and doors. 

   

          

            The boys loved going on adventures with Spencer. Especially when ice cream was involved. 

      

                         A group from Vancleave Baptist spent many hours putting the siding up.  

                                         

                   The animals of true rainforest are incredible. Such an amazing opportunity. 

Not a minute late...

  Alli and I have experienced so much change in our marriage. We just finished moving for our 8th time in our 7 years of marriage.  We have finally made it to Living Waters Children's Ranch.  The one thing that is different about this move than all the other is that we believe God is calling us to finally send out roots.  In many ways each one of our moves has been one step closer to getting us here.  I still remember getting this random facebook message from Spencer 5 years ago....

A completely random message but God in His wonderful provision began working in our hearts  5 years ago to make this move happen.  I could go on and on with stories how God has provided financially, spiritually, emotionally and mentally for this.  The truth is he has began the work within our hearts way before we were married.  We are more that excited to serve God here.  We are so blessed.

A little update:

We have officially submitted all our paperwork for residency.  This has been a very long process but God has used it to teach us many things. While our paper work is under review we do not have to leave the country for border runs.  This review process could take up to a year.  Please join in prayer with us that we would receive residency.

We moved April 10th from Escazu, San Jose to Horquetas, Saripaqui.  Everything went very smooth.  We were able to hire a moving truck to get us from our house to the bridge before the ranch. Since the bridge is a old suspension bridge it can not have a lot of weight on it so we had to hire a smaller truck to transfer our items.  The Wutkas (the other missionary family) were working tirelessly on preparing our new home.  Alli's reaction to our new home was tears.  They did a wonderful Job.

 

Saying Goodbye was very difficult.  Over the past 19 months I have developed friendships with a lot of locals.  About 3 months ago Alli and I made some new friends with a young family in one of the neighborhoods we work in.  We were just getting our friendship underway when we had to move.  But we know that they will come visit us and we can visit them, we are only 1.5 hours away.

I went to our weekly feeding center in verbena this past Saturday.  This is where I almost lost it. I have spent the good part of the last year building trust with a 4 year old boy who was abused by a family member.  Every time I tried to show him attention he would run away.  Slowly but surely I began to gain his trust. I came a little late to our feeding center this week and our pastor was already in mid lesson but when I arrived the little boy blurted out AMIGO, and came over with the biggest grin and bear hug.  I held him for a little while praying for him and holding him tight.  It was sad to say goodbye.  Before I left I bent down and told him that I was moving but I would be praying for him, he nodded his head with a big smile.  As hard as the move has been we are very excited to know that there are so many more relationships to built here. 

Prayer request:

1. Residency acceptance

2.  Transition out here

3.  Relationships out here

4. Financing for the Living Waters Ranch

5. Our busy summer months coming up.

6.  The future children of the ranch.

God has blessed our first week with so much wildlife.  We have seen monkeys, toucans, great green macaws, large and small parrots, hummingbirds,  Iguanas, basilisk lizards and countless other bird species.

Thank you for all the prayer and support. 

For more info on LWCR click here for the most recent update.

Swinging near the river

Constructing the temporary chicken coop

The early morning riser enjoying the early morning view.