Weekend Visitor

Justino, my adopted Ayore buddy, became one of the weekend campers for the youth retreat. Only he's 2 years old. Justino's mom, Aida, says he's always saying my name and asking where I am so when we went to pick up his sister, Mariana, for the youth retreat, Justino wanted to go. After a lot of hooplah, he came with me. It was actually fun. Justino (pronounced hustino) spent the night with us at our house Friday night and it was pretty hysterical. We put lice mousse shampoo in his hair and since he had to wait 10 minutes we gave him chocolate ice cream. He must have licked the spoon 20 times even after the ice cream was gone. So in walks Pablo and sees Justino at the table, naked, eating ice cream with a completely sudsy mohawk. It was a riot. We bathed him and put him in our room to sleep with the air conditioning. He definitely did not like the shower he got but his hair was sparkling afterwards. He slept 7 straight hours on the floor by our bed and woke up to my alarm clock. He watched a movie and ate bread with jelly and a banana for breakfast. He has to be the cutest thing around! He certainly enjoyed the weekend of ice cream, showers, and air conditioning. His new clothes were too cute to keep a secret. When we took him home on Sunday, I gave him back to his mom and he cried! I don't know who was more tired, us or him. Altogether, it was quite a weekend of fun and he was quite the weekend visitor!

Costa Rica

FRIENDSThe girls in our apartments Bonnie, Sarah and me
Our friends' kids lined up on the couch
Sarah, Theresa, Melissa and I were all in a Bible Study together
Laura, in the middle, was also a part of that group
Bill and Debbie lived in the apartment behind our host family and commonly called us "the kids" as we became almost like children to them. The two of us with our maid, Marita, outside of our apartment Seidy and I became great friends through English classes. She and her husband, Randall, were our closest national friends in CR. Me and Bonnie, our neighbor, dining at our Landlords' house (Orlando and wife Yvonne).

OUR HOST FAMILY

Charles with our host parents
The Gang-- our host brother and mother with Bill and Debbie on Sept. 14, Independence Day in CR
Aida with her granddaughters, Daniella and Diana
Daniella with Bill and Debbie's puppy, Ezer
Bill plays grandpa with the girls
Our host parents, Aida and Edwin, were more than we could've asked for in CR

TEACHERS

Me with Dixie, my grammar teacher (and her friend)

Charles' teacher, Fransisco, smiles for the camera

Charles and Oscar (his teacher) make pizza using a Spanish recipe for class this day!

My teacher and friend, Mau, and I enjoy dinner together before we left for Bolivia

THE TWO OF US

All geared up for the canopy tour in Monteverde

We found a little bit of D.C. in San Jose

Costa Rica called for some beach time as well!

TRIPS

Charles and Bryan, a friend, put up a walkway during a mission trip to San Carlos

Vacation Bible School in San Carlos

A van full of friends on the way to the beach

Beach Jaco with friends Sarah and Forest (and little Caleb)

The CR sunsets are gorgeous

Beach bikes are a popular item in Costa Rica.

We climbed CR's highest peak, Chirripo!

Charles found (and killed) this scorpion in one of our hotel rooms in Monteverde where we were vacationing for the weekend.

SCHOOL

Attendees for Language School Graduation packed the ILE Chapel

Charles and Caleb, our neighbor, hit it off great!

September Letter 05

October Letter 06

March Letter 06

January letter 06

November Letter 05

May Letter 05

Dear Friends,

We hope this letter finds you well. It is almost summer and we have started the countdown! Charles and I plan to leave the States August 30 — bound for San Jose, Costa Rica! It seems that our hopes and dreams of serving as missionaries in South America are on the verge of finally being realized!

We were told just weeks ago that we met our financial support goals and therefore will be able to attend the classes at the Center for Intercultural Training in June-July. We will leave the Washington, D.C. area June 17 headed for North Carolina, where the classes are held. We will take three intense week-long courses on Acts, Old Testament Survey and New Testament Survey. We will be the first S.A.M. missionaries to take any courses from this institution! Charles and I are also excited about the time to focus all of our energy and attention on the courses — it has been a long year of juggling two full-time jobs along with steps of preparation.

The classes will be the beginning to a very busy summer for us. Charles and I will be able to go on vacations with our families this summer, which we have not had the opportunity to do since we graduated from college, due to busy work schedules. We will visit with our immediate and extended families for the latter half of July — some of whom we won’t see again until our return. We plan on being in Memphis for almost the entire month of August in hopes that we can prepare and rest before we embark on four months of intense language training in Costa Rica.

In the last month, we have spent a lot of our time preparing for our journey by communicating with other missionaries in Costa Rica and Bolivia, finding out what we’ll need to pack and what to expect as far as climate, medical treatment, housing situations, etc. It is quite something to be enlightened by some of their responses! We are also communicating with missionaries from our local church who are spread across the globe, asking for advice and any wisdom they can give. Just this week one of our teammates, Alison Hershey, has arrived on the field in Santa Cruz! We are so excited to be able to communicate with her via email about her first impressions and the work set out for her there.

Just this week at church, a group of 11 men returned from a short-term mission trip to Cuba. It was so fascinating to see how these grown men in the church were brought to tears when standing before the congregation telling stories of lives that had been saved and the ways in which the trip had changed them. Charles and I couldn’t help but be so excited about how we too will be changed by the people we will come to know in Costa Rica and Bolivia. One of the men talking about the trip said, “It’s a very hard thing to be away from home and be evangelizing to strangers, but it’s amazing the satisfaction one feels from being obedient to God at the root of his heart.” Charles and I feel the satisfaction I think he is mentioning as we know that we are going to Bolivia in obedience. We also have a good friend who is working on a team with Word Made Flesh in Sri Lanka, restoring tsunami damage. Her emails bring such insight about how God is alive in parts of the world many of us will never see on this side of heaven. What a blessing that she has and that she can share it with so many of us back home. We have similar hopes for the next few years — that we will be able to give insight to others about God’s presence in Bolivia and how we are changed by it. We also hope to host groups from the States for short-term mission trips so that many of you can taste God’s goodness in a foreign place.

It is so exciting to learn how God continues to confirm this calling in our hearts! We hope that you will join us in taking part of this Bolivian ministry to the Ayore people. We are still in need of your support, both prayerfully and financially. We hope you will consider being a part of what God has called us and possibly you to for the purpose of advancing his kingdom. Also, please keep us in your prayers as we start the process of going by saying goodbye to our friends here. We anticipate it being a difficult part of the process.

By God’s grace and mercy,

Charles and Hannah McCall

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8.

July Letter 05

Dear Friends,

As summer is well under way, Charles and I are drawing closer to our departure date! As mentioned in the previous letter, we met our financial support goals in the spring and were able to register for classes at Center for Intercultural Training (CIT) over the summer. Well, we’re here! We wrapped up our jobs and left the D.C. area on June 17. We started our first class two weeks ago at CIT here in Union Mills, NC, just east of Asheville.

The week leading up to our D.C. departure was a bittersweet time for both me and Charles. We were commissioned at our church on June 12 before the congregation. What a blessing that church has been to us! Walking out of church that Sunday reminded me of the line from the hymn ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’ that says, “sorrow and love flow mingled down” – hard to leave but under blessed circumstances! We spent the week surrounded by our friends at dinners and parties where we celebrated God’s goodness in sending us to the field. Charles and I drove away from D.C. saying “God is good,” feeling as though our cups were overflowing from those friendships and that He was leading us to yet more relationships in a land we don’t yet know.

After a long road trip, we arrived at CIT where classmates met us at our car to help us unpack -- the friendships with them began immediately. It has been amazing to hear testimonies of how God has led them to serve Him (literally) all over the world. There are nearly 20 of us in class together. I think it’s safe to say we are all learning more about God than we ever imagined through our classes on Acts and the Old Testament – the New Testament is yet to come. Charles and I both feel like God has given us this time to really study and prepare for our time on the field in a way that hasn’t been possible over the last year. The hours of study we’ve been putting in, in addition to the class time, will be such an instrument in sharing our faith and has already strengthened our knowledge of scripture greatly. We regularly gather with classmates to pray for our needs as well as the people groups we will be serving overseas. What a time of fellowship with other believers! Our pastor at Briarwood Presbyterian in Birmingham, Harry Reeder, would always insert this phrase into his sermons, “God is good – all the time, and all the time – God is good.” We seem to come back to that a lot lately, being in a new place and in new circumstances with so much uncertainty in the near future and yet God is good – all the time.

As far as the future goes, we will be in classes two more weeks and then on vacation with our families for the remainder of July. We return to Memphis for several weeks before departing Aug. 30 for Costa Rica. We have been communicating with our big brother/sister couple in Costa Rica who have found a family for us to live with in San Jose close to the language school we will be attending. God is doing amazing things to provide for us!

Please keep us in your prayers as we finish the second half of classes here and spend time on vacation with our families. You can also join us in prayer as we lift up those on our team (already in Bolivia) and the nationals we will be in contact with both in Costa Rica and Bolivia. We continue to pray for all of you receiving our letters as so much of the ministry is the prayer and financial support that is behind it. **Also, if you are not receiving this via email, please contact us with your email address so that we can add you to our list.

By God’s grace and mercy,

Charles and Hannah McCall

March Letter 05

Dear Friends,

As spring draws near, we hope you are all doing very well and have survived the winter (as we almost have). As I write this, snow continues to cover the ground on the streets of D.C. We are so excited to tell you about how God continues to open doors for us to leave our current surroundings and go to Bolivia to minister to the Ayoré people.

As of now, God has provided much of the financial support we need to go to Bolivia through various churches, family, and friends. We hope to continue raising support at this pace so we can attend the fall semester of intense language training in Costa Rica. Classes start in early September and we’ll arrive on the field the following January. We are so encouraged by God’s goodness in how he has brought us this far and continues to show us more about what is to come!

If we do raise the support by summer, we plan to leave the D.C. area in late June. We then tentatively plan to attend several abbreviated week-long courses on the topics of Acts, Old and New Testament at the Center for Intercultural Training in North Carolina. We would then spend a week with each of our extended families and the following weeks in preparation in Memphis before leaving in late August. These are just some of the plans we hope to confirm in the case that the support requirements are fulfilled.

In the last month, Charles and I have had the opportunity to speak more about what God has called us to be a part of in Bolivia. We met with our local core group in early February to discuss some of these upcoming possibilities and get their opinions on ways to make others in the community aware of the situations in Bolivia. We were also able to meet with an elder of McLean Presbyterian and his wife who challenged our aspirations to be missionaries. They put us in contact with other missionaries and sister churches, and also prompted us to reach out to specific groups in our own church

At the end of February, we spoke to a group of young singles at McLean about how God had presented two young people like ourselves with such a big task and how we must all be open to that calling. Last week I shared with a close co-worker about our plans to travel overseas as missionaries, which provoked many questions about his own faith—a blessing in disguise! And just this week we met with a friend who spent several summers in Bolivia with S.A.M. and was willing to give us the ins and outs (and show us pictures) of Santa Cruz, where we’ll be living. All of these have proved to be invaluable tools in helping us prepare.

In addition, we are just beginning the 2005 missions conference this week at McLean Presbyterian Church. At this time we will have the opportunity to listen to the experiences and ministries of other missionaries, as well as be reminded of their representation of our church body as the gospel spreads around the globe. We are so excited to be a part of it this year!

It is so exciting to see God confirm this calling in our hearts through these series of events. We hope that you will join us in taking part of this ministry to the Ayoré people. We are still in need of your support, both financially and prayerfully. We lack $800 in monthly support, which will cover our financial needs once we’re living in Bolivia. We hope you will prayerfully consider being a part of what God has called us, and possibly you, to for the purpose of advancing His kingdom.


By God’s grace and mercy,

Charles and Hannah McCall


“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8.

January Letter 05

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year to all of you! We hope this letter finds you well … after a blessed Christmas and a happy holiday season. It was great to see some of you while we were visiting in Memphis. During our trip, we were able to spend time with so many friends and share what God is doing in our lives as we prepare for our journey to Bolivia!

Charles and I are excited to tell you how God has blessed us in amazing ways since we last wrote. One blessing that is so humbling is the financial support that God has provided through churches, families, friends and even strangers. God has provided nearly half of the amount we need in order to go! We also continue to be encouraged by the number of people who are praying diligently for the ministry and for us as we prepare. If you are one of these supporters, we cannot express our gratitude enough! Thank you. We continue to remind ourselves that God is faithful and sure to carry out His will for us.

Charles and I have completed the new members course at our local church in McLean, Virginia, and will be introduced to the congregation January 16. We continue to serve in several ways at the church through ESL teaching, Sunday school, home fellowship group and assisting with the 2005 missions conference. We have volunteered to assist the missions committee at McLean in coordinating the missions conference in March, and even hosting a missionary during the weekend. It is a great way for us to see the relationships the missionaries and church have built with one another.

We continue in preparation as we meet with our local accountability team early this month, do more research about life in Bolivia, and correspond with our team in Santa Cruz. Through our church, we are hosting our home fellowship group during a 12-week study on evangelism. This too proves to be a great tool for the work we will do in Bolivia! Also, two weeks before Christmas Charles and I got our first rounds of immunizations! I got four shots in one arm, two in the other—ouch!

In the meantime, we are constantly reading about being effective missionaries and making the most of our time while on the field. I am currently in the middle of The Concise History of Bolivia while Charles is reading The Mind Changers, on the topic of Christian persuasion. Charles and I are making plans for the churches that we hope to partner with in this ministry to the Ayoré Indians. We have recently heard from several churches that are interested in having us come speak to their congregations! God is opening doors in more ways than we could’ve ever imagined.

It is amazing to think about what this year holds for us! We are hoping, God willing, that we could leave the States at the end of the summer to attend the fall trimester of language school in San Jose, Costa Rica. We would then enter the field this time next year! What a year this could be!

Please consider our requests and join us in our ministry to the Bolivians. We cannot go without you! First, we need your prayers. We hope to have at least 50 people who are faithful in prayer for us and the Ayoré ministry. Secondly, we need financial support to get to Bolivia. According to the budget set forth by South America Mission, we still need about $5,350 to cover preparation cost such as visas, travel, immunizations and language study. And once on the field, we still need $1,426 per month to sustain us for two years. Please prayerfully consider supporting us in one or all of these ways.


May God bless you all through the New Year!

Charles and Hannah McCall

1 Thessalonians 5:23
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will surely do it.”

November Letter 04

Dear Friends,

Since we last wrote to you, God has continued to prepare us for the work we will do in Bolivia and we are so excited to share with you how He is working.

One of the most exciting things to happen is that the mission board at First Baptist Church of Memphis, Charles’ home church, has decided to support us in a significant way. They’ll be supporting us with 10% of all missions funds that they receive! What a huge blessing and help in our efforts to raise support. Even more exciting, we’re being given the opportunity to speak to the congregation during an upcoming “missions-minded” week. We will be able to give First Baptist members a glimpse of how we will be serving in Santa Cruz and how they can be a part of the ministry. Charles and I are so excited about our first chance to share our calling with such a large number of people!

Another bit of exciting news is that we have begun regular meetings with our local core group. This group is made up of singles and couples, young and old friends who are committed to helping us prepare for and get to the mission field. Perhaps more importantly, these friends will be advocates for our ministry while we are in Bolivia. The support the group has already given to us has been tremendous! Just this week one older couple from the group called to ask us if we would like to practice our presentation in front of them to get ready for public speaking engagements. Another member of the group is taking us to the airport for an early morning flight so that we can speak to First Baptist. These small acts of love make a huge difference in our preparation as we know that we have a backbone of support! In the upcoming months we will meet together and study a book called Serving as Senders, recommended by South America Mission. The book focuses on how we can be praying and reaching out to our sending group, as well as how they as individuals can help us prepare most effectively.

Charles and I have also become more active at McLean Presbyterian Church in the DC area. Charles is teaching ESL once a week, and in return has learned some Spanish. I am teaching the two-year-olds on Sunday morning while Charles has just started attending the Grace Partners class. We are both heavily involved in our home fellowship group with other young couples and are also a part of the CARE team, a ministry the church provides by having members bring meals to other members who are in need of them. It has been such a blessing to get to know so many people in our church through these ministries and Sunday school classes. We will soon be members of McLean and officially introduced to the congregation at the beginning of January!

Charles and I rejoice as this is just the beginning of our preparations here! We know that so much more will be happening from this point on. Since our last letter was mailed, many of you have responded with such excitement and support! We hope it will continue, and that this letter will be a reminder for you of how great and awesome the God we worship truly is!

Please consider our requests and join us in our ministry to the Bolivians. We cannot go without you! First, we need your prayers. We hope to have at least 50 people to be faithful in prayer for us and the Ayore ministry. Secondly, we need $13,860 to cover preparation cost such as visas, travel, immunizations and language study. Once on the field, we will need $2,195 per month to remain there for the next two years. Please prayerfully consider supporting us in one or all of these ways.

By God’s grace,

Charles and Hannah McCall

September Letter 04

Dear Friends,

As many of you may know, Charles and I have spent the last 15 months applying to be missionaries overseas. At the end of last summer, Charles and I contacted South America Mission about possibly working with their organization in our hopes to serve as missionaries. We spent much of the time in early fall doing preliminary work to see if it was the right fit. In the meantime, we were able to spend 10 days in the Dominican Republic, immersed in the realities of mission work.

Since the fall, things have gone nearly full circle with South America Mission, an interdenominational mission working with national and tribal communities in five South American countries since 1914. We continued the application process and attended a two-week candidate orientation. There we were accepted as Associate Members and assigned a two year term in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Our general assignment as missionaries to the Bolivia field will be working with Placido and Toni Mercado, ministering to the Ayoré Indians around Santa Cruz. These Indians are only a few thousand in number and are regarded by many Bolivian nationals as a dirty, despised and disliked people. They were once a nomadic tribal group that has now settled in villages on the fringes of cities. We will join the Mercados as well as other team members to assist in providing health education, training and medical treatment in the Ayoré villages. Most significantly, however, we hope to establish relationships and minister to the spiritual needs of the Ayoré Indians through the work of Jesus Christ. We also hope to work alongside the nationals to make Christ known and bring glory to His name among all the people we meet.

Our “deputation duties” have already begun as we have met with our pastor and missions coordinator to update them on our assignment, built a core sending team, and begun raising support to go to the field. We hope to leave in late summer 2005, attend language school in Costa Rica for one term, and join the team in Bolivia in late 2005 or early 2006. The formal language training will help us adapt to the culture and advance our communication skills.

During the next year, we will continue taking necessary steps to prepare for God’s work in Bolivia. Some of those things include researching cross-cultural living, formally studying the Old and New Testament of the Bible, speaking to churches and groups about the needs in Bolivia, meeting with our core team, raising support through various outlets and truly preparing our hearts for what is next in our lives.

Charles and I are constantly praying that God will show us his perfect timing and his awesome provision. We have both felt called to the mission field for some time now, having tasted his goodness in far away lands. Now we are approaching a longer taste, a feast rather of his overflowing love in a place that is not familiar to us. Please join us in prayer as we anticipate what is to come: the uncertainties, our growing faith, our families and the hearts of those we will be working with. We remind ourselves daily that god can do the impossible! He is capable of more than we can ever fathom.

Please consider our requests and join us in our ministry to the Bolivians. We cannot go without you! First, we need your prayers. We hope to have at least 50 people to be faithful in prayer for us and the Ayoré ministry. Secondly, we need financial support to get to Bolivia and remain there for a term. We humbly ask that you prayerfully consider supporting us in one or all of these ways.

By God’s grace,

Charles and Hannah McCall

Bolivian High School Graduation

Toni and Pablo

This weekend Charles and I were able to experience a high school graduation first-hand. Pablo, our live-in Bolivian, graduated Friday night. The invitation said 7pm so we were there promptly at 7. Little did we know that Bolivian graduations don’t always start on time. The graduation started at 9:30pm! The other highlight of the graduation is that it’s much like an American wedding – each graduate is walked in by a family member or close friend. Toni did the honors for Pablo. We watched as Pablo’s name was called and he met the others in cap and gown up front. I had a nasty cold and it was late so we decided not to stay. Another interesting aspect of the night was the gift-giving. Outside the school where the graduation was held, a number of vendors were selling these pyramids of small stuffed animals surrounded by fake flowers. It was all a little unreal that this is the appropriate gift for an up and coming adult.

The second part of graduation happened on Sunday night – the graduation party. Charles and I dressed in our “Bolivian formal” attire and met Pablo for his graduation party. This is much more of a family event than what most of us are used to in the States. The graduate goes ahead of time, reserves a table and chairs in a reception hall and then the night of the party, brings all the food and drink he/she wants to have at the party. The whole thing was quite amusing. We sat at the table with Pablo’s sister, brother-in-law, cousins and friends. The traditional Bolivian graduation party food is potato chips, meatballs, peanuts, etc. The most popular food item was the pineapple with toothpicks sticking out of it, full of cheese cubes, olives, ham and quail eggs. It’s quite a site and if you forgot your party pineapple, you could buy one right outside the gate. The music was mostly from the ‘80s such as Aerosmith and Four Non Blond coming from a DJ. Unfortunately, we had to leave the graduation party around 10:30pm for the next day’s work but it seemed as if it was just getting started.

Our Niece and Nephew

Baby Annelise

Annelise

My brother John and Lorena with their first born

My mom sitting with her first granddaughter

My dad playing it cool with Annelise

Baby Read

Baby Read being held by his mom Charlotte with a hospital room full of family

Hannah's mom Mary holding here first grandson

Hannah's sister holding Read

Father Sam holding his first son

Baby Read is all smiles