Our History  

 
The national flower of Costa Rica.

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We are YWAMers, and here's our story...

We visited Costa Rica the first time in 1973 when we came with a ranch owner & businessman from Texas who wanted to invest in Central American property. He found out that Terry grew up in Peru with missionary parents and spoke flawless Spanish, so Terry was a big help as interpretor. The next year, 1974 we had moved to the jungle property on the south end of Costa Rica to pioneer a ranch. For the next three years we hacked out a living, struggling to survive and make it prosper. This was not much different for the Peruvian raised Terry, but for Donna, the city girl, it was different. She struggled with the language, culture differences, loneliness, hauling water, no electricity, washing in rivers, finding poisonous snakes sleeping with her in bed . . the list goes on. Luckily, she loved adventure and God protected us both on many occasions. We adopted our first child in Costa Rica, (having been told Donna couldn't conceive). We named her Lorna Marie Keith, she was 5 months old.

After those first 3 years, we traveled back & forth between the Texas & Costa Rican ranches, working on them both for the same man. Our family increased, . . surprise - miracles still happen,. . Donna became pregnant 2 times while in Texas, (a son, Jason & daughter, Erin), and once more when our youngest son, Michael, was born in Costa Rica in 1982.

When the Texas ranch sold in 1985, we went to Miami, Florida to do our DTS and join YWAM. We were in the "pioneer" school for YWAM Miami, the largest family in the DTS. After our DTS, we kept raising the flag to pioneer a YWAM work in Costa Rica. Why not? We had done it before. We finally got our chance in 1991-92. We led the first DTS school, did outreach in Panama and left our staff person Ruth Lockhart with some of our students to be the pioneer team for that country. We still have close ties with Panama.

Well, our dream came to a difficult end when we experienced some problems and couldn't continue in Costa Rica. We returned to Miami in August 92 just in time for the arrival of "Hurricane Andrew". We became entrenched in the Hurricane Rebuilding project for the next 3 years, participating in the rebuilding of hundreds of homes and seeing victims' shattered lives restored. After repairing our own home, and with the marriage of our oldest daughter we decided to sell our home.

We were invited to join Floyd McClung with his pioneer work in Stonewall Colorado. The day we arrived was July 4th, 1995 and we drove in just as the city began its fireworks display. It was quite inviting, we even felt honored! Terry kept busy teaching in many DTS's, both in Spanish & English, and we were asked to be on the board for "Western Frontiers" (which used to be known as "Cowboys With A Mission"). We also got deeply involved serving our area through the Volunteer Fire Department and Emergency Medical Response. Terry became Assistant Fire Chief and Paramedic, and Donna responded as an EMT Basic. We found this to be an "amazing open door" and way to help the community. Well, as time went on, we began to sense God was calling us back to our first work. This was confirmed and encouraged by others and in 2001, we began to pray and seek God to open the way for us to come back to Costa Rica. We saw our other three children all do a DTS and continue with their lives. Within one month, two of them were married and the youngest went to do his DTS in Costa Rica. God continued to show us that we were to come back, and as we stepped toward that, things began to speed up to make it happen. We didn't want to leave without the sale of our house, but - - it didn't sell.  We couldn't wait any longer. We needed to be in Costa Rica for the September DTS 2005. We left Colorado on September 11, 2005.

We finally arrived in Costa Rica about two weeks later. It was raining like crazy and probably why they didn't want to check through our things and waved us through. It seemed relatively easy compared to every other border where we seemed to be battling through an invisible shield. We are now back, taking up our stand against the plans of our enemy. We've grown stronger since 1992 when we left feeling defeated, we now know "our calling is sure" and feel prepared for whatever battle is to come! We are back in "the land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven". (-Deut.11:11)