NLCH Christmas '06

Ever since we made the decision to come to Guatemala, we had been looking forward to being able to spend Christmas at the children's home, and the last few days have been a very special time.

On Christmas Eve, we started the day by going to church in the morning. The kids were already very excited, because most of the events happen late in the night of the 24th. The younger kids even refer to the 24th as "Navidad," since the 25th is a much more relaxed day. After church we returned to NLCH, had lunch, and then started getting things ready. It was a good bit of work just to carry all of the presents to the dining hall and put them around the tree.

After dinner, the kids watched a Christmas movie, and then we had our worship service at 9:00. Almost all of the kids participated in some way; we had a skit of the birth of Christ- complete with the sheep pictured on the right, dances, and songs (be sure and see the Jingle Bells video below). Kendon gave a short lesson, read the Christmas story, and we shared holy communion together. After the service we ate again, and then about 11:30 the kids started opening their presents.

It was a lot of fun to get to watch them, especially the litte ones since they haven't learned how to hide their excitement yet. Little Josue, pictured right, would pull out each present one by one, then hold them up and yell, "Look! A shirt! (or a car! or whatever it happened to be)." When he got these superman pajamas he showed them to everyone would would pay any attention, then proudly wore them over his clothes until everyone was finished.

Then came midnight, and we had never seen anything like this before in our lives. The whole world down here sets of firecrackers and fireworks at the same time. We had plenty for the kids to set off themselves, and it was about 30 minutes of non-stop noise and smoke, but they loved it. I climbed up on the third story of the school to look out over the city, and it was amazing to see fireworks going off like that in every direction. It's not exactly taking "Silent Night" to heart, but it was certainly memorable.

Christmas morning, Kendon always makes pancakes for everyone, so we enjoyed a good breakfast after watching the kids open their stockings. The rest of the day was pretty relaxing as the kids enjoyed playing with their new things.

I've taken up enough space here, but if you'd like to see more Christmas pictures click here. If you'd like to see more videos, click here.

Christmas Pictures

We're pretty tired right now from Christmas with 46 kids, so we'll have to wait to post a good description of our first Christmas here. For now, though, we wanted to go ahead and post a link to our pictures from the last few days. Click here to see them.

¡Feliz Navidad, Amigos!

We took this video from some of our friends at NLCH for you to enjoy as a Christmas present...

Our Fourth Month

We've been here 1/3 of a year! Over the last month, we´ve really enjoyed getting to spend the extra time at the children´s home and begin connecting with some of the kids there. We´re really looking forward to our first Christmas at NLCH (complete with photos and stories for all of you), as well as a trip to Costa Rica with some of the kids in early January. We´re so thankful to be part of such a wonderful ministry. At the same time, though, we´re overwhelmed by the importance of the kind of work for which we´ve come here. We don´t have it in us to be able to overcome the language/culture barrier and connect with teenagers in a way that will invite them deeper and deeper into the kind of life that God has for them... but we´re thankful for that. We´re more dependent on the Holy Spirit and on prayer than we have been in ministry before.

We´ve also become more aware that our time in language school is winding down. In some ways we´re glad about that, but not completely. We´ll have 5 more weeks of school in January, but after this week we have to move out of our host family´s house. We hope that we´ll be able to return to them in January, but there will be a lot of new students coming while we´re gone to NLCH, so it´s pretty likely that we´ll have to start over with a new family for our last 5 weeks. This has started to feel like a home to us, so the prospect of changing again isn´t very appealing.

Our fifth month holds a lot in store...

My First Futbol Experience

I played soccer for the first time in my life tonight, and it was a very humbling experience. When I was coaching basketball in Georgia, we were always amazed at the kids who had never played a game of basketball before and then would come and try out for a varsity team at a large high school. I felt sorry for them because their lack of skills were glaringly obvious when they were on the court with other players who were pretty good.

Well, tonight I was that kid. First, they put me at goalie, I guess because they figured my long arms would help defend the goal. After I gave up three goals in the first five minutes or so, they moved me away from the goal, where I did even worse. After it became obvious that I couldn't overcome my instincts to always reach for the ball with my hands, they put me back at goalie for the rest of the night. I'm glad we weren't keeping any score because I lost count after I gave up 15 goals or so. One guy scored on me about 10 times all by himself.

I think one of our biggest challenges in ministry here is going to be connecting with these older guys... if they like connecting with gringos who are amazingly lacking any soccer skills- I'm their guy.

A Fun Trip

Daniel and I returned last night from an overnight trip with some of the kids to a water park and amusement park. This trip was a reward for those children who have been on the top level of the behavioral system for four straight weeks and who also did well in school (the school year here ended in October and a new one will begin in January).

We left early Thursday morning and it took us about 4 hours to get there. We were very impressed by how nice both of the parks were! They were clean, well-landscaped and had a variety of great rides. They also were not very crowded so it was great not having to wait in long lines. It was so neat to watch the kids' reactions because most, if not all, had never seen an amusement park before. Their faces lit up and some weren't sure what to do.

The kids had a great time and so did we.... inspite of a wipeout that Daniel and I had on one of the water slides. We were on a two-person raft in an inclosed tunnel that let out into a large funnel, where we were whirled around and sucked throught the bottom of the funnel into another tube which let out into the pool. The problem occurred when we were sucked through the funnel backwards and with our weight differences, when Daniel hit the second tube first, our raft flipped over on and we broke the fall with our heads. We received matching goose eggs and pretty bad headaches. Some of the personnel quickly came to assist us and asked if we spoke English, if we wanted to see a doctor, if they could get us ice, etc. We just took Advil though and stuck to the wave pool and lazy river with the little kids after that!

As soon as we returned last night and were walking to retrieve our luggage, we saw little Kevin already talking a mile a minute, bragging to his friends about everything that he had experienced. I am sure that will encourage some of the others to work a little harder the next time to be on the top behavioral level!

I bet you're not doing this tomorrow...

Kara and I returned to NLCH this afternoon to leave at 5:30 in the morning on a trip with some of the kids to a water park about 3 hours away, near the coast. We'll spend the night in a hotel there and then go to an amusement park on Friday.

So while many of you are freezing tomorrow, we'll think of you while we're on the water slides...

Lighting the Park

There is a tradition in Antigua of lighting all of the trees in the Central Park. The trees are wrapped with strings of white lights and a ceremony is held in which the street lights are extinguished, and after a countdown, all of the trees and red and green lights on the fountain are turned on. We heard about the event from our teachers, so we went to see the lighting and took some video for you to see. After the trees were lit, they had a lot of fireworks and a marimba band playing Christmas music.

Decorating for Christmas

Last Friday, I helped the boys in our host family put up their family Christmas tree. Our host mother told me that she doesn't enjoy decorating and would gladly hand the task over to me. I was thrilled!

We had a good time putting up the tree together. Then, on Saturday morning, I was surprised when the youngest boy, Mickey, asked me if I would help his grandmother put up her tree. I was honored because this was only the second time that I had ever been in her home (she lives downstairs). She is a very sweet lady. Because of her hearing problems, and my limited Spanish, we didn't say much but she kept clapping her hands together, smiling, and saying, "Que bonito!" (how beautiful!)

This morning, I helped Mickey decorate the balcony with lights. Despite the 80 degree weather, it seems a little more like Christmas.

Great Memories

Today would have been my grandma, Mary ("Granny")'s 81st birthday. She passed away two years ago and I still greatly miss her, as well as my other three grandparents that I have lost in the past five years. Thankfully, it is a great blessing to know that all three are in heaven with the Lord right now.

I wanted to post this message in a special tribute today to Granny. She was a very special woman who impacted my life in so many ways by who she was and her love for her family.

5.8!

Sunday afternoon I was sitting in the living room of our host family's house, and Kara was in our bedroom reading when we had a new experience- one which the news says was a 5.8 on the Richter scale. (Click here to read the news story.)

Neither of us were quite sure of what was happening at first. Kara thought that a dog had jumped up on the bed with her and made it shake, and I thought a big truck was going by on the street outside. I knew that wasn't the case as soon as I looked down at the floor and could see it moving! It wasn't frightening as much as it was just plain weird- seeing the concrete house around us move as if we were in a cartoon.

A lot of the Guatemalans can remember the earthquake that destroyed a lot of the country in 1976, so they took it quite a bit more seriously than we did. Kara came out of the bedroom smiling until she saw the serious looks on the faces of our family. We certainly don't want to experience it again while we're here- thankfully this one didn't cause any damage anywhere- but it was about 15 seconds of a whole new experience for us.

Pictures

Here are some pictures that we took last week. Daniel and I are now back at language school in Antigua. We really miss the kids!

Asbury Missions

Since Kara and I both dearly love our college, Asbury, I decided to make a website with links to blogs of other Asbury missionaries around the world. Even if you're not Asbury-connected, you may enjoy reading some of them. The address is www.asburymissions.bravehost.com.

My biggest problem right now is that I need to find more of the blogs... I'm sure they're out there, but all that are listed right now are friends of ours that we already knew about their sites. So if you are an Asburian and know of others that I can add to the site, please let me know.

Construction Progress

Here are some pictures of the new contsruction. Some of you are already familiar with it, but this property is across the street from the current property. We will eventually have new facilities for everything involved with the orphanage, while the current property will be continue to be used for the school and other ministries. In the picture above, the completed building on the right is Casa Elizabeth, where the girls are already living. The partially completed building on the top-left is the employee apartment building, where we will live, and they're pouring the foundation for the boys' home unit.

We climbed up on top of the storage tower with Kendon to get these pictures. We didn't realize how tall the ladder was before we started to climb... you can't really tell from the picture, but it's about 4 stories.

We also took a few pictures inside the new apartment building. The pictures on the right are of what will be our kitchen/living/dining room. It's a much different construction process down here, since everything is done with concrete- even the countertops and cabinets that you can see here are concrete.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday, we had a very nice Thanksgiving and a wonderful traditional, American feast with approximately 35 people -- the Wheeler family (the directors of NLCH), Emily (the 19 year-old intern), Emily's mother and friend, Patsy (another missionary with NLCH -- pictured right), a couple that visits from the States every year at this time to help with Christmas preparations, and the rest were other missionaries serving in Guatemala.

I have to be honest, I was apprehensive about our first holiday away from family. I anticipated feeling sad and the day being a little strange. However, the day turned out to be such a blessing! It was a reminder to me of the first Thanksgiving. Each person brought something (like a delicious church potluck) and strangers gathered together and became family for the day as we gave thanks for God's faithfulness and provision.

This is the one holiday that the children at NLCH do not celebrate because, obviously, Guatemalans do not celebrate Thanksgiving. Kendon and Wendy explained to us that it is the one holiday that they can sit back and enjoy because they are not busy with activities for the kids.

The celebration was held in the guest dorm kitchen. Before the meal, we formed a circle for prayer and Kendon and his son shared short inspirational stories. We enjoyed traditional favorites: turkey (Emily's mother brought a frozen one down in her suitcase from Pennsylvania!), mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, etc. Finally, a meal with no black beans!

In the afternoon, we played card games and dominoes, before everyone started leaving for home. Daniel was happy that he was able to watch a little of the Cowboys' game at the Wheeler's house.

We hope that each of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We certainly are thankful for your love and friendship.

Daniel's Spanish Debut

For those of you (our parents) who always want to hear us say something in Spanish and we refuse, here is a video that might interest you. This is a 2 minute clip of Daniel's first devotional in Spanish. He did a great job! It is going to say that this post is from Daniel because he is the only one who can post videos, but I (Kara) am posting it. Daniel did not want this video on here but I thought you all would enjoy it!

Anciano de Dias

We returned to NLCH on Friday, because we get to take the week off from school and celebrate Thanksgiving here at the children's home. It's been fun to be back, and we can both tell a very significant difference in our Spanish abilities. It's sort of like someone has taken a cover off of our ears and all of the sudden we can understand a lot (but certainly not all) of what is being said around us.

On Sunday we had a short devotional and worship time with the kids. I gave a little testimony in Spanish, and it went pretty well. I also got to play the guitar while Wendy led a few songs. Kara took some video- enjoy.

Name That Tune

We've finally figured out how to put videos on the blog. We took this video in church a couple of weeks ago- do you recognize the song?

Our Third Month

It´s officially been more than three months in Guatemala now. It was quite a landmark for us when the stamps on our passports expired, and we´re now waiting for our missionary visas to come through.

This last month has brought more progress in the language- Kara and I are both almost through the final tense of verbs that we have to learn, and then the rest of our time in school will just be adding vocabulary and reviewing what we´ve already covered. Hopefully that will bring us more confidence in speaking, which we´re still lacking now.

We´re excited that we get to return to NLCH for a visit tomorrow. We´ll be there the entire week and get spend Thanksgiving there at the home. One prayer request that I´d like to mention: the kids are having a spiritual emphasis weekend at the home starting tomorrow, and since we are going to be there visiting, we were asked to give a devotional talk with the kids. We´re a bit intimidated by the thought of trying to do that in Spanish, although if we decide to use a translator we can do so. The important thing to us is that we can communicate to the kids how thankful we are to be here and that we want to help them realize the fullness of life that the Lord is offering to each of them. So, since it´s our first official ministry activity with the kids, we wanted to ask you all to keep it in prayer.

We´re looking forward to month #4 and getting to celebrate our first holiday season with these wonderful kids.

Haircuts

I am amazed that Daniel can get his hair cut here for twenty quetzales ($2.66)! It is a great hair cut, too! He has been going to a place called Tommy's. Tommy (I guess?) does not use guards, only his comb to gauge the length. This, in itself, impresses me. However, that is not the most impressive part. He uses oil and a straight razor to trim the back of Daniel's neck and sideburns. I couldn't resist taking a picture. I mean, people think we are the crazy gringos anyway, so why not be the only woman in the barber shop plus start taking pictures!

Sure, you have seen a man walking three dogs in the morning but... have you ever seen a man walking three goats on leashes through the city streets?

We miss the USPS

I remember seeing an email before we came to Guatemala titled "You know you've lived on the mission field if..." One of the items on the list was- you've lived on the mission field if you marvel at the speed and efficiency of the US Postal Service. Our experiences here, especially today, have proven that to be true.

Before leaving the states, we sent ourselves some books that we thought we'd like to have during our time here. Other missionaries had recommended that we could use a little-known service from the post office called M-bags. Basically the idea is that your books are going to take a long time to get there, but it's much cheaper than any other shipping option. So we tried it- other people (mostly in other countries) had said that it works great- it may be 4 or 5 months, but your books will be delivered right to your door.

We got a letter last week saying that we had a package (which we assumed was our books)waiting for us at the central post office in Guatemala City. That in itself doesn't sound terribly inconvenient, but let me explain. In order to claim our package, they require that we bring the original letter that they sent us and our passports.

The letter they sent us was dated Oct. 27, and we didn't receive it in until Nov. 12. The inexplicable part of this is that it was sent Oct. 27 from the central post office in Guatemala city, and it took 17 days to make it to our PO box, which is in the same post office! On top of that, the letter states that we only had 10 days from when it was sent to pick up our package.

Since the day we received the letter was already past the deadline, we figured we'd better act quickly. So we had to take the day off from school today, arrange transportation into the city, then accomplish the following:

1. Drive from Antigua to the children's home to get the original letter from the post office. This usually takes about 45 minutes, but today there was a wreck with a truck carrying vegetable oil, so it took about 2 hours. The good thing (for some) was that quite a few local people made off with some free vegetable oil before the police arrived.
2. Drive from the children's home in Villa Nueva to a lawyer's office in Zone 10 of Guatemala City to pick up our passports, which we didn't have because our visas are in the process of being approved.
3. Drive from Zone 10 of Guatemala City to the post office in Zone 1 to pick up our packages. We arrived and they found our books, and then told us we needed to pay the import tax of Q93 (or about $12), but we couldn't pay at the post office- we needed to leave there and go pay at a bank. (My Spanish teacher explained that this is to keep the postal workers from stealing the money).
4. Leave the post office and go to the bank to pay the tax. Unfortunately there was a line of about 50 people and only a few workers, so I had to wait about 45 minutes to pay my $12.
5. Return to the post office- which, thankfully, was still open- and stand in line to show one of the workers our receipt, proving that we had paid the tax. She then told us we had to stand in line and give a copy of the receipt to the person standing right next to her.
6. Stand in line for him, sign a paper, then he told us we needed to stand in line for the lady we had just talked with (still standing about two feet from him) , who would then give us our books.

The worst part about all of this is that we sent two M-bags, and they only had one ready for us today- which means we'll get to do it all over again sometime soon!

Another Interesting Day in Antigua!

Yesterday, we witnessed a strange and very funny event in Antigua. It was the fifth annual Meta race. This race consisted of waiters and waitresses from various restaurants in Antigua and surrounding cities. Each person was dressed in their serving attire and carried a tray with four bottles -- water, beer, soda, and Gatorade. The object was to be the first person to complete the 2 km course through the rocky city streets without any of the bottles falling over. The winner received approximately $300, so the participants took the race very seriously.

The Gallo beer company handed out flags to the bystanders, a Guatemalan flag and a Gallo beer flag. My teacher, Pedro, is pictured left with his flags in his pocket. I enjoyed joining in the others as we waved our flags and cheered on the participants. I especially thought the man pictured on the right needed a lot of encouragement. The uniforms were unfair because some waiters wore jeans, t-shirts and tennis shoes. This man, however, was from a Chinese restaurant in Antigua. He was wearing a wool jacket, hat and clog-like sandals! It was a hot day and those shoes were not very good on rocky streets. He came in last place.

Two separate races were held. First the women competed. Most of them were only speed-walking, so, it was funny but not too exciting. Next, the men lined up for their race (pictured left). They were very serious and ran from the start. One guy was extremely disappointed as he withdrew himself from the race after his Gatorade bottle fell over. I admired his honesty, since I witnessed several others quickly stand back up a bottle that had fallen over on their tray.

Lake Atitlan

Ever since we started telling people that we were going to come to Guatemala, people who had been here before (i.e. Phil Holeman)kept telling us that while in the country we need to visit Lake Atitlan. The opportunity came, and so we took it. It really is a beautiful place, and I'll echo everyone else- if you ever come to Guatemala, visit Lake Atitlan.

We had a great time, although the trip didn't get off to the best of starts. We left after classes on Friday, and we took a tourism bus. The bus was late, I had to brush a previous passenger's snack crumbs off of my seat, and the driver had a terrible cough. Unfortunately we were sitting right behind him. (Kara is home sick today, and whether it's actually related to him or not, we're blaming the driver.) The bus was supposed to take us to our hotel, but when we arrived in the town of Panajachel, the driver stopped in front of his company's office and told us that we were on the main street-pictured left-, and dropped all of us off. It was a bit intimidating, since we had no idea where to go. But I figured downhill was toward water, so we walked downhill and fortunately came right to our hotel. (I could probably get hired for all sorts of adventurous jobs with that kind of outdoor skill.)

In addition, Friday was foggy/rainy, so when we walked down to the lake we couldn't tell what all the fuss about this place had been about- because all that we could see was water. And to top it all off, neither of us could sleep very well because our bed in the hotel consisted of a 4" mattress on top of solid wood.

Thankfully, Saturday and Sunday were different stories. The weather cleared up, and we could see why they advertise Atitlan as being one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. We took a boat tour (just the two of us for about $15), and got to see the lake and take a lot of pictures. If you'd like to see more of the pictures we took, click here.