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.