Emmita

Just got Internet back about 48 hours ago, and still it is not the best connection. Thank you all so much for your prayers for us and especially for Emma. Last week she suffered her first asthma attack ever and it was severe. We spent many sleepless night due to her in ability to breath but we finally found a doctor we can trust and got Emma the right medicine and she is doing much better – it has taken a week but she is almost back to normal. God is so faithful.

Please pray for our friend, Jimmy. During the family festival at church on Saturday he broke his collar bone. he was playing a game and hit something (or should I say some one) and broke his clavicle into 3 pieces. No doctor in Pucallpa can fix that properly . . . .please pray for him and his wife, Monica.

More updates later . .  . have to go teach the boys and then high school Bible class along w/Christian.

Vacation, sweet Vacation

Vacation was amazing – we spent 6 amazing days right on the ocean. We all got burned the first day and then Christian got the cold I had during conference. But we all had a wonderful time nonetheless. The strangest part for me right now is remembering that we live in Pucallpa. We are used to traveling that it is weird to remember that we actually have a real home over there in the jungle. I am looking forward to getting home – almost. Our sweet friend, Fabiola, stayed at our house while we were away. She got the instruction mixed up about the dog and put her in the box at night and left her in the house ALONE during the day. WE NEVER leave Libby alone in the house, She eats everything. Apparently she’s destroyed muchas cosas. We will find out tomorrow.

Peru Field Conference 2010

Well, we just wrapped up the 2010 Peru field conference. It was a wonderful but hard week. The entire Peru field went to a quaint hotel just outside of Lima for the week long conference. A nice break from the bugs and heat of Pucallpa. This year’s speaker was our pastor from SC. Skip and his wife, Courtney, came to bless us at the conference along with the Tandy’s (the visited us in Pucallpa) and two great teachers, Amy and Danielle. They were all such a blessing to us all. We want to send a huge thank you to Eternal for sending such wonderful people down to help us and bless us this past week. (see new pictures)

The kids spent fun times in class, in the pool, at the water park, playing games and climbing mountains. The adults got to do a lot of that to, but we had lots of meetings as well. I got a terrible cold and stayed in bed for two days and am pretty sure I have amoebas - that made it a hard week for me, but otherwise we walked away encouraged and refreshed. Next week is spring break form school so we are taking our first week long family vacation EVER. With the exception of a long week-end in Lima in January we have never traveled anywhere we didn’t have an obligation. I am so excited to head north to Mancora. I will let you know how it goes.

Bethie has a fever and an infection in her knee. Her knee is getting better but the fever has me concerned. Pray she wakes up feeling great. I don’t want anyone sick at the beach. Pray for a great week of refreshment and fellowship before we head back into the craziness for Pucallpa and ministry.

crazy days

Friday a couple from our church in SC, Eternal, arrived to spend two days in Pucallpa with us. Christian did a lot of running around with them while I watched the kids and got the bags packed. Our friends, Matt and Laurie Tandy, brought with them two suit cases full of goodies – some things we ordered from the States, the rest stuff was from a wish list people at Eternal asked us to send them. We are so humbled and blessed by their gifts. Just to have people come visit is great but the Dove chocolate makes it all that much more special.
They were out and about with Christian throughout the afternoon and finally, come about 6 p.m., I began to wonder where they might be. I called Christian’s cell and asked their where-abouts . . . . . “umm, we are at the police station.” What??!!! A mototaxi hit the car and they had to go to the police station for a few hours. Later that evening we went to have pollo a la brasa in town. It was carnival week-end and the streets down town were blocked off and there was a huge parade. The music from each float was so loud you couldn’t hear what the person next to you was saying and every other float was complete with its own pole/cage dancers wearing next-to-nothing. On the way home Christian got pulled over for going through, and I quote, “a practically red light.” He received a verbal warning and home we went. It was quite a day.
Saturday we introduced the Tandys to more SAM ministries and missionaries. I took them to the market in the morning, we ate lunch at a restaurant floating in the river, they ate ceviche and tacacho for the first time and saw a dolphin in the river while dining. Matt really wanted to try suri (grub worms he had seen in the market that morning – a jungle delicacy). So they went back to the market with Julio and bought some to fry up at home. They were fried in their own grease with a little salt. Matt said they tasted like butter. Max said burnt toast (then stole another off the plate). I think it tasted like deep fried clam or snail. I liked it – wouldn’t order it at a restaurant, but it was good.
We were to catch a plane to Lima at 10:30 Saturday night (our annual field conference is this week just outside of Lima). We arrived at the airport only to find that the plane hadn’t even left Lima yet. The terrible earthquake in Chili Saturday morning had shut down the Santiago airport and all of the LAN computer system. They were checking us in on hand written pieces of paper. We were supposed to pick up two more people at the airport in Lima who were coming from Eternal to help with our field conference. We should have arrived an hour before their plane landed . . . but we didn’t. We didn’t get on the ground until 2a.m. in Lima and they had arrived early and gotten through customs in record time. The two single girls waited for us for 2 hours.
Before leaving Pucallpa the LAN lady tried to tell me that our carry- on baggage was too large. I had to chuckle because we have carried our baggage on the plane at least 10 times already w/o a problem and we had been in the airport for over an hour waiting and she now wants to measure our bags 5 minutes prior to boarding. Actually our carry-ons had never been packed so sparsely before so I didn’t think we would have an issue. The bags fit in the measuring thingy just fine but she thought one was too fat. I was starting to get really annoyed at the silliness of the whole thing. I took back the “fat” bag while Christian helped her measure the other two. I dropped the bag on the ground and jumped up and down on it several times and then asked her to try it again. It fit just fine. She then mumbled something about getting on board quickly because we only had 15 minutes. We boarded and then sat on the plane for a good 45 minutes before taking off. I was so glad to finally arrive in Lima.