Christmas 2007

Whew! The last few days have been packed. Be warned that this blog has the potential to be long :)

We arrived at the children's home Friday afternoon. The common room outside of the room that we are staying in was full of gifts. We called that room Santa's workshop for a few days. That evening we began going through the gifts all of which had been donated to the kids making sure that clothing sizes were correct and making sure that all of "the goods" were spead as evenly as possible among the kids. That meant that we had to unwrap, go through, and re wrap about 300 gifts. We finished the majority of the gift wrapping Sunday evening. Also during that time Staci made 4 pans of brownies, 20+ dozen cookies, 5 cakes and a pumpkin pie (all of which are mostly consummed now). Lee washed a 40 pound box of apples and mounds of grapes (that were nearly the size of plums) on Sunday preparing for Monday night's events.

The evening of Christmas Eve is the "big event" in Guatemala. After supper the kids watched the movie "The Nativity" and at 9 o'clock everyone gathered for a short Christmas service. Groups of the girls had choregraphed dances, a few played various instruments and sang, we sang Christmas Carol's, Lee sang a solo, and Wendy had an extra flute so the two of us played together. Kendon read Luke's account of the Christmas story and then read our of 1 Corinthians. After that, we all took communion together. When the short service was over we ate snackes including apples and grapes (a Christmas must here), cookies, cake, ham, cheeses, and crackers. We drank "hot punch" which is a bunch of fruit juices with spices that was hot. By the point the little guys could hardly wait for their gifts. After cleaning up all of the "food mess" packages were handed out and opened. It was so fun to watch Eliseo, Javier, and Juan David open their gifts. For all three of them this was not only their first Christmas here, but their first Christmas to receive gifts.

The presents were opened and taken to their rooms just before midnight. Everyone, including the littlest ones were handed a bag of various firecrackers and their own set of matches. At midnight the whole country seemed as though it blew up. Imagine the best fireworks show you have ever seen - and then imagine that happening on every city block. It was amazing - for a solid 20 minutes it looked and sounded much like a war zone. The kids played with their firecrackers until 1 when they were sent to bed. After that we moved their stockings to the dining hall, as well as, their "group gifts" like soccer balls, puzzles so it would be ready for Christmas morning.

On Christmas morning, Kendon made his famous oatmeal pancakes, and they were excellent. Before we ate the kids got to see what was in their stocking and look at their group gifts. They were also surprised with a new puppy - a 6 week of Huskey who were offically have a name after the vote at dinner tonight. Kara's parents are here visiting for Christmas. Their church sent all of the "stocking stuffers" for the kids. There wasn't a square centimeter left empty in any stocking. In fact, they brought so much stuff that the two of them packed their clothes for the week in one carry on bag! After breakfast all gringos took a much needed recovery nap.

For lunch, there were traditional Guatemalan tamales, bread and cake.

Last night Kara and Daniel invited us to have Christmas dinner with them and Kara's parents. Not only did they bring all of that stuff for the kids, they managed to pack a whole ham in their carry on bag (that stayed frozen the whole trip), a cheese tray, sweet potatoes, Christmasy plates, napkins, and a few table decorations - it was pretty incredible. We feasted on ham, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, bread, and a pumpkin pie - yummy!!

It was alot of work to pull of a Christmas for 47 kiddos - and a great blessing to see those 47 kids be blessed. It was incredible to see how the Lord provided Christmas gifts for these guys. They all kept saying "we've never had this many gifts".

Here are a few pics for the past few day:



This is what gifts for 47 kids looks like!



This Javier opening up Christmas gifts for the first time.



Eliseo is on his bed with all of his gifts in a big bag - he was so excited about them that he wanted to sleep with them last night.



Juan David is checking out some new shoes.



Angie isn't generally afraid of much, but wasn't about to hold a roman candle - so she gave it to Lee.



This is the newest addition to the NLCH family.

Buena Noche!!

Oh man, it's now 1:28 a.m. We're headed to bed in mere moments. We will futher explain the Christmas tradicions here, but thought we'd send a Merry Christmas to you all as we head to bed after the grand festivities of the night here. We have never seen so many fireworks in our lives. Watching the kids receive and open their packages was so fun. It was especially wonderful to watch Javier, Eliseo, and Juan David receive and open packages as it was their first Christmas.

Javier (who is 8, I think) wins the best quote award for the night. I helped him take his gifts to his room. When we got there he said, "Staci, this was my first Christmas ever. It was the best one yet."

So...Merry Christmas. We hope that you are having special time with your families wherever you are.

Lee & Staci

Each day at school we have a 30 minute break from 10 - 10:30. There's always coffee and hot tea, as well as, various breads for snacking. Today we were sitting on the first level of the school talking with a few others students when were heard a strange noise. It sounded like the normal fireworks - except didn't stop as it generally does after a few seconds. In fact, it got louder. Arturo, the school director, came out of his office because of the strange sounds. He passed by us and said that he thought the store that sells fireworks was on fire. So all of the students and teachers proceeded to go up on the roof where we watched a whole store of fireworks go up.

Just to help you compare - this isn't like a fireworks stand at home. It covered the area of maybe 3 houses, American. Also, the structure isn't like a store we would think of the states. Lee says it was of lesser quality than most barns he's seen. Mostly made of wood 2x4s and corrigated iron for a roof, it was basically a facility that would keep rain out. We have no idea what started the fire - with no fire hydrants they had to wait for their version of tanker trucks to come and put the fire out.

We talk about the fireworks alot. Mostly because it's completely new for us. In our world, fireworks were for the 4th of July and New Years, and they generally look nice. Here it's every day - and all about noise.

We walked by the site tonight - we saw where someone's business was - and their livelihood gone. There's really nothing like insurance down here that would cover a loss like that.

Our teachers say that nothing like that has happened in Antigua before. Evidently last year, a similiar incident happened in the capital city.

3 school days are remaining before we leave Antigua for the children's home. We are very much looking forward to this break! As far as language school goes, we are still learning the subjunctive - which is really difficult! We'd try to explain exactly what the subjunctive is, but there really is no equivalent in the english language.

As for the past couple of weeks, we attended language school and took a small excursion to the beach. After a 2.5 hour bus ride which also included a 1.5 minute ferry ride we arrived to the pacific coast. It was a bit akward to enjoy 90 plus degree weather in December!! It was really nice to have an afternoon outside of our regular surroundings. The black sand beaches were decently vacant of people and a bit to warm to walk on barefooted. On the bus ride home that evening our bus driver kept looking out of the driver's side window - he then told us that we should look up the mountain where we saw a huge eruption thanks to volcano Fuego. It was much like red fireworks - and was really neat watch the lava change from bright red to black as it cooled while running down the side.

Other than that - it's been pretty routine. We are very much looking forward to being at the children's home and helping with the gobs of things that must be done for Christmas and New Years.

Here are a few pics from our little trip:





We made plans to not get in the water, as we were only there for a few hours. We didn't want to have to take extra clothes and such. This picture is Lee "not getting in the water".

How to celebrate a random Wednesday....

Wednesday, December 12th is indeed a day to celebrate. Why you ask? We have no idea, but the marching band that began at 5:30am sure thought that today was a fabulous day. Today was such a great day that cotton candy was for sale in the park - and there were firecrackers that were blown up (loud ones, not pretty ones) every 15 minutes as opposed to every 30.

In the afternoon there was a parade - and yes, another marching band.

It is 9:35 now and we can hear a marching across town that is destined to come our way.

In all actuality, today there was some sort of celebration concerning the virgin of Guadelupe. We truly do know much about this celebration except that many marching bands are a definite need for the day. Also, all the little kids dressed up like adults in traditional mayan clothing. The little boys had painted on mustaches, it was pretty cute.

We'll post more pics soon - and a blog worthy of reading, just wanted to share with you the proper way to spend a Wednesday so that you can plan appropriately for next Wednesday in your neighborhood.

For the record, we've heard 10 "bombas" the loud firecrackers while typing this short blog.

School days

We finally remembered to take our camera to school and take pictures all in the same day!

This is Lee and his current teacher, Lydia.


This is Staci with her current teacher, Harvey.


In the last blog we wrote about how teachers have found out about Lee's knowledge of biology and are bringing him bugs of all kinds.... This is the lastest specimen being inspected...



The inspection was followed by a 30 minute conversation of varous spiders and insects. Harvey has told us that he has placed cups around his house and has told his family to capture insects.

Another week...another blog

So it's been a little while since we've blogged, here's the latest update. Not too much has happened.

When we got back from our Thanksgiving break a group of journalists from Denmark were studying at our school. We knew before we left that they would be studying there for 2 weeks. We knew that meant for us the possibility of our teachers having different students. Staci was able to continue studying with her teacher, however, Lee's teacher had a Danish student so he studied with Lydia. At the end of the week Lee had the option of changing back to his original teacher - he has chose to stay with Lydia. Both of us are studying the "subjunctive" modes of spanish right now - it's difficult, but we'll get there.

A funny thing about school is that the teachers have discovered Lee's knowledge of biology. Teachers are bringing various insects, spiders, and whatever other beasts they find in their houses to school. (Not by Lee's request) They are so kind as to even give us these glorious things. So far, there have been several discussions of brown recluses and he has been gifted spiders, centipedes, and another thing called a solpugid a.k.a sun spider. It doesn't appear as though this string of gifts is going to end anytime soon. Staci's teacher has placed cups in every room of his house for easy catching.

We had a fun visit this weekend with Don Archer from Spearman, TX. He was visiting his brother who lives in Guatemala City, and was so kind to find us, and then come to Antigua for an afternoon visit. We enjoyed lunch with them, and a nice walk around the city.

Please continue to pray for us as our plates are full with being newly married, learning a new language, living in a foreign country and all of the things that come along with those elements.