Christmas 2008

We hope that you all had a great Christmas.

We'd like to share a bit about what Christmas was like for us, and share some pictures of such a fun time.

We shared last year that most of the Christmas festivities happen on Christmas Eve. We love the deep tradition that New Life Children's Home has and things that must happen for Christmas to be Christmas here.

We'll start with the preparations. Church on the Rock in Lubbock, TX begins each summer collecting gifts for each of our kids. You would be amazed at what these people can stuff in a sack. I'm particularly thankful for all of the Texas Tech gear that they pack in for our kiddos. :) The church that we attend here in Guatemala finds several sponsors for our kids and they purchase gifts as well.

Once the gifts arrive, we open and check them all for sizes and the redistribute if necessary. On the 23rd we began to move gifts for our "workshop" to the dining hall to start to surround the tree. We added another pile on the 24th. If we were to put gifts out earlier it's amazing how some gifts would unwrap themselves a bit early, because "no one" touches the gifts before it's time to unwrap.

The evening of Christmas Eve is when the fun begins. Here it's call "noche buena" or "The good night". At 9pm the kids left their homes to come to the dining hall. Some of the little kids did a dance, some of the older ones played instruments, our older girls sang "O Come All Ye Faithful", and one little guys, the newest at NLCH sang "Jingle Bells" solo and a acappella, Kendon read Luke's account of the Christmas story and we had communion together. After our Christmas Eve service, we had snacks including homemade cookies, cheese, crackers, ham, sausages, apples and grapes. Apples and grapes are a must have for any Guatemalan Christmas festivity. Snacks were cleaned up, and the we began handing out presents. Once the present touches your hand you're allowed to open it. The table of little boys (there are 12 of them) was electric!

After all of the presents were opened, everyone took them back to their rooms and then came back outside for the midnight fireworks. At midnight the whole country sets off fireworks - it's the best fireworks show there is.

Christmas morning began with the traditional oatmeal pancakes and stockings that were filled with popcorn, candy, small toys....etc...

During breakfast, Lee and the Wheeler's kids began to put together the trampoline that the kids had no idea about. After breakfast the kids came out to see their new trampoline. It's only been in service for 5 days and already has a lot of miles on it. :)

Here are a few pictures from such fun days:

Just before opening presents, here are a few of the kids with the pile o presents behind them.


Lee teaching Oscar how to use his new whoopee cushin.


Anxiously awaiting to get to jump on the trampoline.


Michelle was the first to get to try out the trampoline.


Jorgito jumping on a trampoline for the first time.

Merry Christmas!

We are in the middle of Christmas activities here - we'll explain more later about the traditions of Christmas at NLCH and Guatemala. It's currently 11:40pm, Christmas Eve and we're having a small intermission or half-time if you will before blowing up fireworks at midnight. There's nothing like watching a small child experience Christmas for the first time. This past year, NLCH has received several new kiddos, it was so neat watching them receive gifts. Randy asked Lee to carry his stuff to his room because it was too heavy for him. He also asked when the next Christmas was. :)

Merry Christmas!

Lee & Staci

Catching up

It seems like we're often writing blogs to catch up. We really thought that the fall would be a bit slower and that we'd have more time for things like writing blogs. The fall has simply just been different than what the spring and summer were.

We wrote just before Thanksgiving. We enjoyed Thanksgiving here with other American missionaries. We, like most of you all enjoyed turkey, ham, dressing, broccoli rice casserole, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, homemade rolls and the list goes on and on. It was a fun day of great fellowship. The day after was fun too. In the states their were parking lot wars of "black Friday". Here it was just a normal Friday. We (us 3 missionary families at NLCH) enjoyed a day out together. We grabbed lunch at a mall food court and then played a couple of games of bowling before returning to have leftovers from our Thanksgiving feast.

On December 7 Lee left with Chad Smith (another missionary here at the home) and 7 of our older kids for a 4 day mission trip to western Guatemala and a brief crossing into Mexico. Over the 4 days they stopped at between 20 and 25 churches to share with the kids of the community and give out Christmas gifts. Another ministry called Hearts for Heaven planned the trip, as well as, collected the Christmas gifts - Lee, Chad and the kids were the hands and feet of the effort and gave out the gifts and shared a gospel message through stories with the kids.

This past Tuesday we took our middle aged girls out for their "school vacation excursion". We're really enjoying taking the kids out in small groups for a fun afternoon - not only is it something fun and out of the ordinary to do, I think they just like getting out of the home and seeing other things. This week, we took 5 girls out and went bowling. None of them had played before - and all of them complained of their arms hurting at the end of our time together :). The only bad part of the whole thing was the traffic jam of all traffic jams that we experienced on the way home. It took us over 2 hours to go just 13 miles - yuck!

Also this past week we finished our two teenage small groups for the year. We'll start those back up mid January-ish. We plan on continuing to have our group of college aged kids during the holidays. Our groups are going well, our relationship with those involved in the groups is growing, and our spanish is continually challenged.

Christmas preparations are now in full swing. It is fun to get to be a part of Christmas on this kind of scale. 50 kids, plus employees and their families = a mountain of cookies to be baked, lots of presents to be wrapped, and more excitement than you can imagine housed in a bunch of little kids.

Here are a few pics of recent events:

The second stop of the trip was a church plant in progress out in the country. A few of our kids climbed coconut trees nearby and knocked a few down to be eaten.


One of the visited churches.


Most of the visited churches were small, poor churches.


Handing out gifts.


Group shot from the trip. If you look closely, you can see the pacific ocean in the background.


*I've been trying to add other pictures, but blogspot is being weird - I'll try again later.