Lee & Staci

La Casa Del Waffle

2009-05-16T13:04:00.002-05:00

Last weekend we took the two current interns on a retreat to lake Atitlan. On the way home, I looked up and saw a bright yellow sign with black block lettering that said, "La Casa Del Waffle" or "The Waffle House". We made a note then to make sure that we took an adventure there someday.

Usually on Friday nights Michelle spends the night with us, but sometimes we change due to varying schedules. This week, she spent the night with us Wednesday night, which freed up our Saturday morning a bit. Michelle is a girl after my own heart and likes to stay up late and sleep in - so going out to breakfast when she's with us is only an option if we want to deal with a little girl who didn't get all of her beauty rest.

So this morning we left to go check out "La Casa Del Waffle" upon arrival we knew that it would be something that we'd want pictures of, except we forgot the camera at the house. In the parking area there was a handicap parking sign from the city of Phoenix. In front of other parking spots were signs that said "Dale Jr. Fans Parking Only, All Others will be Towed", "Jeff Gordon Fans Parking Only, All Others will be Towed", there was a traditional mail box with numbers on the post and the red flag raised, and a sign that read "For Sale By Owner" just like you'd find in Home Depot. What was extra funny about it all is that no Guatemalan knew what any of it meant. Inside we quickly observed that it's not a place you'd want to eat when it was raining because of the massive holes in the roof. Somehow it seemed fitting. There were various license plates from various states on the walls. Other decorations were an old Singer sewing machine, a fishing rod, cast iron skillets and pots, and lots of framed pictures of the 3 Stooges. The menu also showed their love for the 3 Stooges, Larry, Moe and Curly each had their picture on a page. One wall had various street signs like a yield sign, a stop sign, as well as, a Route 66 sign. It even said "get your kicks on route 66."

As for the food, the menu offered various breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, black beans, plantains, and of course waffles. Lee had a pretty traditional breakfast of 2 eggs, black beans, bacon, and a waffle. I had a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. The food wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, and for about $10 the experience was well worth it.

The blog of all blogs!!

2009-04-18T13:21:00.003-05:00

Over the past month we've had two teams, Holy Week, and internet in spurts - so be sure your in your comfy chair - this blog is going to be lengthy!

Thanks, Trinity Christian School.
In mid-March a group from Trinity Christian School from Lubbock, TX came for a week. We had a medical clinic, construction projects, soccer games, lots of UNO games, and just an all around great time. TCS has what they call "missions week" the week before spring break. All students in the school were involved in various missions projects in and around Lubbock, Texas, and around the world.

Thanks, Lifesong Church.
Lifesong Church from Orlando, FL spent a week with us late March - early April. The pastor of the church lead the team, he and his wife had been here before leading teams for a church they pastored before they moved to Florida. For every other team member it was their first time to be here. We enjoyed so much getting to know them. We also enjoyed how much help they were. Their main project was helping to put in parts of the sewage system that will be used by buildings yet to be built. They also helped with a big cleaning project, made banners for our dining hall, did some painting, and taught us a new game called "move your buns".

Holy Week.
Our kids spring break changes between various parts of March and April each year to match Holy Week. At New Life Children's Home there are some die hard traditions like "Holy Week Olympics", sleepovers, and special foods. During that week, everyone went to the swimming pool on Tuesday - and most everybody came home with a sunburn! Usually, only kids that are on good behavior levels get to go to the pool - an exception was made this time. It was great to watch them all enjoy such a good day together. Wednesday - Friday we had the "olympics" each afternoon. Wednesday was "Rally Day" which was much like what I remember "field day" being in elementary school. For 2 hours there were all kinds of relay races. Thursday was "food day" and for another 2 hours we played various games that all involved something edible like a bubble gum blowing contest, saltine cracker eating relay, blindfolded apple eating contest, and a cake decorating contest. On Friday we had another 2 hours of water games. We ended that day with tug-o-war in a mud pit. For all of these days the kids were broken up into teams - they worked together and cheered one another on. At the end of the games each day a theme was announced for supper that evening. They had just about an hour and a half to shower and get ready as a team for supper. We had 3 theme nights: ocean night, clown night, and zoo night. It's really fun watching how creative they are and how fast they can come up with ideas. Also, during the week each age group of kids had a sleepover. On Wednesday we had the younger girls in our place, and then on Friday we hosted the older girls. We learned that we're not as young as we used to be, staying up past mid-night is such a stretch these days. Some of the older girls stayed up until 5 am watching movies and eating junk food.
On Friday night, we had a Good Friday Service, and then on Sunday morning we had a sunrise Easter service. The Easter service was followed by a special breakfast of breakfast burritos.
We were so thankful to have the help of Chad, Marlana, Dave, and Lindsey this year, along with a few of the older kids here at the home.

Dave & Lindsey.
We have two interns here with us these days. Dave is from Seattle. He came late February and after studying spanish in Antigua for 3 weeks has joined us here for the remainder of his time until late May. Dave graduated from the University of Washington in December and will begin Med school this August. He's helping out in the medical clinic in the mornings and then helping with homework in the afternoons. Lindsey is from Abilene, TX. She is married to Ben, who is a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. He is currently deployed and so instead of staying in Abilene in a quiet house, she's spending a couple of months in Guatemala. She has completed one week of language school and has one more to go. Once she's here with us she's going to help out in the kitchen in the mornings and then with homework in the afternoons.

Lee & Staci.
We really enjoyed the two teams and Holy Week - we also enjoyed the long nap that followed the ending of the three events. We will receive our next team in June. Until then, we have several other things going on. The accountant/bookeeper here is on maternity leave so Staci is helping out some in the office. We're not finished with the sewage project, so Lee is about to become good friends with the backhoe. We're also looking forward to having groups of kids back in our apartment. We're also beginning to gear up for the summer as we anticipate several groups and interns.

Baby Jarvis.
Yes, that says baby Jarvis! We're expecting to welcome baby Jarvis into the world in late October. We went to the doctor for the first time this week. He did an ultrasound, and we got to see the little baby show off a bit. Baby was pretty active, and everything appears to be very normal and healthy. We plan on staying here to have the baby. We really like the doctor and hospital a lot, and feel very comfortable with going through this whole process here.

Almost a month...

2009-03-06T19:08:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow will be a month since we've written, so we thought we'd fire off a blog before midnight to keep that from happening.

In the states, spring breaks are happening which means "team season" is heating up. Tomorrow we'll receive our first group of the spring from Lubbock, TX. Lee's been busy getting their work projects together and making sure that all necessary materials are in order for Monday morning

In a couple of weeks, the book keeper/accountant here at the home will start maternity leave, so Staci's been learning the in's and out's of such stuff to be able to lend a hand in such capacities while she's gone.

About 3 weeks ago we were in Antigua on a Sunday afternoon, in the central park with a few friends when we heard, "Staci?, Staci?". A girl that Staci went to high school with, and hadn't seen in 11 years was there as well. The following weekend she and a friend came to visit us for the weekend. It was fun to have visitors for a couple of nights and catch up on 11 years.

Lee spent a good part of February with Don Snow, a retired shop teacher from Pennsylvania who comes down twice a year, usually. Don is the master of many trades, and a perfectionist. Lee and Don did a lot of maintenance on the girl's home unit, built some bunk beds, and lots of small odd jobs that no one ever seems to have time to complete.

So sorry for such a boring blog - life here is nothing short of boring, but it sure seems like it from this blog.

Lee's week out and about

2009-02-07T18:39:00.008-06:00

We mentioned in the last blog that we're in the process of seeking out "what's next". Before we tell you about Lee's last week, we'd simply ask for you to join in prayer with us about this matter. It's not easy, it doesn't feel good, but we are certain that the Lord will lead us to the right decision.

On Thursday the 29th, Lee headed out by himself to Nebaj to meet up with and travel around with Mike. During the following six days they taught in four different places.

If you care to google a Guatemalan map, we live in Villa Nueva - a suburb in the capital. Nebaj is north and west of Villa Nueva (mostly north). You can google names of towns, which will help you travel along with where Lee travelled.

On Friday, they left Nebaj early (between 4 & 4:30) to head to Huehuetenango. After teaching from 8:30am - 5pm on Inductive Bible Study and the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit they drove to Santa Cruz del Quiche (we'll call Quiche from now on). Saturday morning they taught the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit again until lunch. After lunch they drove to San Andres Joyabaj to have a meeting about possibly starting classes there in the future. On Sunday, they left a town called Chichicastenango and went to Barrillas. It took 8 hours, 3.5 of which that were only in 1st and 2nd gear because of steep mountain passages and switchbacks. On Monday they taught in Barrillas. On Tuesday they taught in Nuevo Porvenir, a small town near the Mexico border. On Wednesday they drove from Barrillas back to Nebaj; it took about 8.5 hours. On Thursday they left Nebaj and headed back toward the capital city so that Lee could drop Mike off at the mechanic's place and then Lee came home.

Lee said it was a great time with Mike and the Guatemalan highlands were really beautiful. Teaching in spanish was difficult, but really good at the same time to be able to train those mountain pastors that will never have the opportunity to go to seminary.

Here are some pics from the adventure:

This is a huge bolder left from a landslide from last year's rainy season that is blocking 3/4 of the road.

Teaching the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Barrillas.

These last 4 pictures are just to help give you an idea of the varied climate zones that Lee saw this past week. This was on the dry side of a mountain.

This picture was in the rain forest.

Many of the people in the highlands are subsistence farmers. On the bottom of this picture is a man in front of his house, hoeing his field.

Thought we'd throw in a picture of wheat for you west Texas farmers.

3 days, 300 miles & 6 quarts of oil

2009-01-26T21:04:00.004-06:00

We came to Guatemala in September 2007 on a 2 year commitment. So that means between now and September we have some decisions to make - like do we stay in Guatemala or do we move back to the states.

We're beginning to process that decision. Part of the process was us taking a trip to Nebaj (pronounced Neba) this past weekend. Mike & Terri and their kids are missionaries with New Life Advance International - the same organization that we're a part of. They live in Nebaj. Mike is the International Director of an organization called ASELSI. ASELSI does pastoral and church leader training in remote areas. Lee is a teacher (a good one if you ask me) and is looking into the possibilities in becoming involved with ASELSI.

So... on Friday we left here about 8:30 in the morning - sparing you many details of the days before dealing with how much oil we had in our car, or if we had any at all we'll begin this story in Chimaltenango, an hour into our trip, and the check gauges liight came on. Aware that the oil pressure gauge was low we checked the oil - no oil. Added 2 quarts. Skipping many more details, we arrived in Nebaj about 3:45 - and added 6 quart of oil along the way. Nebaj is only about 150 miles from where we live, but it's way up in the mountains, and the roads weren't great in all areas. We checked out Mike & Terri's beautiful home at the base of a very green mountain and then Lee took the car to the local mechanic.

We spent Friday evening with Mike, Terri and their 4 kids. They were thankful that it wasn't as cold as it had been - we were thankful for the long sleeves that we brought. We have become very accustomed to the weather in Villa Nueva - rarely above 80, rarely below 60. So the 40 degree weather in Nebaj was freezing to us.

On Saturday morning Lee went with Mike to an extension site for ASELSI where 8 students had met to receive teaching. One student began walking at 4am to reach Nebaj by 8am for the class. Mike taught a 2 hour session that morning and Lee observed.

After the guys got back to the house we loaded up and drove about 30 minutes on mostly dirt roads to a dairy for lunch. The story is that an Italian guy came to that area in the 1920's and settled there because it reminded him of his home in Italy. 90 years later the family still runs the dairy and makes cheese just the way he did in the 1920's. We had a delicious lunch, including the cheese they make there melted between 2 tortillas. The weather there dumps between 7 and 9 feet of rain every year is never really hot - thus, really beautiful plant life. She had a green house full of orchids among other flowers.

We spent Saturday afternoon and evening at Mike & Terri's house with a few other missionaries from Nebaj. It was great getting to be a part of the community that they share.

Sunday morning the alarm went off at 3:15am and we left their house at 4am so that we could be at a little town called Los Encuentros by 7:30am. After grabbing a quick bite of breakfast in Los Encuentros we drove another 20 minutes to La Argueta. That morning Mike taught for a while and then handed the reigns to Lee for a bit. He taught about 5 pages of the material that morning which took about 45 minutes. Another teacher, Jose, taught the last part. This was Lee's first time to teach in a setting like this in spanish. (He was awesome, if I do say so myself. It's one thing to have a conversation about the weather in another language, it's something completely different and difficult to teach. I certainly wouldn't have felt comfortable in that situation - he didn't mispronounce one word!)

After having a snack and spending some time with a family in La Argueta we headed back to the capital. Thanks to the mechanic in Nebaj, we didn't have to add any oil!!

It was such a good weekend. Great time with great people in a beautiful place.

On Thursday Lee will head back to Nebaj to spend a week travelling with Mike to several extension sites. He'll be gone for a week.

Here are a few pictures of the little trip:

Lee teaching his first class.

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This was part of the dairy that we had lunch at.

Mid-January update

2009-01-19T19:52:00.002-06:00

So we'll officially stop apologizing about not blogging more often. We would love to think that we would blog more often, but as you can see from over a year of blogging, we're just not good at blogging consistently.

So here's the run down:
We rang in the New Year's with a bit of a get together in our apartment with fellow gringos. We ate, played board games, and had a great time hanging out. Just before midnight we gathered up our loot (fireworks) and matches. About midnight we began to light one by one the biggest fireworks that we've ever lit. There are a lot of things here that differ from that in the States. One of those is the control of fireworks - there just isn't much control here. So, we purchased 100 shot roman candles - they were about 5 feet tall. Lee got to blow up some huge, very loud firecrackers.

Our kids enjoyed their last two weeks of freedom before school started on the 15th.

We had a team of 6 from Pennsylvania from the 8th - 16th. This team comes twice each year - our kids dearly love them and an always anxious for their arrival. While the team was here, and with their help, we took 18 of the kids to a water park that is located on the pacific beach. What gets better than a couple of pools, a few cool slides, and the beach? For many if was the first time that they saw the ocean. For one little guy it was the first time he'd been to a pool or the ocean, it was a bit of fun overload for him, he hardly stopped playing to eat lunch.

During the rest of their time here, the Pennsylvania team got our phone intercom system working properly again, we know have wireless internet in more areas, they demolished a couple of walls (on purpose), and put doors on a couple of medicine cabinets - oh yeah, and fixed several leaks!

Now that school has started, a change in schedule happens for everyone - it was no fun for the kids to wake up at 5:30am last Thursday. Most of our kids struggle with academics and would appreciate your prayers for their school year.

Without going into details, we'd ask for your specific prayers over New Life Children's Home as this new year has brought some new challenges that it has never faced before.

Thanks for standing with us,
Lee & Staci

Christmas 2008

2008-12-30T21:54:00.008-06:00

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!

2008-12-24T23:38:00.002-06:00

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

2008-12-21T15:25:00.006-06:00

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.

Another Friday Excursion

2008-11-26T22:00:00.008-06:00

This past Friday we surprised 4 of the younger girls with an outing. Our kids have a behavior level system. If you are on a good level - you get to have privileges like the ability to go on surprise excursions.

We would love to be able to take all of them out for a fun afternoon during the break, but with 50 kids, the odds of them all being on a good enough level to go it not likely.

Anyway - on to the really fun stuff! Iris, Angie, Emily, and Sheila were on a great level so on Friday we went to a food court for lunch and then headed on to the Children's Museum. They loved that they got to share a pizza together and go through the museum with very few other people. We were surprised by how great and interactive it was. In addition to the information, they had activities that went along with each station.

At the end of the museum was a huge ball room. There were thousands of those small balls that are in play places like chuck-e-cheese, but instead of a huge vat of balls, there were pulley systems and other ways to collect the balls. Much like some water parks that have a huge bucket of water that spills periodically, instead of water, lots of balls fell at the sound of the alarm.

Here are a few pics from our day out:

Here Iris is learning all about static electricity.

Though we didn't see any reason to have a bubble area, we all loved making giant bubbles.

Lee is showing them how exactly to remove the "charlie horse" in the life size operation game.

After all of our hard work, the balls came raining down.

Taking a little rest at the end of our afternoon.

We hope that you all have a great Thanksgiving. We're looking forward to all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods with fellow missionaries from the states tomorrow.

Surprise Excursion!!

2008-11-16T19:59:00.005-06:00

We've mentioned before that our kids are out of school for the equivalent of "summer break". This past Friday we surprised the little boys who are on good behavior level with an outing.

We had planned the outing, and clued in all of those who needed to know ahead of time. Our plan was to leave about 11:30, make our way to McDonald's for a happy meal lunch, and then head on to the zoo.

At 11:30 we pulled the van in front of the boys house, the 10 eligible kiddos ran outside, excited for what was to come. We told them that because of their great behavior level, there was a reward in store. So just before loading the van, the announcement of a McDonald's lunch was announced, followed by cheers. Here are a couple of pics from McDonald's :

The next part of the story is best with a little background information. The little boys are... little boys. Meal times can be really messy, loud, and sort of out of control. In the past few weeks the house parents have been talking to them about how they are animals. This was no reason for our choice of taking them to the zoo, but it lead to some teachable moments.

After eating Lee rounded up all of the kiddos and said that he had been talking to their houseparent who said that they needed to learn the difference between being animals and humans. Therefore we were going to go to the zoo to learn the difference. This announcement was also followed by cheers. Here are a few pics from the zoo:

This is just inside the gates at the zoo. The couple on the left, Edon & Dixon are here visiting the home for a couple of weeks. We have enjoyed spending time with them, and they were great help on Friday.

"Everybody be a flamingo" You can faintly see a couple of flamingo's in the background on the left.

Of all animals, most of the kids wants their picture taken with Camila, the donkey. I think she was getting a little agitated, so she decided to snack on Javier's shirt for this picture.

Christmas Cards

2008-11-12T22:28:00.002-06:00

Yeah, we know, talking about Christmas cards in early November may be a stretch, but we're almost finished with them here. Let us clarify, the kids are almost finished with their Christmas cards.

Each of our kids have to write a homemade Christmas card to each of the sponsors each year. It's almost like a dance that begins in late summer and by early November the music has stopped, but some kids haven't finished the dance. So, the first part of November the kids have Christmas card making sessions to finish them in enough time to get them to the states before Christmas. When the kids have finished, we translate them, stuff them, seal them, weigh them... and so on.

Last year we wrote a blog about helping to translate the cards while we were on a short break from language school. We enjoyed so much reading what the kids would have to say to their sponsor. This year was was no let down, I think by far the Christmas cards from our kids are the best ones around. Last year we shared with you one funny card written by Samy for Bob. We can't remember which kid it was this year, but the card read "Merry Christmas. God bless you. I love all of my sponsors. You are my favorite sponsor. Merry Christmas." What made it even funnier is that we know that they kid had not met that sponsor.

We'll take this time to clarify a bit what a "sponsor" is for one of our kiddos. New Life Children's Home operates off of donations. One way of connecting with the ministry of NLCH is being a child sponsor. A child sponsor donates $25 per month. That money goes to pay for food, clothing, medical care, school, and anything else that you can imagine that a child would need. The goal is for each child to have 12 sponsors. If this is something you think you, your small group or Sunday school class might be interested in, please email us for more information.

Keep your browser pointed here in the next few days... Friday we will take the little boys out on a surprise excursion, you'll want to see pictures of that.

Home Dedication

2008-10-28T18:55:00.003-05:00

Several of you who read our blog have been here within the last year. You all watched for the few days that you were here, people working on what would be the new boys home unit. On October 3, the last parts of the house were finished and later that day the boys moved in. It was electric. It was loud. It was a such a good moment. Aldolfo, the newest boy here at the home was very careful to show me (Staci) his new bedroom that he currently shares with 3 other boys. He made sure that I saw his part of the closet, and the bathroom that he would share with others. He was so proud.

This past weekend we had the dedication service for that home unit. "Casa Anthony" is the name give to the home in memory a little boy named Scott Anthony who went home to be with Jesus just 17 days after he was born. Our kids learned a dance and prepared songs to sing. Scott, the father of Scott Anthony came to share the story of Scott Anthony. Scott and his wife believed the Lord had called them to be ones to raise the money for the new boys home unit. He shared his story of how they have grown in faith of the Lord through the healing process of loosing a son. Scott Anthony was the second child of Scott and his wife. They now have 6 children. Also the mayor of Villa Nueva (our town of 1.2 million) came and spoke, as did an elder from the church that we attend here.

After the service, we had a reception and the kiddos gave tours of the house. From the kids perspective getting to "go ahead" to eat cookies was the best part of the day. It was hard for them to wait until all of the guests had been through the line.

In other news... the weather has changed a bit. "Winter" has come with a vengeance. It's quite bizarre how our bodies have become accustomed to the weather here. When it's above 80 degrees it's terribly hot, and when it's below 72 it's cold. The past few days I've had on a sweat shirt in the frigid 68 degree weather. Today one of the little boys said it was "pure winter". Our thermometer read 71 degrees.

The latest...

2008-10-19T19:35:00.006-05:00

We last updated on Sept. 25. So much for updating weekly, huh?

Here's a glimpse of what's been going on, and hopefully we'll keep you better informed!

On Oct.3 our kids who are in 9th grade and below finished classes for the school year. The school year here starts in mid-January and ends in October. They, like all kids, were very excited. Also, extra excitement was added for them because after classes finished they got to move into their new house! All afternoon the "big pickup" ran back and forth between sides hauling their stuff.

On Oct. 4 we went to the airport to pick up a team from First Baptist Church in Canyon, TX. It was so great to see people we knew, and it was good to know that we had them for more than a week. They, unlike most teams, did not do construction stuff, they had preplanned and then led activities for our kids everyday that they were here. The team of 13 came with 26 checked bags, and 13 carry ons. In those bags were mountains of supplies, and a few goodies for us to! For just a sampling of things they did: they taught on the fruits of the spirit, the armor of God, inner beauty, tye-dyed t-shirts, made homemade ice cream, had a "Texas night" complete with jalapeno poppers and Texas sized chocolate chip cookies and like all nights "Texas" we danced the Cotton Eyed Joe. Part of the team went with a small group of our kids to climb volcano Pacaya and the others stayed back to have the ultimate craft morning with the little ones and a "water" afternoon with a slip-n-slide. They spent lots of hours hanging out with our kids. Our kids loved it, and the team loved it.

The team left at 5am Monday morning. After returning from the airport, we both crashed.

Now that our kids are out of school the sound level during the day has increased. It's fun to hear them playing and enjoying their "summer" vacation.

We took a small hiatus from our small groups with having the team here. So tomorrow night we'll begin having not 2, but 3 small groups each week.

We'll leave you tonight with a few pictures of time that we had with the team.

A couple pics from today

2008-09-25T22:16:00.005-05:00

We've told you that we've started having small discipleship groups in our apartment on Monday & Thursday nights. Here's a picture from tonight:

Every Thursday afternoon Staci watches Michelle for a few hours. Today, we let Michelle see the guitar, and she loved it! In fact, she got a little pouty when it was put up. She's going to be playing riffs like nobodies business in no time :)

Welcome, Aldolfo

2008-09-14T21:27:00.003-05:00

We'd like you all to meet Aldolfo, picture below, the newest kiddo at New Life Children's Home. He joins 4 other siblings here. He's adapting quite well. The second or third day he was here I saw him and said "amigo!" (friend!) and he replied quite quickly "no mi nombre es Adolfo" or "no, my name is Aldolfo" now it's our joke and we go through the same song and dance most days. Aldolfo is 5 years old and the other little boys are really liking their new friend.

This past Thursday we took Lee's dad to the airport after he had spent a week with us. We were sad to see him go; we had such a great time with him. We left the children's home for one night with him, and then spent the rest of the week at the home. He helped out with several small construction projects, but most importantly we got some excellent time of just hanging out, talking and laughing.

Tomorrow is Guatemala's independence day. We can already see a few fireworks tonight noting the special day. Guatemala became independent from Spain in 1821. Our kids don't have school tomorrow and we'll be eating hamburgers for lunch!

This past week we had our first 2 small groups. On Mondays and Thursdays we have a group of 7 and 9 of our kids ranging in ages from 14-25. These small discipleship groups are not mandatory for the kids and we are super excited that 16 of them would choose to be involved in such a thing. Our language skills are being stretched! We are doing a 4 week series through the first part of October, we will have a team from Canyon, TX for 10 days, and then we will begin a new series.

We'll leave you tonight with a couple of pictures:

First, we have Aldolfo. What a cutie!

Here is a picture of Lee holding a lychee. A lychee is a fruit that is about the size of an apricot, but is red and is "hairy". Once you cut it open, inside is a "large, white, naked grape looking" fruit. It has a seed in the middle of it as well. It was a "hey we haven't tried it and Wesley (Lee's dad) is here, so why not" The taste was very mild - it sure didn't live up to it's outward appearance.

One Year Today!

2008-09-04T22:38:00.004-05:00

One year ago today Felix, the hurricane, was threatening Central America and we left Amarillo on a plane bound for Guatemala City! What a year it has been! Thank you for praying for us and with us. Thank you for reading our blogs and caring about what his happening in our lives. We are so grateful.

Today is not only the anniversary of us being in Guatemala for a year, we also picked up Lee's dad, Wesley, at the airport. We've been looking forward to his visit for a while and are so excited to have him here with us for a week!

More later...

Friday Nights

2008-08-23T23:02:00.003-05:00

In January we received a group of 4 siblings, Oscar 10, Iris 9, Randy 6, and Michelle 8 months. Now, Michelle is 15 months old, and each Friday night she spends the night with us.

Weighing less than 8 pounds, Michelle is very small for her age. What she lacks in size she makes up for in personality. We have enjoyed our Friday evenings with her. Though we see her almost everyday at some point or another, it is fun to learn what she has learned from week to week. When she started staying with us 5ish weeks ago she was perfecting the crawl. Now she's pulling up on things and crawling everywhere possible in record speed.

Here are a couple of pictures from last night:

Helllooo!!

2008-08-21T22:51:00.002-05:00

First off, yes we're still alive. Yes, we are healthy. Yes, we still live in Guatemala. Yes, we'd still love for you to read our blog. And yes, after 2 months, here is a blog from us!

We'll start with a bulleted summary of what life has consisted of for us since we last posted:
-On July 2nd Staci's parents came and stayed with us for 10 days. We really enjoyed having them here. We especially are grateful for the work her dad did by beginning the framework for an extended roof on our maintenance shop. Staci's mom spent most of her days in our apartment sewing curtains. We love that our neighbors can no longer see in! Also, while they were here we spent a couple of nights away seeing new things for all of us. We went to Tikal in northern Guatemala. Tikal was once a large city that geologists believe people lived in until 860AD. It was then rediscovered by some Guatemalans in 1848. The University of Pennsylvania took it as a major project in the 70's and today about 20% is uncovered.

-From July 10 through the 19th we had a group from Red Lion, Pennsylvania. These guys come down twice a year each year and our kiddos love them. They're much like family around here, and we enjoyed working with them so much. They worked in our medical clinic, helping to get the facilities up to code, as well as, they also worked on our phone system.

-July 23rd-25 we were in Panajachel with our summer interns. This summer we had 5 super great interns. They did a variety of things throughout the summer. Some of the things that they did were working with our doctor in the clinic, helping a teacher in our school, helping to prepare meals for our kiddos in the kitchen, after school tutoring, weekly devotional groups, and countless hours of playing games. Our time in Panajachel was an end of the summer retreat. We listened to each of them about challenged, stretched and encouraged them and then we had specific prayer with each of them. We also enjoyed 2 nights of sitting by the fire telling stories and hanging out.

-July 26-Aug2 we welcomed Highland Baptist Church from Waco, TX. Neither of us had met anyone on this team before, but after spending a week with them we have several new friends. They connected with our kiddos quickly and were such hard workers. They did so many things - the biggest of which was helping us to get so much closer to getting our boys new home unit complete.

-July 30 we celebrated Lee's 30th birthday - it was a great day!

-Aug 4 most of our summer interns returned to their homes in the states. Most are getting ready to start another college semester. A couple of them are looking for jobs to start soon.

-Aug 5-8 we went with Kendon, Wendy, their son Ian and his friend Nicco toward the coast to get away for a few days before school started for Ian and Nicco.

-Aug 9-16 we had a group from First Baptist Church in Shallowater, TX here with us. Again, we didn't know anyone on the team beforehand, but enjoyed them so much. They worked on a roof extension, repaired a multitude of things, and cut up tons of tree branches. We recently had a problem with tree roots getting into our plumbing, so we had to cut down several of our trees.

Today is August 21. For all practical purposes we're finished with what we call "team season". Life will switch gears a bit as our kiddos are about to end their school year (they go from mid January to mid October). We will begin having small discipleship groups in our apartment 2 nights each week for our older kiddos. We would ask you to join with us in prayer as we are planning these groups.

Thanks for hanging with us through these last few weeks of no blogs! We're blessed to have such faithful friends and supporters.

Lee & Staci

Thanks WTAMU Wesley Foundation

2008-07-01T18:24:00.003-05:00

We mentioned in the previous blog that a team went to camp with us. For the past several months we looked forward to the team from the WTAMU Wesley Foundation - our friends coming to see us.

We enjoyed every minute of getting to be with these guys and wished they could have stayed longer.

Below is a picture of all of the stuff they brought us - it was incredible. Some things we asked for, but they went way above and brought us all kinds of stuff. Originally we were going to call this blog "love came in a bag"... but they truth is that love came to us in the form of 6 people. We miss you guys.

*the picture that is supposed to be here will not upload "due to internal errors"... so if you will, picture a pile of goodies, including spices of many kinds, a wireless router, a basketball, t-shirts, computer speakers, cupcake baking cups (hundreds of them for various occasions), green chilies, rotel tomatoes, a book, small tools, and Roger Romex.

Campamento 2008

2008-06-30T11:26:00.007-05:00

Along with a children's home here at New Life, a medical clinic operates 4 mornings each week and there's a school that ranges from Pre-K through 9th grade at has about 400 students in attendance.

Each year the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students have the opportunity to go to "campamento" or camp. This past week we went to Campamento 2008. We were blessed to have a group of 6 from West Texas A&M Wesley join us...those guys are another blog.

Camp lasted for 3 days and 2 nights. It was unlike any camp that we attended in the states with a few exceptions. The cabins that we stayed in were much like what you'd expect in the states... bunk beds wall to wall. We ate meals cafeteria style - and the food was really good. They're was a large swimming pool that the kids loved. The differences: the schedule was packed beginning at 6am, and going to bed about midnight (later for some of the teachers). For these kids this 3 day camp is a big big deal, and so the teachers (who not only teach, but organize and run the camp) pack the schedule full. There were hours of games, small group times, swimming time, large group meetings, and even a dress up dinner. We'd also mention another difference for us was the heat and humidity. Here in Villa Nueva, we're in the mountains and enjoy temperate weather year around, but just 2 hours away we were very close to the pacific coast and it was hot and humid. We got out of our vehicles when we arrived and started to sweat just standing there.

Here are a few pics from camp for your enjoyment:

This is what the pickup looked like just before coming home.

All of the teachers, and adult volunteers that went to camp.

One of the games was a scavenger hunt. The list was given in about .5 font, and so they were given a magnifying glass to read the list.

Another one of the games... I'm not really sure of the exact point, but they loved it.

This is just because we like this picture. The flowers were beautiful & plentiful. There were always butterflies flying around them.

"I just set my alarm for 3:15am"

2008-06-18T20:12:00.002-05:00

That's what Lee just said...

Tomorrow morning we leave for "Campamento"... a three day, two night camp with the 7th, 8th and 9th graders from the school here. We're excited to have a team from West Texas A&M University Wesley Foundation to go with us.

Today we had a meeting about camp - we learned what promises to be an important dance for the weekend, and got teamed up with Guatemalans. Hopefully everybody understands his/her role.

Kendon & Wendy are still in the states for a 2 week visit. So far so good here! We expect them back next week.

We'll give a camp report when we return!

*This past Sunday we went to lunch with Daniel & Kara. Little Michelle joined us as well. After lunch we headed out to the zoo - check out Daniel & Kara's blog for pictures of the fun day.

the rainy season is here...

2008-06-06T22:08:00.002-05:00

We're West Texans. When it rains, we stare at it like we haven't seen any in months - because we haven't. Rain generally means thunderstorms and or hail. And...there's never enough of it.

Then the West Texans moved to Guatemala. We experienced the end of the rainy season last September and October. It rained most afternoons for a couple of hours...

Now, the rainy season is beginning here. Tropical Storm Alma helped the normal rainy season out a bit this past weekend. We went to Panajachel for our staff retreat where we perhaps saw 12 hours without rain over a 4 day span. We're back in Villa Nueva, where it is still raining, however, not with the great consistency of this past weekend.

About the retreat... we had a great time with our fellow coworkers. We really enjoyed hearing about the other New Life Advance International ministries in Guatemala. NLAI is in many countries, and operates very differently in each place because each culture is very different. In Guatemala, NLAI has New Life Children's Home, 2 missionary families that work in different towns, but both work with training pastors and church planting. Another woman works with street kids, helping them with schooling and feeding them. Here at New Life Children's Home there are 4 couples from the US (sadly about to be just 3, as our friends Daniel & Kara will be returning to the states at the end of June).

Tomorrow morning the kids who passed all of their classes during this last session, plus have good behavior level get to go to McDonald's for breakfast. We're looking forward to celebrating with them!

Please note to the right that we now have a phone number that we can be reached at! It operates through the internet and we have to be at home with the computer on to receive calls. Also, there is voicemail attached to the number so that we can receive messages. So with that said.... give us a shout out & keep in touch!

We'll be back on Tuesday...

2008-05-31T13:18:00.002-05:00

Thank you all who continue to read our blogs and pray for us.

Here's a quick update as we run out the door....

Last Saturday Staci's dad and the 4 other men that were here working for a week left. We loved having them here, and miss their community.

This past week we worked on various projects & attended staff and intern meetings. All went well - we're continuing to learn to hear spanish, so those staff meetings are helpful for both keeping up with all that's going on around here and practicing our listening.

We're headed to Panajachel today. Panajachel is a small town located on Lake Atitlan in the mountains. We'll be there for 3 nights for our annual staff meeting. All of the missionaries with New Life Advance International that are in Guatemala will be there along with the president of NLAI, his wife, our speaker and his wife, and the Houston office administrator and her husband. In all there should be about 34 of us. We're looking forward to this weekend of connecting with our coworkers in other types of ministry.

Please pray for us this weekend. Pray that the Holy Spirt would manifest Himself in our times together of worship & fellowship, and that we'd be ministered to. Also, Staci tends to get carsick on the roads that we'll be taking. If you'd pray that she would be free from this, we would appreciate it .

So, we'll be back late Tuesday night, look for a blog either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Mimi's Coffeecake goes International!

2008-05-23T18:09:00.003-05:00

My dad has been here with us this week. Because this is the end of the school year, my mom had to stay home and finish up the year with her second graders. We emailed a list of things for dad to bring with us, and he came through with everything, including my Mimi's coffeecakes.

I have lots of memories of baking with my Mimi during the weeks that we stayed with she and my granddad each summer while I was growing up. Specifically, I remember making lots of coffeecakes - and eating them too!

So in the picture below, you see Lee and I attacking one large piece of coffeecake - what you can't get a good idea of is how great that sweet bread with lots of gooey sour cream, sugar & cinnamon mix on top is!

So thanks, Mimi, for sending 3 excellent coffeecakes.

If you happen to be in the central Texas area and run into my Mimi - maybe you'll be lucky enough to get to try this delightful treat!!

A 6th Love Language?

2008-05-18T21:58:00.004-05:00

"The Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman is a popular book. It speaks about how we communicate love is 5 basic ways: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. In our 8 months of being here in Guatemala we have discovered that Mr. Chapman missed one important love language: the string of blackcat firecrackers.

You see - Christmas Eve, the country blew up at midnight. Seriously, it was much like a scene out of a war movie. New Year's Eve was a repeat - many firecrackers at midnight then again at 6am, 12noon, and 6pm. Mother's Day we began to hear firecracker's at 4:30. Really? The one day each year to celebrate mom's and we do that by waking them up at 4:30 with a string of blackcats. Then there are birthdays...... everyday their are birthdays, and every day we hear a string or 2 of blackcats.

This past Wednesday was by birthday, my first Guatemalan birthday. I woke up to find that Lee had left a cupcake cookbook for me to find. I love to bake. During the 6am hour our friend and coworker went through the apartment across from us, lit a string of blackcats and then threw is onto our balcony. (We live on the third floor) About the time the smoke cleared the girls set off a string downstairs. We spent the day with the group from Texas Tech Wesley & Trinity Church in Lubbock in Antigua. We were back in plenty of time for supper, and Kendon & Wendy took our duties for the evening so that we could go out to eat. Wendy called and said that before we left we needed to drive by the dining room so that she could give me some instructions about some medicine that she needed us to buy. Poor Lee, knowing the whole situation tried his best to get me to move a little quicker - after deciding that I could check email a little later we went. We showed up to a dining hall full of kids (waiting on me) with cakes (all decorated, with candles & plenty for everyone). After they sang the Guatemalan birthday songs, 2 more strings of blackcats were lit, and the candles were blown out, I was handed a whole stack of homemade birthday cards from the kiddos.

To top all of that, we got to eat Pizza Hut that night!

What a great birthday.

Here are a few pics from the day:

This is the blackcat "leftovers" on our balcony with the smoke from the second string.

This is what was left of the second string as we left for the day.

Thank you Florida State Wesley

2008-05-10T23:21:00.003-05:00

This past Tuesday we said goodbye to a group from The Wesley Foundation at Florida State. We enjoyed having them here for just over a week. They all were so great to do whatever we needed them to do at any moment. They helped us with tree trimming, painting, building picnic tables, and running down lots of kids energy.

We realize that we've been back for a couple of weeks with little blogging, so we'll help to fill you in a bit....

The latest in Guatemala news was the possible strike by gasoline/diesel trucks. From what we understand there are specific hours that these trucks cannot drive in the capital city because of the heavy traffic. They blocked two entrances to the city one night in efforts to have their voices heard. The president sent the army out to take care of the situation. Today - there are no lines at the gas stations - everything seems to be normal.

Also, the temperatures have been a little warmer than usual - probably in the upper 80's. (We know, we know, most of you are gearing up for a hot summer, we shouldn't be complaining...) The rainy season is a bit late this year in making itself known. While it's been nice to not have to deal with the rain (and mud) we're ready for cooler afternoon temperatures & less dust.

This past Monday we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. It seems much longer than just a year, as lots has changed in the past year. We moved countless times (including moving countries), learned a new language, started new jobs, and started a marriage. That's a lot to put in one sentence, much less in one year. :) We are thankful to be settled into life here at the children's home and are very much looking forward to the next year having fewer big changes.

Tonight we'll leave you with the latest story about Sammy...

Sammy wanted to know why the group was cutting branches off the trees. I (Staci) said "well, Sammy, you get your haircut once a month, don't you? It's the same with the trees, once a year we cut their branches." Sammy said, "the trees must be sad." I asked him why so. He said, "because I don't like getting my haircut."

We're back in Guatemala

2008-04-26T10:58:00.002-05:00

Thursday night we arrived back to Guatemala. We had such a good three weeks in the states. Thanks to everyone who made time in their schedule so that we could see you.

We are enjoying a slower Saturday morning, and taking care of some business so that we will be ready to receive a group of college students from Florida State tomorrow.

l

We're pansies when it comes to cold weather!

2008-04-12T11:58:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we arrived to Missouri to spend a couple of days with good friends here. We've learned a lot being in another culture for 7 months - and yesterday we learned that we don't deal with cold weather very well any more.

At any rate, we're enjoying being with Kendall & Amy, and their cute kiddos.

We'll be back in Texas this coming Monday. For all of you in the Canyon area, we'll be at First Methodist Church in Canyon this Wednesday evening. We'll share our experiences of the past 7 months in the Searcher's classroom begining at 6:30. After that we are heading over to the Wesley Foundation to hang out for a bit.

Also, we're going to the Sunday (April 20) evening service at First Baptist Church in Canyon. We'll also stick around afterwards to hang out for a while that evening.

News from the lands much farther south..

2008-04-08T23:58:00.003-05:00

We received an email tonight from Guatemala. Over the weekend theives stole their phone lines. 1500 users are out of phone lines, which also means internet.

We rely heavily on the internet for lots of communication, including telephone services that allow us to connect with friends & family in the states.

Of course, the cell phones are still in service, so they still have communication available.

They have been told that it will take 1 week to 3 months to replace the lines. Would you join in praying with us that those lines would be retuned in one week - and that the added stress of having to go off site to check email & such (something we all rely on) wouldn't be an issue that they have to deal with?

On another note - today we had a great time seeing some of Staci's extended family. What a joy it is to see and reconnect with family and friends.

The stars at night are big and bright ... deep in the heart of Texas!

2008-04-06T22:19:00.002-05:00

This past Wednesday we flew into Amarillo, TX - we were met at the airport by Lee's dad. We left the airport and drove to one of our favorite mexican food restaurants - it was yummy.

We changed our original plans a bit and drove to Dallas on Thursday. Lee's Grandma Jean passed away Thursday afternoon. We stayed in Dallas for a couple of days to be with family and to celebrate Jean's life at her funeral.

Last night we drove to central Texas to spend a few days with Staci's parents.

We've enjoyed seeing friends and family, wide open spaces, driving 70 miles per hour, and even spent a little time fishing this evening after a Sunday afternoon nap.

We were thankful to get to spend a morning with Staci's parent's church and share with several people in their congregation our experiences from the past 7 months. This congregation has supported us faithfully, and we are thankful for them.

This week we're spending time in central Texas, as well as, an afternoon and evening in the Dallas area.

Thank You, La Croix UMC

2008-03-29T22:55:00.004-05:00

This past week we had a team of 17 from La Croix UMC. They built school desks, repaired a glass cabinet, painted, lead school devotionals, repaired the food prep table in the main kitchen, and painted some more. We're thankful for all of their hardwork.

We dropped them off at the airport early this morning and found out a bit later that they are in fact still in the city. Their flight was cancelled and will be going home on various flights over the next two days. Would you join with us praying that the new iteneraries would see them home safely?

We were also blessed to have Mollie & Emily from Oregon spend their spring break here. They joined in on the work projects with the La Croix team.

Here's a picture of all 19

Lee helps to oversee all of the work projects with teams - and often helps out. This week, he was the welder.

Holy Week Continues

2008-03-20T20:59:00.002-05:00

We promised pictures, we know, however, we haven't taken one this week. We'll steal a few from coworkers and post them when we can.

We had a sleepover in our apartment the other night. I think we both appreciate our parents and our friends' parents even more that did such things for us at that age. It went really well, but it still seemed to take quite a bit of energy to host 11 little boys. We were surprised when they all went to sleep by 11:30 - and even more suprised that they were up and ready to go at 6am!

Tomorrow will be our last afternoon of games - today's highlight was the tug-of-war in a mud pit. All members of each team were in the ditch.

During the evenings the kids are going through the "Journey to the Cross". There are 12 different stations set up that follow the gospel's account of Jesus during what we now call Holy Week. They seem to be enjoying it - you could join with us in praying that this time would be spiritually impacting.

Pictures to come....

Holy Week begins....

2008-03-17T20:26:00.002-05:00

Yesterday at church instead of the "normal" service, they put on a production of the "Via Dolorosa" or what translates into "the painful way" It was a production that depicted the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was a great way to begin Holy Week.

The kids do not have school this week, as with every other Holy Week. Today, thanks to the team from Lubbock that is visiting, the kids who rank well in the behavior system, about half the group, a few homeparents, and the two of us went to Auto Mariscos, a small waterpark. We had a great time, and we're very excited to report that we have no accidents of any kind. Just a few eyes that look very tired.

It's a tradition here at the children's home to have Holy Week Olympics. Each afternoon there will be a couple of hours of various games like a basketball shootout, various water relays, crab soccer tournament, 3 legged soccer, dodgeball tournament, and so on. We promise to be better about pictures so that you too can enjoy the festivities.

We mentioned having a team from Lubbock, TX earlier in the email. We are enjoying getting to know the 12 on the team, and are thankful for the help that have been and continue to be for us.

What are we doing?

2008-03-11T10:44:00.003-05:00

So a few have asked, "now that you're at the children's home, what are you doing?"

We are learning more and more of how this children's home works and how our gifts and talents can be used here. Lee is helping to coordinate some work projects for upcoming teams, and helping to plan upcoming events for the kids. I (Staci) am helping with short term teams that are coming. specifically with the communication with team leaders - getting them the paperwork that they need and being sure that we have everything that we need on this end for teams. I'm also helping to plan a few upcoming events for the kids.

Next week, as you know, is Holy Week. The kids will not have school at all that week. It is a tradition here, to have "Holy Week Olympics" during the afternoons & sleep overs at night. What more could a kid want? So, recently we've met with small groups of kids who want to help us in dreaming up games & planning certain days. For instance, one day will be the day of food games. Ever tried make a plate of nachos by dropping the ingredients off the second floor to the plate that your team member is holding below? Or tried to eat an apple that is hanging in the air without using your hands? We'll post pictures next week.

Of course we are still adjusting to our 3rd place to live in 10 months. We are really enjoying our apartment here - it's quickly becoming our home. We'd ask that you'd continue to pray with us - not only for the adjustment of living in our new place, but the adjustment of working here as well.

A few of you already heard that we will be in the states in April. This is true - for various reasons we are making a short trip to Texas. We will post a schedule of places that we'll be on the blog in a week or so in hopes of seeing as many of you as possible.

Home, Sweet Home

2008-03-02T19:17:00.004-06:00

We're writing from the children's home. We've written from here a few times over the past few months, but each of those times were only visits. Tomorrow we're not going back to Antigua, tomorrow we will not be attending language school because we finished!

This past Thursday we finished language school. Friday through today we attended a conference for missionaries in Guatemala. When the conference ended today we packed up, said adios to our host family and came to Villa Nueva.

We're super excited to be in our apartment. We still have a few things that we need to do to really live in the apartment,like getting dishes to eat off of and cups to drink out of. Those are minor details though.

4 more days!

2008-02-24T18:44:00.002-06:00

4 more days of school is all we lack! You haven´t misread any of our previous posts. We had indeed planned on staying for 2 more weeks, however, we have decided to change our plans a bit. This Friday we will not attend school so that we can attend a conference with other missionaries. Both of us have been taught all of the spanish grammar, and at this point another week of school wouldn´t be that advantageous. By no means does that mean we are speaking great spanish, we speak decently, and using it more will help to better it. Thanks for praying for us as we´ve journied through language school. We´d ask you to pray for our last week of school and for us as we begin living at the children´s home.

Living in a different culture has provided many funny situations for us. The most recent of which was when we took Harvey, Lee´s current teacher and Staci´s former teacher out to lunch as a way of saying thanks for his help with our language skills. The food arrived to the table, and Harvey asked Lee if he´d like to pray. Lee begins the prayer by saying ¨Dios gracias para este dia¨ As soon as Lee said that Harvey interjects and says ¨por¨ meaning Lee should have said ¨Dios gracias por este dia¨ Harvey...always a teacher had to make sure that Lee´s prayer was gramatically perfect. For those of you who don´t know spanish both ¨por¨and ¨para¨translate to ¨for¨. There are specific reasons and situations for using one or the other. I don´t think either of us with misuse ¨por¨ in this situation again.

Becoming home...

2008-02-17T19:10:00.002-06:00

This weekend we are spending a 4 day weekend at the children's home working our our apartment so that when we move here (in 3 weeks!) we will be able to move right into our apartment.

On Friday we headed out with Kendon and Wendy who graciously drove us around the city and lent us great wisdom and advice along the way. Before 2pm we had purchased a bed, a couch, loveseat and chair set, and a small dining room table that is now our coffee table. (Right now, Don, a retired high school shop teacher is here, he chopped the legs right off of that table and it now sits in between our living room furniture.) Daniel & Kara met us for a late lunch and then took us to Pricemart (much like a Sam's) where we picked up a few more things.

Saturday morning Lee left with Elmer, an employee here and Pablo a teenager who lives here to retrieve our furniture. A couple hours later they returned with all of the living room furniture in tow. They were also gracias to help Lee get it all up into our 3rd story apartment.

After the furniture was in place, we were able to borrow a vehicle and made our way to Hiper Paiz (much like a Wal-Mart) and found things like shower curtains, silverware, cleaning supplies, and a few kitchen essentials. There are still a few things that we need to get like plates, cups and a microwave - that will happen with time. It is such a good feeling to have accomplished all we did this weekend.

The Lord was really gracious to give us time with people who could haul us around and who knew what they were doing. We believe that we got great deals on the stuff that we purchased, and even have money left within our budget to purchase things that we still need.

Right now we're in the dry season which means a lot of dust, add that to the construction dust (we're the first people to live in our apartment) and you get one dusty place. Thanks to the use of Daniel & Kara's vacuum cleaner and several passes with the mop we're mostly dust free. We had time today to put stuff into cabinets - in short, we're excited to be here in 3 weeks.

This morning at church they celebrated their 29th anniversary. Upwards of 15,000 people joined together to celebrate such an event. They invited Marcos Witt, a big name in Latin countries to lead worship and preach. Afterwards we went to celebrate Esdras' birthday and enjoyed a yummy meal from Taco Bell.

So, tomorrow we leave to go back to Antigua and will finish out our last 3 weeks of school.

Sunday evening...

2008-02-10T20:26:00.000-06:00

Thanks for the comment, Mital, we did have a fun little excursion this weekend!

This morning we met up with our friends Pat & Bill who are serving with an organization called Youth With a Mission (YWAM) for a couple of years. They live just a bit outside of Antigua and attend a small church about 2 kilometers from Antigua.

Now before you all laugh at the less than a mile a way adventure, let me just say that people around here consider 2 kilometers quite a distance. We've had several conversations with our host family about this topic - there kids attend a school that is between 1 and 2 kilometers away. When the new school year started a few weeks ago there was much discussion in the house about the bus routes and how one of the kids had to get up an extra 30 minutes early to catch the bus to take him 1 kilometer. We've tried to explain how we west Texans would drive 4 hours for a drink of water. We realize that is stretching it a bit as well, but our concept of distance and time is much different than ours. One night I told them that on several occasions my sister and I would each drive about an hour so that we could meet for dinner. They couldn't imagine doing that - both my sister and I just considered it a treat.

Ok, back to the days activities - we met up with Pat & Bill and had planned on taking a 5 minute bus ride to the church. There is a lot of construction going on right now, so we ended up walking to the church. It was a great walk, and nice to see new things. The church was small, and we'd describe the service as typical Guatemalan. Pat & Bill took us to see the YWAM base that we had heard about for sometime and then we came back and ate some delicious italian food for lunch.

We are looking forward to our last 4 weeks of school - it's hard to believe that we only have 4 weeks left! This Thursday we are planning on going back to the home and making a few purchases this weekend that will begin to make the apartment that we will live in our home. We'd ask you to pray for wisdom about our purchases, and that we could simply attain the things that we need.

2008-02-04T21:34:00.000-06:00

Sorry in the delay of post in recent days, however, after many weeks of language school there just aren't too many new things to report on.

A week and a half ago we spent the weekend in Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. It was a nice break from Antigua. We had heard weather reports that said we should have had a cold and dreary weekend - instead, we got sunburns! There isn't too much to do in Panajachel. We enjoyed walking around the small town and along the shoreline of the lake. It was a great time away from the norm.

For sometime Lee has been wanting to climb Volcano Agua - a volcano that is just south of Antigua. Many travel agencies offer this trip, for a price of course, however, one day the local gym announced they would be taking a trip for about the half the cost so Lee signed up. This past Saturday morning Lee left the house at 6am part of a group of 36 people from various countries. After climbing to the top, the group cooked lunch in the crater, spent a few hours in the crater and then returned. He got back to the house about 7pm. Lee said that there wasn't anything quite like sharing your testimony in the crater of a volcano. He had a great day.

Staci spent the day hanging out with a couple of girls from the language school - and enjoyed a more low key day.

Thank you for continuing to pray with us and for us - we'd ask you to pray for those who we still have a chance to witness to in Antigua during our last few weeks of language school.

New Kiddos!

2008-01-25T18:07:00.000-06:00

Today we received an email letting us know about 4 new siblings that were received into the children's home. You can go to the blog of our friends Daniel & Kara to see pictures.

2008-01-21T13:53:00.000-06:00

8 weeks remaining - of language school, that is. Both of us have just about covered all of the grammar. We're looking forward to having several weeks to reinforce grammar rules that we did not learn very well the first time through, learning local slang words and expressions.

Today was the first day for us to spend with our new teachers. It's like a breath of fresh air to change teachers - it always gives us a new energy. Also, because each teacher teaches differently, it seems like each teacher brings something new to the table. Staci will for sure change again in 4 weeks because her current teacher has been reserved by a future student. Lee has the opportunity to change as well, but the teacher that Lee has now is spoken of as being one of the best, so he may choose to stay with him.

Anthony, the spring intern at the children's home has been studying in Antigua for 2 weeks - and will be here another 2 or 3 weeks before moving to the home. We've enjoyed getting to know him, and sharing meals together on Sundays.

We'd ask you to join with us for praying for our perseverance through language school. We're both begining to feel a little burned out.

2008-01-11T17:58:00.001-06:00

The last time we wrote we were awaiting the arrival of Lee's mom and cousin. The did indeed arrive, we had a great time with them, and they have made it home safely.

We spent frist day and a half of their visit at the children's home. We wanted them to see where we will spend our next year and a half. Then on Sunday we left Villa Nueva for Antigua. Lee and I started classes on Wednesday so that we could spend Monday and Tuesday with Lee's mom and cousin, Cheri & Johny. On Monday we hiked Volcano Pacaya - this is an active volcano that we can see smoke during the day and the glow of red lava at night from the children's home. It was such a neat experience - one that we'd like to repeat someday. Tuesday we spent the morning at a coffee farm - Lee and I have been there before, however, it is coffee harvesting season - so it was a treat to get to see the havest in full swing. During the afternoons we walked around the city, looked at ruins, shopped a bit, a talked a lot. We were so thankful to see faces that we knew.

Wednesday we began our classes again - we're more than halfway through our projected time in language studies, and much more than halfway through the grammar. We'd ask for your prayers for our last stretch of school that will last until mid-March.

Here are a few pics from our time with Cheri & Johny:

This is Lee on the side of Volcano Pacaya - this is the highest point they'd let us go because of the volcanos activity. If you look closely you can see the glow of lava behind his left shoulder and above his head.

Just behind us and to the left looks like there is a ledge of sorts on the volcano - this is the highest point they let us go, and this is a vent that we can see glow red from the children's home each night.

All harvesting is done by hand at the coffee farm that we visited. Cheri, Johny and Lee pitched in and helped a bit with the harvesting.

Candle Light Dinner...

2008-01-04T12:40:00.000-06:00

Happy Friday afternoon to you all.

We'd first like to say thanks for praying for Kara, she is feeling better. We'd ask you to pray for a full return of health to her body and that she'd be free from sickness.

We're having wind here that could rival a West Texas wind in the spring time. It's even dusty - a little taste of home, I suppose. On Wednesday night just before supper the electricity went out, we heard because of the strong winds this happened. So, we got candles out and had a candle light supper. The littlest guys thought it was way fun - even the older ones liked the change in pace. The electricity returned about 3 and a half hours later - after they were already in bed.

Yesterday we picked up a group from Pennsylvania from the airport. It was great to see those guys, the kids were super excited for their arrival as well. A funny little story of our trip to the airport... Two vehicles had to go because of the size of the group so we followed Daniel. Daniel was so kind to keep us in his sights as we don't know the roads yet. At one point a bus was in the lane to the left of us and we were in the far right lane. He decided it was his turn to be where we were, so he came over before we could get well enough out of his way we had a slight meeting of vehicles - the side of his bus to the driver's side mirror. Praise the Lord there is no damage, of course he didn't stop. We didn't stop either being able to see that nothing big happened.

That pretty much covers the happenings of the past few days...we're anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lee's mom and a cousin tonight - we just looked at the website and they look to be ontime right now.

Happy New Year!!

2008-01-01T19:38:00.000-06:00

We hope that you have enjoyed the holidays with your family and that you are looking foward to a great 2008.

The past few days have continued to be really enjoyable here at the home. We've had lots of time to play with the kiddos, playing soccer and knockout have been some of their favorites. They are also enjoying playing with the new puppy.

For New Year's Eve we watched movies and ate cookies with the kids. Much like Christmas Eve at midnight the skies lit up with fireworks for a good 20 minutes. A small church meets next door and they were up until atleast 2:15 this morning.

For New Years we had a special lunch of turkey, rice, green beans and brownies. We were especially grateful to a few people who attend the same church as we do here that donated turkeys and cokes for lunch today.

We are very much looking foward to the arrival of Lee's mom and cousin and also a mission team from Pennsylvania. The group from Pennsylvania comes twice each year - the kids (and us) are looking foward to spending time with them.

We'd ask you all to join in praying for healing for our friend and co-worker, Kara, who is dealing with pneumonia for the second time in 3 months.

We are grateful to each of you that continue support and pray for us.

Christmas 2007

2007-12-26T17:05:00.000-06:00

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!!

2007-12-25T01:27:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-19T22:05:00.000-06:00

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.

2007-12-18T21:19:00.000-06:00

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....

2007-12-12T21:32:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

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

2007-12-03T14:12:00.000-06:00

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.

Back in Antigua....

2007-11-27T21:11:00.000-06:00

Last week was such a great week. We spent 9 days in Villa Nueva at the children's home. Our brains were thankful for the rest from school. It was so nice to see our friends and the kiddos again as well.

We helped some of the interns translate Christmas cards that the kids had made, played a little basketball, watched a couple of little ones fly kites, rode bicycles around the property with some kiddos (without brakes might I add), played some soccer, shuffled a few games of uno...and so on...it was great.

Thanks to Daniel and Kara who hauled us around the city, we signed a couple more documents to continue the visa aquiring process.

We ate a Thanksgiving feast with 22 other folks from the states, and then played dominos until 11:30pm.

Friday we spent the day away from the home with Kendon and Wendy, Daniel and Kara, and the 3 interns. We enjoyed a lunch out - who knew that Taco Bell could be excellent (with no tex-mex in sight, it's amazing) and then went bowling. We also were able to find a card reader for our camera memory card - pictures are coming, wahoo!!

We even got to see Tech beat OU and Missiouri beat Kansas.

In short - it was a great break - a good time to re-energize.

We're back in school and back up to our ears in grammar.

Please continue to pray for us as we continue to learn spanish, continue to prepare for our ministry in Villa Nueva, and continue to seek the Lord.

This is Fuego - the volcano that we often see shooting ash and smoke into air. The plume you see there is pretty normal.

Remember the day we were served Fiambre - the dish with everythng? The bowl on the right is the fiambre and the bowl in the left is a pumpkin like vegetable that was for dessert.

This is a close up of the fiambre - take note of the five different sausages - and remember this was served in a weird clear sauce and was chilled.

Thanksgiving Week

2007-11-18T21:22:00.000-06:00

We're here at the children's home - it's good to be home - it's even better to not have to go to school tomorrow. It has been so encouraging to be here and feel like we really gained quite a bit in the past 4 weeks of school.

Friday evening we were watching a movie with the kids and experienced another tremor - Elias, on of the kids laughed that we reacted to the less that 10 second small shake.

Church was good today - people ALWAYS respond to altar calls for prayer and salvation. After church while talking to Wendy she said that in the 3 years they have been taking the kids to that specific church there has yet to be a Sunday without a salvation.

During the sermon the pastor asked those who had relatives in the states to raise their hands. Atleast 50% of them raised their hands out of a congregation of a couple thousand. It is kind of wierd that many times we seem to recieve some type of anti-American sentiment and then other times we recieve the opposite. In other words, many people down here worship the idea of the US and having a life there but at same time "no" for some people. Yes lots of people here want to go to the states legally and more often than not illegally. We hear different sides of the story down here at times too. Yes there are the people that get to the US and make money and send it home to help their families and there are those that die in route and those that never return to their families and wives but leave their old responsibilities here for new jobs and new wives in the north. That may be one of the reasons that where our childrens home is that 80% of mothers there are single. I guess that we are just still geting used to how hard life is for a lot of these folks and how they seem to have little vision and ability for betterment. I also know that at times it is difficult to paint for you the picture that we see here as we are still in the process of learning what the picture really is.

For a little funny story..... Each year the kids must make homemade Christmas cards for their sponsors. Yesterday we were helping translate the Christmas cards and we came across one that was funny enough to share with you all. It reads:
Dear Bob- Merry Christmas Bob. God bless Bob. You are very special for God and for me. You are my friend and my heart. From Sami for Bob.

We hope that you all think it's as funny as we did. It may help for you to know Sami has more personality that most - it may also help to know that he had glued beads on the bottom of the page in 3 inch letters "Bob". Bob will love that card.

Pray for us as we have the opportunity to practice our spanish while we're here this week and reconnecting with the kids.

Random Guatemalan fact for the day: The estimated migration rate for Guatemala is -2.31 per 1000 people. Which basically means that they're losing more people than they're gaining. The United States' estimated migration rate is 3.05 per 1000 people.

Mid-week Report

2007-11-14T20:55:00.000-06:00

Today we were in class - learning various grammar rules when our desks started to shake. Guatemala is located on the pacific rim and is no stranger to earthquakes. We experienced a tremor today that lasted 10ish seconds. For both of us it was the first time to experience such a thing. If you've listened to the news you probably heard that Chili experienced a major earthquake today, the tremor that we experienced today was probably related to that earthquake.

We are very much looking foward to leaving Antigua this Friday - it is definitely time for a break from school! As we've said in previous posts, we'll be spending Thanksgiving in Villa Nueva with several other Americans there. Language school continues to be going well - from the estimation of our teachers we should finsh with all of the grammar in the next 4-6 weeks and then we will spend the rest of our time in language school reinforcing what we have learned so quickly while learing peripheral gramatic things. As for now, our brains are toasted and we cannot wait for a school/homework free week!

Random Guatemala fact for today: There are 3 notable earthquakes in past century - April 19, 1902 measured 7.5, February 4, 1976 measured 7.5, and June 13, 2007 (a earthquake off the shore of Guatemala) measured 6.7.
Today's little tremmor pales in comparasion to those mentioned above.

It's Friday!

2007-11-09T12:43:00.000-06:00

In case you're not aware, it's Friday. We've been looking forward to this afternoon specifically for 2 weeks. The past 2 weeks we both attended class an extra 2 hours, 2 afternoons per week. We know that adding 4 hours per week doesn't sound like much, however, it took away a good amount of time to do homework, and it generated more homework. We also chose to go on an excursion with our school which took a great deal of time one afternoon.

Yesterday was the day we went on the excursion with our school. We went to a coffee farm which we had both been to in years past. There were 2 main differences this time - 1. we understood the tour guide and 2. the coffee is almost ready for harvest. In the past we have seen green plants with a green berries on them - when the coffee berries are ready like they are now, they are red. We toured the facility where they grow the plants, and where they process the crop once it's cut from the plants.

On Sunday you folks in the states got an extra hour of sleep - this now puts us in the same time zone until you "spring foward" in March/April. This has made it really nice for communicating with family and friends. This would be an appropriate time to let you all know that we use skype. Should you be a skype user, please let us know so that maybe we could set up a time to talk with you.

Please continue to pray for us in the area of language, encountering with the people here in Angtigua, and our personal walks with the Lord.

Don't be shy! We'd love to hear from you either through a comment on here or in our email inboxes.

The Fiambre, The Day of the Dead & More

2007-11-04T20:41:00.000-06:00

Fiambre - when defined by the Jarvis' is a random mixture of edible things in a bowl that should never be served together.

Here's a list of what we could identify in the fiambre that we ate:
-radish
-parmesan cheese
-boiled egg
-lettuce
-baby corn
-pacaya (aka date palm - a veggie that looks like octopus tentacles)
-whole kernal corn
-onion
-carrot
-ham (like sandwich meat you'd get at the deli)
-black olives
-green olives
-bologna
-5 different kinds of sausage (ranging in colors from pink to black, and ranging in taste from bland to extremely spicy)
-2 different types of lima beans
-califlower
-mystery green vegetable #1
-mystery green vegetable #2
-chicken
-beets
-cabbage
-green beans
-red bell pepper
-green leaves

All together in one bowl, served chilled with a weird clear sauce.

All fiambres vary, we've heard that some have green sauces, we've heard of some having so many beets that the whole dish is pink. What we do know for certain about all fiambre is that the Jarvis' don't care for it. No worries, however, they only eat fiambre for one meal each year.

The Day of the Dead is a national holiday here - we had the day off from school and enjoyed sleeping in a bit. There are many traditions that vary from family to family, the main ones include a visit to the cemetary with fresh flowers, the eating of fiambre, and the flying of kites.

School is still going well - we have two weeks before we leave for Thanksgiving. Tomorrow Staci will begin studying with a new teacher - after our week away for Thanksgiving the plan is for us to both change again. To help make up some lost time from being sick and from the holiday this past week we have added a 2 hours a couple of afternoons this week.

As for how language school is going - we have both learned 7 verb tenses (in spanish there are 20ish different tenses all with their own set of rules) along with lots of other gramatic rules, prepositions, adjectives, pronouns, expressions....and the like. We still have quite a bit to go, but we've qot quite a bit of time as well. We often run into Europeans who are proficient in 2-5 languages and picking up spanish seems to be much easier for them. Some people in the world learn from an early age how to be proficient in lots of languages, something that us as Americans were never challenged with.

We think that's everything for now - thank you for your continued prayer and support.

Lee & Staci

October comes to an end...

2007-10-31T19:41:00.000-05:00

In our last post we promised pictures. The good news is that we have some - the bad news is that we do not have the correct cable to link our camera and computer together - we'll be in search for a cord - keep watching for pictures.

The past week and a half have been very rutine for us - this week we added a couple of afternoons with teachers to help make up a bit of time that we missed during our "sick break". We will also study with teachers a couple of afternoons next week as we do not have school tomorrow. Being in school for 6 hours per day sure is different from just the normal 4.

Tomorrow, November 1st is "The Day of the Dead" of "The Day of the Saints" It is a federal holiday here in Guatemala. Our host family compares it to what Thanksgiving Day is like for us in the states. Their whole family is planning on gathering (there are atleast 35 grandchildren and atleast 12 greatgrandchildren in the family) it should be a great time for them. They don't eat turkey and dressing for their special day - they eat a dish called "fiambre" we're anxious to get to try it. We're told that all kinds of meats (fish, shrimp, beef, chicken, pork, and numerous sausages), vegetables, cheeses and whatever else they can think of goes into the dish. We'll be sure to take picures :) One sign that our host family recently saw advertised that their fiambre included 208 ingredients - interesting isn't it?

Thanks so much for those of you who have recently updated us on what's happening if your lives. We hope that you all received our recent mass email update. We do know that a few of you did not receive it as it bounced back to us. Please send an email to stacijarvis@gmail.com and we'll try to get the kinks worked out. If we somehow missed your email address please email me and I'll send you the email and will add you to the list for future emails.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support!

When being sick pays off!

2007-10-21T21:57:00.000-05:00

You are all aware that we spent more time than planned in Villa Nueva - thanks for keeping up with the blog and for praying. We are back in Antigua as of this afternoon and we are well!

A group of master´s architecture students and their professor from Texas Tech accompanied a man named Scott to Villa Nueva this weekend. Scott is considering a move to Guatemala the 3 students´thesis project is his dream for what he would one day like to see in Guatemala. The students needed to do a helicopter fly over to get a better feel for the area. They had 2 extra spots on the helicopter and Scott generiously offered them to us.

Of course we took him up on his offer and yesterday morning we drove to the Guatemala airport for our helicopter ride. Because the students wanted to take good pictures, they had the back doors of the helicopter removed. Lee and I were in the first group of four. The other two were Scott, and Luis, a boy from the home who will begin studying architecture in the university this January. Luis sat up front with the pilot, and Lee, Scott and I sat in the back. Scott said that he´d been in a helicopter before so Lee and I got the window-less window seats. It was so wonderful to see where we live from such a different prospective. We saw a beatutiful lake that is right next to a squatter´s village. We saw our home - the children´s home, school, and even some of our kiddos out of the soccer field waving at us amongst a very poor area that was less than a mile from developed condominium like neighborhoods. A once in a lifetime kind of experience - we´re looking foward to watching the video footage that we took while we were up there.

Tomorrow we begin school again, and we´re excited. This time we know that we will be studying for 4 weeks and then we will return to Villa Nueva for the week of Thanksgiving.

We realize that we´ve been terrible at posting pictures - this week - we´ll post pictures this week.

Lee & Staci

What a Day!!

2007-10-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

Let's begin with yesterday when we got to walk to the local shopping center. We went after a couple of adapters for various things here at the home and wasted a bit of time looking in various stores before eating lunch at Pizza Hut. Lee feels fine, but is supposed to be "resting" while his body makes more white blood cells and platelets. It was so good for both of us to have a good walk.

Also, last night we received warning of an impending basketball tournment that would happen today and that I (Staci) was to play in.

This morning we got up and around and showed up to the basketball game, 5 gringas were to play 5 teachers from the school that is here on the property. Jon said "don't worry, there's a 5 minute halftime between the 20 minute halves." Don't worry - I haven't run 40 minutes in who knows how long - and we had no subs!! Gledia, a home mother apparently felt sorry and offered to play for our team, thankgoodness for the one substitute player. Well, we'll just get to the end of the story. It was a terrible game, really, and the gringas lost terribly. We have another game in the morning, Lee is planning on giving a "coach speach" tonight, and maybe a little instruction...we need it!

At lunch Wendy asked if we had time this afternoon to take Ruben to buy some new shoes. Of course we had time, so we offered and then she gave us keys to a pickup. Our first Guatemalan driving experience - it went well.

Today was the day for the 5th blood test for Lee, Kendon and Wendy were swamped, so Kendon drew us a map and said "what's to be afraid of, it's only a little town of 1.2 million people" - so with our map in hand, again we were handed the pickup keys. We got there and back just fine - and even got to watch a bit of the Rutgers v. S. Florida game in McDonald's while we waited on the results.

The blood test results showed that his body is continuing to heal. The platelets have returned into the normal range. The white blood cells are still a bit low, but climbing. We anticipate no problems with returning to Antigua on Sunday.

A little sidenote - it's been our observation that the wealthier side of the culture here is much like the early to mid 1990's - we walked into an electronics store to Michael Jackson videos from the early 90's - they were still playing when we left.

2007-10-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

It's 12:30 here at the home - and we're looking at a semi-sunny sky. It's been raining so much here lately - I suppose the rainy season is going out with a bang.

Last night Lee had yet another blood test with really positive results, though his white blood cell and platelet count are not in the normal range yet - they're doing their best to get there. The doctor asked him to return again Thursday for another blood test. Though Lee feels just fine, the doctor has told him to rest for this week. Because of his white blood cell count being low he is more susceptible to infection to a secordary illness, and with the platelets being low, the doctor is worried about cuts and bruises that platelets would generally clot up. Being subjected to rest has been hard for Lee - he's trying to fight off boredom and restlessness.

We knew when we got here we'd have to start the hoop jumping process of getting visas. After we arrived we were told that we would need offical criminal records from the state we lived in for the past 5 years. Thankfully, we have only lived in one state, however, the state of Texas doesn't just give criminal records out. So, thanks to my Dad - he has been able to make arrangements to get our records released to him if he has our fingerprints. Sending and receiving mail is quite an issue here, however, there is a small team who will be here this Friday through Monday. Hopefully those fingerprint cards will arrive in Lubbock today, they'll fly down here on Friday, we'll put our mark on them, and then send them back Monday. If the plan goes as continued, the cards will be mailed to Dad - the records will be released to him and then he can send them on to the correct people in Houston. While it may sound confusing - really, it's not - however, it is a blessing that we are here this during this time so we can not only receive the finger printing cards, but will be able to get them back to Texas in a short time. You could join us in praying that we would receive our visas quickly and that there is no other hold up in the process like getting these records has been.

Also, in November a new president will be elected to Guatemala. We'd ask you to pray for the elections themselves, and also pray that our visas would be processed before the change in leadership is put into effect in January.

Though we haven't been in school this week, we are in Guatemala, so we're using our spanish. Both of us have been able to tell an improvement, and we're both thankful that we have more school ahead of us.

Sunday Evening at the Children's Home...

2007-10-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

Hello!

Just a little update for the evening.....

Last night Lee had another blood test done and it showed his levels begining to up! We are still here at the Children's Home for this week, waiting on Lee's white blood cell count and platlet count to come up. He is having some further reactions from the dengue - his hands and feet are red and he says it feels like he has a really bad sun burn on the palms of his hands and on his feet. He hasn't had to have medicine for a fever in a few days, which is good.

I'm just fine - over the amoeba thing.

That's all for now.

Staci & Lee

Tropical Weirdness Continues.....

2007-10-12T20:00:00.000-05:00

Here's the "situation report"

Lee went back to the doctor today and it is confirmed that he has
dengue fever. His platelet count and white blood cell count is down.
Lee will have yet another blood test run tomorrow, not because of the
dengue - but because of what dengue has done to his blood level.
Today, though his white blood cells were low, were the same as they
were 2 days ago - his platelets were lower today then they were two
days ago.

Dengue generally takes 7-10 days to run it's course - that's great
news, as today is day 6. Today, his fever is much much better.

I was diagnosed with amoebas and an intestinal infection. Last night
I took the pills that should kill all amoebas within 24 hours - and
this morning I started taking Cipro- an antibiotic. Essentinally, the meds killed
all bacteria in me - I took a "good bacteria" pill to hopefully feel
better soon. I'm still having a lot of pain and nausea.

With that being said - we covet your prayers. We know we have asked
you all to pray for us a lot in the last week, thank you - thank you
for continuing to stand with us in this way.

We love ya'll,
Staci & Lee

Thursday Evening...

2007-10-11T22:27:00.001-05:00

Today I (Staci) had lab work done and a diagnosis was confirmed. So, I started meds this evening and I'm told I'll feel much better tomorrow night, yea!

Lee is feeling pretty well this evening - as planned, he's going back to the doctor tomorrow.

That's about all that we know for now - more later.

Thurday Morning

2007-10-11T11:41:00.000-05:00

Well, got up this morning and things are looking up some. both of us feel better but certainly aren't out of the woods yet. Both of still fighting symptoms and such. we're thankful to be with the Wheelers and to be taken well care of. Thanks for your continued prayers.

"Being Guato-ed"

2007-10-10T21:41:00.000-05:00

Last summer when I (Staci) was here with the WTAMU team, Rance started calling Guatemalan's "Guatos". All in love of course - if we are gringos - they can be guatos, right?

We have continued and taken it a bit futher, "being guato-ed" Lee is in his 4th day of fever - he's "being guato-ed". We left a day early for a long weekend at the children's home - and I started throwing up - I'm "being guato-ed".

To update you on Lee's health - he was seen by a doctor this evening and a blood test was completed. He has a few low counts but everything else was either normal or negative. We have a suspected diagnosis, but nothing confirmed. The doctor asked that Lee return to the office on Friday for another blood test.

I thought I was carsick today, but threw up 2 times afterward - I'm feeling pretty well right now.

If you want to know more particulars of our illnesses (really do you?) hit us with an email.

We'll blog again tomorrow...

Update...

2007-10-10T10:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we thought Lee was over the weird fever. His fever was gone last night, and he even felt like getting out to go to an internet cafe for a while. Not long after he went to bed, the fever returned.

I'm currently at the school while the administrator finds a doctor who can see Lee this morning. As soon as one is found, I'll go get Lee and we'll be off to the doctor.

When we can, we'll update the blog.

Staci

So it's been a while...

2007-10-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

Sorry that it's been a while since we've posted - this past week was very normal, very predictable - which isn't bad.

This Thursday we will leave after class for a long weekend at New Life Children's Home. We are excited to be with the kids, for a homework free weekend, and the possibility of watching a little american football. We will return to Antigua on Sunday afternoon.

We are now learning our 5th verb tense - our brains are looking forward to a day off of classes this Friday. We are also looking forward to being able to speak with the kids - this will be a real test as to how much we have really learned thus far.

Though we're not yet in the ministry that we came to Guatemala for, we have had several ministry opportunities with people from our school - please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom as to how reach these folks.

Also, if you would pray for Lee's physical health. Last night he had a headache and began running a fever, today the fever is worse and has yet to break. His fever is consistently at or above 101. He is taking medication and if not better by tomorrow we'll go to a doctor. He only remembers one other time having a fever this bad. He took a long nap today, but tossed and turned atleast every 15 minutes. Please pray that his body would rest tonight - that it would be healed. We're thankful that Wendy (the wife of the children's home director) is a nurse - she suggested a different medication that Lee will start at 8:30 this evening.

Ok, the knock of the door for dinner just happened so we'll end here.

Be Blessed...Lee and Staci

Everyday things...

2007-09-30T13:52:00.000-05:00

A few people have emailed asking similiar questions, so we thought we'd entertain a few of them here for you all to read.

What do we do on the weekends?
This is our third weekend in Antigua. The first weekend here was September 15th, Guatemala's Independence Day. We walked around the streets and watched parades (many parades). We also moved into our new host family's home, so we spent a bit of time unpacking and getting used to our new surroundings.

I'm not sure we've been here long enough to say that we have a normal pattern, but we do enjoy going walking on Saturdays. We spend 99% of our time within the same one square mile. It is so nice to walk for a good bit on time on Saturday. Generally we have a good bit of homework on the weekends too.

We have been to two different churches on Sunday mornings. At Iglesia del Camino the pastor who is from Florida preaches in english and it is translated into spanish. Over 90% of those in attendence were American - all here for various reasons.
At Vida y Fe the pastor who is Guatemalan preaches in spanish and the sermon is translated into ensligh. The vast majority of those in attendence at Vida y Fe are Guatemalan.

What is the food like?
We eat 3 meals per day, Monday through Saturday at our host family's home, on Sunday's we are on our own for food. (That is the package deal you get when you get a host home through the school.)
For breakfast we have had various things ranging from oatmeal to banana pancakes to bowls of chopped fruit with yogurt, honey, and granola. Always for breakfast we drink hot tea, and eat bread as well.
Lunches always include veggies and rice. We've eaten a few vegetables that we've seen before. For instance there is a veggie called wiskill (sp?) they tell us it's like a potatoe - kinda tastes like one too. Sometimes we eat something one day that is reinvented a few more times. For example, we had mashed potatoes for lunch on Tuesday - that evening we have mashed potato cakes (that we poured honey on), and for lunch the next day were mashed potatoes within a folded tortilla that was fried.
Supper is very predictable - we have black beans in various forms each evening - whole bean, puree (thick puree, thin puree), soup, sometimes with cream and sometimes without. We always have bread with our beans, and often the bread is the utinsil of which we use to eat the beans. Generally there are also plantains either boiled with cinnamon or fried with cinnamon and sugar.

On Sundays, because we're on our own, we venture out and try other things - for breakfast this morning we had oatmeal pancakes, fruit, sweetend cream and coffee - it was very good. We've eaten italian food here (it was interesting), Domino's pizza, fried chicken, and even McDonald's and Burger King - which are suprisingly good.

A difference here is that when you order something like orange juice - they go and squeeze the oranges. Same goes for things like limeade. When compraring prices, the states is more expensive.

Have your been to the Children's Home?
When we arrived in Guatemala we spent our first 5 days at NLCH. Since then we have been in Antigua. We are planning a 3 day weekend at NLCH in October. We'll go back for the week of Thanksgiving and then for a bit during the Christmas holiday's. Other than that - we're here in Angitua for about 6 months.

We are so thankful for your support. We are without a doubt aware of how you are holding us in your prayers. We are thankful for how you are supporting us financially. Please let us know how we can pray for you all as well - we truly want to stay connected with you all - either through email or by leaving comments on our blog (we have fixed our blog so that everybody regardless if you have a gmail account of not may leave messages).

Have a great Sunday - we'll blog again soon.

And the Winner is????

2007-09-27T22:06:00.000-05:00

As we were walking home tonight we happened to see in a resturante the final minutes of Latin American Idol. Carlos, the Guatemalan won.

Thursday afternoon

2007-09-27T13:46:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow will complete our 3rd week in language school. We are both humbled by how hard it is to really learn another language. It's almost like playing the guitar - so many people can play a few chords, but there are only a few who play very well. It's easy to say hello, or to hold short and shallow conversations, but challening to be truly conversant.

The day we flew in so did 3 other girls who are here in Guatemala with New Life Children's Home for a few months. They finish their time in language school tomorrow and will go back to Villa Nueva on Saturday.

We have met and are getting to know several people here who we're spending intentional time with. If you would like specific details, please email us at leemaroonjarvis@gmail.com or stacijarvis@gmail.com.

In other random news, the volcano erupted again this morning as school began :) It's cool to look out and see a huge plume of smoke - look again 30 minutes later and it's gone.

Carlos or Ricardo? That is the question of the day in Guatemala. The finale of Latin American Idol is tonight. Carlos is Guatemalen and is, of course, the favorite around here. It's a bit different in that American Idol in that it's as if countries are competing instead of individuals. It's the "hot topic" around here, and people are spending money like crazy voting for their beloved Carlos.

It's time for lunch, we just got the knock on the door letting us know it's ready....

Saturday morning...

2007-09-22T11:35:00.000-05:00

Howdy folks,

Lee writing here. Saturday morning and such around here. I'm usually not a real wordy one I guess except when talking person to person so here is a short blog just so see things from my point of view. I study on the roof of the school with my teacher Edna and the other day I was studying the difference between using the spanish prepositions por and para. Edna could sense that I was reaching the point of near frustration trying to understand and put the concept to use. Thankfully breaktime was the next thing to do and before heading down stairs for coffee and bread I had time to just slow down and pray for a sec. It just hit me that if I never really get good at spanish I can still be a ministerial success by just the fact that Holy Spirit is really the one doing the ministry. This is in no way any form of excuse for running right along and not learning the language. I truly believe that the Lord wants to and will have us as good as we can possibly get before school is over for us. I guess what I am saying is something we have already blogged before...We need Jesus more than we need spanish. Like at the end of Mathew 6, we read something like "seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you". Free time, learning spanish, beautiful vistas (views), even ministry itself cannot become the most important objects in our lives...it would be an idol and God would not bless it. How wonderful that the pressure can be taken off, all I have to do is trust and keep walking. Put the Lord first and then the things that seem so big will seem to fall into place...according to how God wants them to look. It was so comforting to think in that moment on the roof that I had somehow placed spanish as the most important thing for the time being instead of God...then to put things into their proper perpective....The Sovereign Lord above all else. How good to remember this at a time when I was wondering how to learn certain concepts...and also wondering how life would look when we don't have a ministry to do for 6 months or so.....or do we have a ministry? Absolutely....God never calls you to a place....He always calls you to a people....He has called us to Antigua to prepare for Villa Nueva...but also to be faithful to Him while in Antigua. You wouldn't believe how this town is such a tourist hub and stopping point for travelers from all over the world. Canadians, Koreans, Chinese, Germans, Swedish, and many others including folks from all over the US as well...Florida, California, Washington, and the northeast. There are people here that we would never have seen at any other place in time....what a chance to share the gospel with the nations. Life is not on hold, it never is, God always has a purpose. Right now we learn spanish, but also we have a chance while in this place to pour out and to be poured into. Follow Him....follow Him hard....it is always interesting....and always a reward....and always Glory for the One Who deserves.

For the Name,

Lee and Staci

Wednesday...

2007-09-19T13:18:00.001-05:00

We just fnished class for today and thought we give a brief update before lunch.

Chepe´s funeral was on Monday. We heard that it was of course a sad event, but that the preacher had an encouraging and healing message. On Sunday because of an autopsy, it was discovered that Chepe had a massive heartattack and did not drown (no water was discovered in his lungs). This news has helped relieve the self inflicted guilt from those who believed they could have done something. Still, there is a lot of grieving and saddness. Please continue to pray for those at the home.

The friend of our family did not have surgery on Saturday. The doctors were sure they would have lost him, and have sent him home, hoping that his blood will become better. His blood is very thin, and the incision they need to make is large. He has received a blood transfuion in hopes that his body would receive the platelets well.

We are doing well in school (though it´s incredibly challenging), and really enjoying the new host family. We are often reminded that we are in Guatemala by various activities that are happening around us...while studying in school we often watch an active volcano release smoke and ash, yesterday Lee saw a huge (ok, ginormous) swarm of bees about 50 yards away, and Sunday night while going to sleep a marching band decided to do it´s thing about 10:30 pm a half a block away from us...seriously, at 10:30 at night, is it really necessary?

We are thankful for your prayers, and are often reminded that though we´re in Antigua for language school, we need the Lord more than we need spanish.

More to come (in a day or 2).....

Join us in praying...

2007-09-16T14:22:00.000-05:00

As we said in our last post, we moved Saturday morning. We really like our new place, we have a bit more room, warm showers, and a really nice family. We arrived at their house about 11:15 Satuday morning. The wife explained to us that we would eat lunch with them but that it would be nice if we could be responsible for dinner as she and her husband had a friend who was going to have surgery that afternoon. During lunch the husband got a phone call from the friend who explained that the doctor was afraid of complicaions during surgery and that there were great possibilities he would not make it through. The friend called to say that he loved him, and goodbye should he not make it through the surgery. This was within the first 2 hours we knew the family. We have not heard how the surgery went.

Later in the evening we got a call from Daniel who informed us that a group of older kids from the children´s home had got to the coast for the day with a set of home parents. When they got ready to leave they could not find Chepe. The looked for several hours last night until it was too dark to continue. This morning, Chepe´s body was found in the ocean. As feared, he drown yesterday. Chepe was 17 years old and has a younger brother, Juan, who lives at the children´s home.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of broken hearts. Please pray for the grieving process that each of the kids and workers at the children´s home are going through. There will be a memorial service tomorrow. After praying and thinking through the situation, we have decided not to go to the memorial service and stay in Antigua. We just belive that it is wise for us to stay here.

Thank you for joining in prayer with us.

Friday!

2007-09-14T17:16:00.000-05:00

Today completes our first week of language school. We are enjoying our teachers and the challenge they are putting before us. We are in school every morning from 8-12 and then we have homework that we complete in the afternoon and evenings. We have had moments that we crave to hear some english and other moments that spanish is just fine - something that we had expected to have happen.

We know it's been a while since we've posted a blog, so hopefully this one will catch you up with us for this past week.

Tomorrow is Guatemala's independence day, and do they celebrate. Yesterday there were herds of kids running in groups in the streets all of them with whistles in their mouths practicing for their run with the torch today. Today the same herds of kids are running around the city, blowing cadences with their whistles and some groups are even followed by a truck or even a bus honking the same cadence.

Throughout the day begining at 6am and ending usually at 9pm the church near our house rings a bell every 15 minutes or so. Last night we were trying to finish our homework and the bell rang for 22 minutes, during which at one point someone lite a good 2 minutes work of blackcat fireworks. We laughed and laughed - this morning we asked our host family about it and they said it was normal and probably even slept through it.

Two days a week our school offers an excursion to various places around the city. Generally they last about 2-2.5 hours. On Tuesday we went to a macadamia nut farm, and yesterday we walked up to a cross on a hill that overlooks the city. While walking to the hill a man pulled up his shirt, pooched out his belly and pressed it against a concrete wall - lesson learned - when your belly needs to be cooled off, just press it against a concrete wall :) Also, should you need to use the restroom, no need to search for one, just stop on the sidewalk and take care of business!

We have enjoyed meeting all kinds of people from various countries too. Antigua is known for it's many language schools and attracts people from all over the world. A lady from Sweeden is staying in the same house as us. Also, at the school is a couple from Korea who is studying spanish - they are quite humorious. Also, we have met a guys named Pete who is also studying here at the school. Pete is from Canada and is here because he wanted to "fall off the grid". Would you join us in praying for Pete? We have the opportunity to spend about 20-30 minutes with him each morning.

Emails and comments. We LOVE them. We want to stay as connected as possible to your lives back home. You can leave comments here on the blog of send us emails at leemaroonjarvis@gmail.com, or stacijarvis@gmail.com. Texas Furniture folks, how are Thursday mornings? Single's class how are you? Wesley folks, how's the fall semester?

Tomorrow we are changing host family homes. The home we are currently living in is just fine - the people are nice and the food is good, however, hot water is only available in the early mornings and even then it is often ice cold. Lee deals with it pretty well, but I haven't been. We are moving in with a host family who our friends Daniel & Kara stayed with while they were in language school here.

We'll end here for now - and post more frequently in thet future!

Antigua : The First 24 hours

2007-09-10T16:43:00.000-05:00

Oh man, up until this point we didn't really have note-worthy posts. We weren't living in Antigua either. So yesterday we went to church, ate lunch at the home, even had time for a little nap then made our way to Antigua. Kendon, Wendy, Daniel & Kara came with the 5 of us. We first arrived at the school. We met the director and then he led us to the first house where the other 3 interns are living. We got their bags to their rooms, got back in the van and went to our house. We dropped our bags in our room looked around a bit and then left to eat dinner.

When we got back from dinner we began to unpack our stuff and then the room got smaller. We began laughing a bit as it looked like our stuff just kept growing - about the time we unpacked everything we were really laughing. We decided that we should calculate how many square feet we are living in to help you all understand what we mean when we say small. Lee broke out his leatherman - it has a ruler on it. We measured a tile and then started counting...after a few calculations we can tell you that our bedroom and bathroom combined and including the shower is 115.5 square feet. Lee looked up and said "people go to jail in things bigger than this" I cracked up laughing and fell over on the bed that made a loud noise - which created more laughter.

We calmed down, and were just talking when we heard the lady who lives in the bedroom next to us hang up some clothes. We could hear the hanger clink against rod in her closet - it was then we realized that the walls are made of paper and that our host family was probably regretting that we moved in their house. Oh well.... we're much better guests now.

The story continues with breakfast this morning - we were supposed to be ready to eat at 7am - we walk in and find a mound of fruit with some yogurt and honey on top and peanut butter toast. The lady from Sweden who is also living in our house said "this must be for the Americans" then she proceeded to speak 90 miles an hour in spanish, which was fine as Lee and I were still decently sleepy.

School was fine - Lee is upstairs doing homework as I write this. I haven't started mine yet. We like our teachers and are looking forward to knowing the language well.

We returned from school just in time for lunch - we were first served a chicken soup that was delicious then we were served a plate with white rice, a Guatemalen style chili rellano, and a beet salad. Lee was a champ and ate all of the beet salad, I ate all I could. Again, our Sweedish friend spoke excellent spanish about 90 miles an hour in spanish.

Now, we're back at the school taking advantage of the free wireless internet and working on homework. Thank you to all who have prayed for us - for the past 3 nights I have slept so well (I've even taken a nap each afternoon!) Thank you for praying for our teachers and host family as well - we are blessed to have such support.

Language School....

2007-09-09T14:58:00.000-05:00

We're leaving in about an hour for Antigua, where language school is. We'll update more as we know it, with pictures too.

Pray that we connect with our host family and teachers.

Friday....

2007-09-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

Today we left at 6:30 this morning to go to the embassy to get our passports validated - one of the many processes to get long term visas for us. We were told that it was a possibility that we would have to leave our passports over night for that process to take place. This Sunday we are leaving for language school and it would be quite an issue for us to have to go back to the capital city on Monday to retrieve our passports. When we were submitting our passports for validation we asked if there was any possible way that they could be processed today, she said that it might be able to happen and sent us to a different room to pay the fee for validation. When we returned with our receipt we waited about 5 minutes, she called us to the window and handed us our paperwork!! We are so thankful that she understood our situation and that she took care of our need immediately!!

After we left the U. S. embassy we walked down the street a bit and saw a place where we could pictures made for our visa - just a few minutes later we left with pictures.

Then Kendon drove us to the Tigo (cellphone) store where in a matter of minutes we had a cell phone.

We got back here about 11:30 - with so much accomplished. Today school is cancelled because of elections so traffic was lighter which was nice.

We're learning lots in the first few days of being here like traffic lights are generally decoration, black beans are a sufficient sauce to top spaghetti noodles with, and long sleeves are just about a need at night with temps in the 50's a night.

Thank you all for contining to pray for us we felt your prayers so close to us. We are still adjusting to our new enviroment and would appreciate you to continue to pray for us in that way. This Sunday we will move to Antigua for language school. We will be living with a local Guatemalen family there. Would you pray that we would connect with our family quickly and that we would begin to soak the language in. Also, with the exception of last night, I (Staci) have not been sleeping well. Beyond just being physicaly tired, it's pretty emotionally exhausting as well. We spent some time in prayer over that matter and I slept pretty well last night. Would you pray that I continue to rest well?

Have a great Friday - we'll update the blog again before we leave for language school.

Wednesday Morning....

2007-09-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, it's amazing what a shower and good night's sleep can do for a person. We were welcomed last night by Daniel and Kara Harris at the airport. We got to the children's home with little welcome notes from kiddos here and a sign on our door. The neighborhood rooster who has no sense of time welcomed us at 2:30 this morning - he realized that was too early and stopped about 3 :) The kids begin school each morning at 7:30 - we were woken up with music this morning and the sound of kids playing. Right now just outside of our door some girls are learning a dance so "Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord"

They're are 3 girls who are spending 3 months here this fall. We met all of them in Dallas as we were all on the same flight to Guatemala. This morning Daniel & Kara gave us all a tour of both properties. It was so fun to see some of the kids and workers around here. We got to walk around our apartment too! They are doing some finishing work on the inside and should be completely ready for us to live in once we finish language school.

Thank you so much for praying for our travels yesterday. We still have yet to have a drop of rain from the hurricane, our flights were good flights (with extra seats on our flight to Guatemala), all of our luggage got here - no problems at all. Today is a low-key day for us. We're pretty much free until lunch today - that will be the first time we get to see all of the kids.

We're here!

2007-09-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

With little delays we made it here (with all of our bags) tonight about 1 hour past what was scheduled. Our friend, Felix is dumping rain and creating some havoc in other parts of Central America, but hasn't produced a drop here yet!

We're pretty tired, so we're going to bed. We'll update with more in the next couple of days.

Felix is just fine...

2007-09-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

We were questioned about Felix, the hurricane in the gulf a few minutes ago. Yes, there's a hurricane, yes it's headed toward Central America, however, we'll be fine. The way the hurricane is travelling right now, we'll probably fly in tomorrow night to a rainy Guatemala, just ahead of the storm. Another thing is that Guatemala is on the west side of Central America, so the storm will have lessened quite a bit before it comes across Guatemala. Rain, lots and lots of rain, that's what we're expecting.

Unemployed, Homeless Nomads

2007-08-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

That's exactly who we are :) On Monday we packed up the last of our belongings, cleaned the hut we've been living in for the past 3 months, and drove to Lee's parents. Since then we've put most everything is it's appropriate place for the next couple of years, spent an afternoon at the lake, had some good friends over, ran some errands, and even got to see a football game.

Today, Lee left with his parents for the mountains in New Mexico. I'm working on a bit of paperwork to be mailed out this afternoon and checking to make sure the wal-mart list is complete so I don't forget anything tomorrow while I'm in Amarillo.

'

On the Move...

2007-08-25T17:56:00.001-05:00

We haven't posted anything in a few days because not too much has been happening. The first couple of days of no working was nice - after that we wern't quite sure what to do with ourselves.

Today, Lee's parents drove to Canyon with a trailor to load up our big furniture. Our little house now is pretty barron on the inside. We are both ready to be transisted - it's been a long 3 months.

On Monday we will load up the rest of our stuff and head north to finish storing all of our treasures for a couple of years.

counting down...

2007-08-08T15:38:00.000-05:00

When we purchased our plane tickets, I began counting down the number of days until we leave for Guatemala. Somewhere in teh 30's I lost count. I don't know if it's because we had a lot going on during a few of those days, or if the reality of all that has to be done before we leave set in!

This Friday (the 10th) is our last day of work for both of us. After Friday we'll begin packing up all of our stuff to be moved to Lee's parents' house. They have been so gracious to let us leave all of our stuff there. Around the 26th we'll be out of Canyon and the on the 4th we'll leave the States.

We will begin to update our website more frequently...now that there's more happening!!

Until then,

Staci

One-Way Plane Tickets!!

2007-07-11T11:22:00.000-05:00

Last night we purchased one-way plane tickets!!

On September 4th we will leave Amarillo just before noon, and if all flights are on time we'll arrive in Guatemala just before 8pm that evening. Buying the tickets was kind of a surreal experience - something we have been planning for so long - what we've been hoping for for so long now is a reality. How exciting.

Now, we change into "getting ready to leave" mode. Things like finishing our jobs, moving, getting our finances in order, saying goodbye to our friends and family, being sure that we don't leave physically exhausted, and being intentional about being ready spiritually top the list of things to do. In short, we've got a lot to do in 54 days!