Dinner with Friends

Time in Kansas City has dwindled down to the final night.  This week has been a series of dinners with friends.  

Monday--Dinner with Jim and Debby (and Jon) at La Fuente.  A lively game of 313 followed.

Tuesday--Delicious home-cooked dinner with Brian and Sheryl.  Yea for salmon, corn-on-the-cob, green beans, garden tomatoes and cucumbers.  Brian and Stephen spent their recreation time shooting baskets while Sheryl and I went for a walk.

Wednesday--Tonight we are heading to Spin Pizza (not necessarily on my healthy eating plan) with Steve and Terisa, with a stop at Custards Last Stand for dessert (definitely not on my healthy eating plan.)  Sometimes, you just have to splurge and our last night in KC for six months is as good a reason as any!

Beautiful bride, handsome groom and good friends

Two hearts, two families and two cultures were joined in marriage yesterday afternoon.  Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Luis Magaña!  

We had a wonderful time celebrating with them and their family.  It was also good to catch up with friends we had not seen for a long time.  

 

Time in Kansas City

The last official day of the campaign with the Christ Chapel Bible Church youth was Friday, July 18.  When the team headed to the beach for the day, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Kansas City.  Unfortunately for us, there were storms along the east coast so, even though we had no problems getting into Houston, our flight to KC was delayed two hours--11:00 p.m. arrival into KC instead of 9:00 p.m.  Originally, my dad was going to pick us up at the airport, but I'm so glad we changed it.  I can't image how he would have handled the two hour delay--probably would have tried to sleep in his car in the KCI parking lot.  By the time we got to Lee's Summit it was after midnight, but we still managed to talk to the Guenthers for an hour or so before we crawled into bed.

Stephen and two of his brothers worked in a game of golf on Saturday afternoon and then we all went out to dinner (minus Michael and Denise.)  

We went to the traditional 8:00 a.m. service at Abundant Life on Sunday morning and then on Sunday afternoon we drove to Topeka to visit with Jeff and Paula Rhoades.  It was great to go to church with them and see their home/town.

Stephen drove to Marshall early (5:00 a.m.) Monday morning to have breakfast and play golf with Michael.  In the afternoon, he stopped to see our friend, Kimberly Kelley in Seymour, Missouri, and pick up a Peruvian drum for our church in Guatemala City.  Kimberly tried to bring it to Guatemala in June, but the airlines wouldn't let her carry it on.  We're going to put in a box and check it as luggage.  Hopefully, it will make the trip safely.

He also managed to find time to play the piano and give her brothers a quick lesson.

He's spent the last two days visiting his parents in West Plains while I've filled my time with various annual doctor and dentist appointments.  Our son, Jon, flew in on Monday night so I've been able to spend some time with him, too.

Youth Trip

The mission trip with the high school students from Christ Chapel Bible Church started on Monday, July 14.  We spent the entire day working with Iglesia Bautista Vida Nueva in Nueva Conception.  Since there are almost 90 people (youth and chaperones) it takes awhile to move everyone around in three different buses.  

We formed 20 different groups and shared at three different schools.  

At noon, we all returned to the church for lunch and then in the afternoon all 130 of us went to the central park and played various soccer matches and basketball games with neighborhood kids.  We were supposed to have a concert, but there was a huge downpour so it was impossible to bring out the sound equipment.

On Tuesday we went to a school in San Salvador and half the team shared in the classrooms and the other half painted!  What a day!  There were more than 200 professions of faith in the classrooms.  

In the afternoon our three-day VBS started in a community center in Apopa.  There were about 70 kids on Tuesday.  The day included songs, drama, game time, Bible story time and craft time.  

Weekend Between Campaigns

The Hilo, Aguja y Biblia group continued working on our most recent project . . . . drawstring backpacks.  We are working with a public high school in a small town.  We'll be sharing a value lesson in the classroom and then distributing the backpacks.  Here's a couple of pictures of our work.

Saturday night we introduced Koky and Ena to healthy food from the Daniel Plan and then taught them how to play Cribbage.  It was a fun night!

This morning we went to church in Lourdes instead of the hotel because we had to pick up a second inflatable.  We'll be using two of them during the campaign this week--one will be used in the afternoon VBS and the other in our regular family festivals.  Don't know if it's possible to get them both in our truck, but we'll find out tomorrow.

The really exciting news this weekend is that we bought our tickets to fly to Bogota, Colombia, in January.  The sending service for our new missionaries, David Guadron and Alex Hernandez and their families is the last weekend in August.  They will begin their church planting work in September and will host the first campaign in January.  We're thrilled to be a part of this new work . . . . please pray for them, us and the group of North Americans who will be coming for this campaign.

July Campaign--End of the week

It was a long, but productive week and amazingly the rain held off.  In fact, it's been very hot, humid and dry--quite an uncomfortable combination.

However, the harvest this week was anything but dry--more than 750 people made professions of faith this week--most of them were high school students who heard the gospel presented in their classrooms.  

We said goodbye to the team tonight after the final campaign.  It's always bittersweet when it's time for them to return home.  

July Campaign, El Salvador

We started a campaign on Saturday evening with a small group of 11 from Fresno and 2 regulars from Bakersfield.  Although the sky looked very threatening, the evening was going fine until half way through the movie when it started to sprinkle.  We stopped the movie, Pastor Steve preached a quick message, the team counseled those who made decisions and we left before the rain turned into a downpour.   Since that night, we haven't seen anymore rain!

I celebrated my birthday on Sunday (not admitting to the "number) with church in the morning, lunch at my favorite Chinese restaurant and a campaign on Sunday night.  

Here are a couple of pictures of from the week so far:

Healthy Lifestyle--Going Well

Every time we travel I have concerns about how hard it will be to continue my healthy eating and 10,000 daily steps routine.  However, after spending several days downtown San Francisco in May, I found if I make the healthiest choices available and keep the portion sizes under control, I haven't gotten of track.  Of course, it helped that my weekly average daily steps was well over 12,000 per day, with a high of nearly 17,000 steps one day.

Last week in Guatemala my choices were more limited, but I still managed to come back .5 pounds lighter!  Hurrah!  

I have a feeling that my biggest obstacle is going come when we are in Kansas City for two weeks.  There are so many "favorite" restaurants and so many friends who want to spend time with us (which usually means going to breakfast, lunch or dinner), that I'm sure it will be my biggest challenge to date.  I'm so close to my goal, that I'm determined to enjoy the time in our hometown and with family and friends, without losing my focus!

P.S.  Here's what was for lunch yesterday--it was easy and delicious.  Who knew you could make soup from zucchini.  You can find the recipe from Skinny Taste here.

Happy Birthday, America

It's been quite a normal day here in San Salvador . . . . we went to the bank to pay our rent, stopped by the water company to pay our bill and bought a few groceries at Walmart.  

Nevertheless, I've been reading on Facebook all about the parades, BBQ's, family gatherings and fireworks.  We've heard and seen a few fireworks, but nothing like our memories of the show at Legacy Park!

Happy birthday, America.  We're proud to call you home even when we're far away.

Happy Feet Wrap Up

I've decided to do one more Happy Feet post and wrap up the week.  As I mentioned in the last post, the road to our scheduled location on Wednesday was blocked by a half mile landslide which made it impossible for us to get there.  Pastor Francisco called his sister who teaches at a school in another neighborhood and she opened her classroom to us.  I don't know how he did it, but by the time we arrived at the school around 9:30 in the morning, there were more than 150 kids waiting in line.

One of the difficult things for the Happy Feet team is trying to decide how many of each size shoes to bring.  They hate running out of a size because sometimes it means that a child won't get a new pair.  By Wednesday we were out of the smallest size, but had a good supply of most of the rest of the sizes.  For some reason, there were more older kids than usual and we almost emptied the size 4 bag before the day was out.  On Thursday, it was just the opposite, we didn't run out of size 4 shoes, instead the oldest kids needed size 3.  It was amazing to see how God worked out all of the details.

On Monday I had the privilege to translate for Emily; on Tuesday, instead of translating I was able to work by myself, washing feet, giving new shoes and sharing the gospel in Spanish.  It is so much easier to share in Spanish than it is to translate English to Spanish!  On Wednesday morning Emily and I worked together again and then on Thursday, Stephen and I were able to work together.  

Thursday was our final day and it was our smallest group of the week.  We finished with the 115 kids just after lunch.  We left all of the remaining shoes with Pastor Francisco who said he would try to get them to the children of the town we were scheduled to visit on Wednesday.  

We headed back to Chimaltenango and had an opportunity to tour the Don José León coffee roastery.  The owner, Gustavo Perez, is a member of Vida Nueva Guatemala, and he kindly demonstrated the whole process for the team and served up freshly roasted coffee. 

Each night after dinner, we had a testimony time which helped the team to get to know one another better.  Our final evening at the hotel was very special as we heard from each of the translators.  It was special to listen to several of the younger girls sharing how great it was for them to share the gospel with kids their age.  

Friday morning after breakfast and clean up we checked out of the hotel and drove to Antigua.  While everyone shopped, Stephen and I visited with our teacher, Corina, and her family.  We always make it a priority to spend time with them.  Stephen played cards with the four girls while I visited with Corina and her mother-in-law.