2009 In Pictures

JANUARY - one final trip to SD to visit family and friends. Our friends' baby Braden is now 16 months old!

FEBRUARY - packed and headed to Florida after many goodbyes to dear family and friends

MARCH - landed in Peru and took off 3 days later for Iquitos

APRIL PART1 - Lisa began school preparations and started school mid-April

APRIL PART2 - Brian began our house! Here we are in our kitchen.

MAY - Brian worked non-stop on our house and we moved in the 31st.

JUNE - participated in an IBYM social, had our first visitors stay in our house, and worked more on the house

JULY - more visitors and the big IBYM event: Conoce Al IBYM

AUGUST - retreat with our co-workers to Cajamarca as well as a visit from Lisa's dad!

SEPTEMBER - We bought a motorcycle!

OCTOBER - Spring sprang in all its Peruvian glory! We enjoyed new furniture and settling into the routine of the last half of the school year.

NOVEMBER - more visitors, graduation for our new missionaries, and our first Thanksgiving in our new home.

DECEMBER - the Fair, end of school, our first Christmas in our new home, and a surprise for Lisa: a new piano.

There’s a brief look at our year in photos. Here’s to an equally adventurous, amazing ride in 2010! Happy New Year, everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Feliz Navidad! From our humble home in Peru to yours, wherever that may be.

Fotos!

1 of the 5 chairs we were given for Christmas

a local bird made itself at home in our shower

Lisa's kids (and teachers) making sugar cookies

the girls decorating their cookies

The English class (plus Adriana, the tiniest girl) and their teachers

the boys making toppings for their pizzas

Our "ornament of the year": Jorge de Nieve! =)

all the new materials for kindergarten!! the blue binder is 1/3 of my summer reading. =)

Merry Christmas Eve’s Eve’s Eve!

Can you believe Christmas is this close?! We sure can’t! Of course, it’s been mostly sunny and warm, which attributes to the lack of true, north North American Christmas spirit. Just lately, though, we’ve had chilly, rainy, foggy days. Believe it or not, we’ve been okay with that since it’s making us feel more in the Christmas mood.

Our first Christmas gift arrived in the form of….

**insert picture here**

CHAIRS! Sorry, my internet has decided to NOT finish uploading pictures. So, you’ll just have to wait.

Our co-workers, Lucho and Elsa, gave us 5 dining room chairs for Christmas. Now, if we only had a table to match! Thankfully, though, it looks like enough funds have come in that we can finally purchase one!! We are SO excited and it’s #1 on our to-do list when we get back from Iquitos in February. Praise the Lord ~ and thank YOU for contributing to that! We feel so much more civilized when we can eat at a table and not on our couches.

I finished my school year, complete with a pizza party and a two-day Christmas cookie decorating party. Once again, pictures will need to wait. Rest assured, both went really well and it was a nice end to the school year.

IBYM has officially finished for the year as well. Graduation for our third year students actually happens in April. They have summer ministry to accomplish before then (very similar to Word of Life).

We went through our 2nd family scare this past week. Lisa’s father was found to have heart problems as well (good grief – must be in their water!!). He went in for a heart cath a week ago where they found he needed stents immediately. The surgery was scheduled for this past Monday, but he actually went in Sunday evening… a little ahead of schedule. Gave us a little scare. But, nothing serious happened and the stents were placed Monday morning. He’s already home and recovering and I’m sure he’ll be back to his world-traveling, nothing-holds-him-down self. Praise the Lord for living in a day and age where stents are possible and praise the Lord for preserving his life! If you happened to have known about all this, thanks for your prayers. It was a difficult week, but our Lord was extremely gracious, on both sides of the equator.

Brian has been continually working on either the new house or the suburban. He’s been very busy!

This past Sunday, we hopped on the motorcycle and went to a bilingual church for the morning service and an evening Christmas play. It was soooooo incredibly wonderful hearing the Christmas story in English. We enjoyed the play and the beautiful Christmas music. It was a nice way to kick off Christmas week.

Only three more sleeps til Christmas!