More camping photos

Worship for 2 or 3 hours is always a good thing

Here is Cole the cole miner.

Beautiful morning sun.

Marcela eats with her mouth open!!!

Canoeing... much fun, but definitely the hardest thing we did on the trip. I realized that I have issues with not being in control...

This was the view from the lookout tower on the very end of our trip. It reminded me of some places in the Lord of the Rings books.

Camping trip pictures

Here are some pictures from the camping trip we took a couple of weeks ago with the young adults in the church. Yes, there's hardly any pictures of girls, but that's Matt's fault. These are his pictures. I'm getting some more soon, so I'll be able to post some more soon.
Dominick and Anthony being silly waiting to go into the park.

The boys took a nature hike in the daytime. The girls hadn't arrived yet, because we were attending the ladies Christmas tea at the church first. So, here are the guys in their band pose.

We've found spiderman's identity. He couldn't resist jumping up on the fallen tree when in the natural surroundings...

Erin and Patrick. Pure silliness.

Here's the yummy camping recipe we discovered. Heap a generous helping of good old dirt in a giant pot of beans. Let sit engulfed in flames for a few minutes or so, then carefully remove most of the dirt. It's good to leave a little in there for flavor and texture. Yum...

Erin, Jada, and Jared cooking some hot dogs the primitive way, you know, like the cavemen cooked their hot dogs.

It got pretty windy in the night. It cracked me up when I saw that all the chairs were neatly tipped over in a nice straight row from the wind in the night.

Jeff, having some morning coffee. He really needed it because I think he slept only about an hour or two in the night.

Robin is getting ready to make breakfast. Luckily the stove didn't catch on fire again.

God blessed us with a beautiful rainbow. There were 2 of them right beside each other. You could see the whole thing, from end to end. It was awesome. Thanks, Lord, for not flooding the earth again.

Merry Christmas

Tonight, we are having a big Christmas eve service. We are going to have 2 services, because we are expecting too many people to fit for 1 service. We have all been preparing the worship and a Christmas pageant with the kids for almost 2 months. Whew! I am excited and a little nervous. We learned so many new songs, I hope I remember them all!

We've been so busy lately, that I almost forgot all about Christmas dinner! Luckily the grocery store was still open today, and I could get something for us to eat tomorrow night. We almost had to eat chinese for Christmas (the food, not the people...)

Merry Christmas to all my family in the states and in Peru. We love you all very much.

Lo siento que no tengo sufficiente tiempo para escribir todo en espanol. !Feliz Navidad a todos!

Last Sunday

Last Sunday we did an outreach to a poor Guatamalan community in Lake Worth. Most of them did not speak any English. We brought toys and clothes to hand out for the children for Christmas. We went to a little convenient store where there are typically a lot of people that hang out there. They did not know we were coming. The police came by one time, and were very nice. Praise the Lord, because we weren't really supposed to be doing that sort of thing there. We ended up with a pretty large crowd. Some of us were doing some one on one street witnessing, some of us were handing out items, and some of us were playing some worship songs. I tried to speak to the crowd in spanish over by where we were playing worship, and I got nervous and felt stupid when no one responded to my questions. I probably wasn't making very much sense to them. Ha! I guess I still have a lot to learn (duh!)

Alcance Outreach

There were a lot of people wanting toys and clothes for their children for Christmas. It was a little chaotic.

Dominick and I decided to go play some worship in spanish. (Actually it was Dawn's idea!) Chris was playing drum somewhere behind the tree there, too.
Hi Greg!
After a little while, the owners of the store asked us to go around to the back, we were creating too much of a crowd. But, we just set up in the back and continued what we were doing.

Marcelo spoke to the people at the end a little bit in spanish (I don't really know what he said). This guy came and wanted to pray with him.

The best part was hearing about Patty's talk with one of the guys there. Apparently, he knew the Lord some time ago, but had strayed away. He had recently found his wife with his brother together and wanted to kill them. He had actually already tried unsucessfully, and was soon going to try again. He felt that he could not be forgiven for what he was trying to do. He broke down talking to Patty. Robin said he was bawling. She talked to him a lot and in the end, he prayed with her to receive Christ.

Praise the Lord! It was all worth it just to reach that guy.

My goofy son

Liam at his finest!

Fotos

We are making some repairs to our house so that we can try to sell it in January. Here's Robin and Kelly working on our bathroom. Thanks, Kelly (and Jim, too!) Estamos hecho reparaciones en nuestra casa para venderlo en enero. Aqui esta Robin y Kelly trabajando en nuestro bano.
Gracias, Kelly (y Jim, tambien!)

Camping trip

(I didn't take any pictures of the trip, but I'll try to get some from the others to post soon.)

Last weekend, we took the transitions group camping. That's the young adult ministry we lead in the church. We only went for one night, but it was awesome. Our stove caught on fire while cooking dinner. We threw dirt on it to put it out, and got it in the beans. After digging out most of the dirt, we ate the beans anyway. They were only a little gritty... That night we had worship for about 2 1/2 hrs, which was awesome. Then we roasted marshmallows and hung out til about 2 in the morning. Some went to bed, and some of us went on a nature hike for about an hour. It was really cool to lay down on the path and look at the stars without light pollution. Luckily, we didn't run into any alligators, which was a very real concern. The next morning, after breakfast was all cleaned up, we had church service under a canopy. That was pretty cool. Then we had to breakdown our camp (one of the tents had broken from all the wind). After that, we went over to the river, had lunch, and got ready to go canoeing. I had no idea how hard that was going to be. Most of us got pretty good at going back and forth running into the mangroves... But, we learned a lot. Teamwork. Trust. To let go of our expectations, and enjoy our surroundings, enjoy our time together, even if you don't get very far away from where you started. Relationships are much more important than the task at hand. But, I just can't help being a little competitive... Lastly, we went up to a lookout point where you could see to the ocean on one side, and out over all the natural lands in the park on the other side. I had no idea how big it was. It was cool to see so much nature in one place. God's creation sure is amazing.

News

We have had a lot going on in the last month, or so. We've been working on the house trying to get it ready to sell in January. We put in a new bathtub, tiles, and sink in the bathroom. Thanks Kelly and Jim for all their help. Praise the Lord, we have a lot of help.

We recently got to visit with Shane and Cary Treadway, missionaries in Peru. It was nice talking about what their vision is for reaching the unreached people in the Carumas valley in Peru. They are going to be moving there in the spring. They were living in another area of Peru previously.

Last weekend our church had a ladies tea. It was very nice and elegant as always. I love to worship the Lord in all different kinds of ways, and when a bunch of ladies get together, it's usually in a very nice and sweet way. We had a great worship team, thanks Joy, Jada, Erin, Cassy, Kaulana, and Marianne. (Way to go Marianne, that was her first time up in front of everybody!) It was probably my last ladies event to lead worship for. So, that's a little sad for me. But, there are many good things in store.

We are preparing for a big Christmas eve service. It's going to be mostly songs and some kids things. The worship is going to tell the story of Christmas in an outreach sort of way. We are working very hard on getting the songs sounding really good. I can't wait.

This coming Sunday, we are doing an outreach to a local Guatamalan community in Lake Worth. We are going to hand out some clothing, some toys, and possibly do songs in spanish for the kids and adults. We are hoping to do the lollipop drama, it's so much fun to do! Pray for this outreach, that we don't get run out by the police. They are starting to not let churches do these sorts of things. They don't want the poor people to gather in the parks, and they don't want anything religious to be represented in the public places. We are not sure what will happen, but we are still going to go. Pray for favor in the eyes of the authorities.