Shoebox Success!

Hi friends! I have to tell you it has been a crazy few weeks! We are doing our best to try and get back into some kind of routine after the holidays and are finding this to be quite a challenge. As many of you may remember we mentioned earlier that we were going to give out shoeboxes filled with gifts for the children in our church here. We thought about doing this during the month of December, however our friends here told us that it would be more appropriate if we could give the gifts out around Dia de los Reyes. Which means Day of the Kings. They have this tradition of the 3 Kings coming and leaving children gifts on January 7th. We think this is a really neat tradition! Anyway, many of the kids here don't get anything on this day due to lack of money. So, we decided to have our party on January 8th and had a huge party with cake and food and piñatas and presents!

Now, keep in mind when kids around here, hear that there are gifts being given they come from everywhere. We did our best to keep the crowd down to our usual church children, however we did have a few party crashers. I  was getting really worried. I was counting kids and then counting presents and counting kids again, and more would come and I finally went into a room and said, " Lord, remember that story about fishes and loaves? Well, I really need you to multiply these presents so that each child gets one." Well, if He isn't the PERFECT provider, we had just enough boy presents, (22) and just enough girl presents (15) to allow each child to receive a gift.

These were the gifts we purchased waiting to be put into boxes.

These were the 3 pinatas we purchased and all the candy that went in them.

This was a typical boy's box.

Here is a typical baby box.

Here is a typical girl box.

Here is the great cake we had made, it was yummy!

This was the last chair in musical chairs. As you can see Alex was playing ref.

Here are some of the kids listening to Greg tell a story from the Bible.

This is a fun game they play when they see which team can cover their mummy best with 2 rolls of tp. Of course the funny part comes at the end when you see which mother fights over the toilet paper. :o)

This was at the start of the night when they were playing Pedro Says, like Simon Says but with a touch of Mexican influence!

Here are all of the boxes wrapped and ready to go.

The unvieling. The delight cannot be hidden!

I tried to get picture of these kids with their gifts and the pictures but it just didn't work.

If you see a boy with a hat on, it is a new hat!

Some of them don't look happy, the only thing they weren't happy about was me bothering them with taking a bunch of pictures! But.... other than that, they were extremely happy!!

Ready for battle!

He did get a box, he wasn't in one as a gift! Although, I would take him!!

This was all made possible by a few of you who chose to bless these children! Let me say, " Thank You!" on their behalf! You made them all very happy children! I hope you all get as much joy from these pictures as we did watching them open their gifts! You may notice in these pictures that the children are holding up handmade cards or pictures of people. Well, these are pictures that were sent to them from churches in the US to help personalize these boxes. I took these pictures so that the people who made the cards or sent the pictures could see who they touched. They may be hard to tell who the people in the pictures are, but hopefully they will know who they are! This party was a ton of work and we are glad it is over! However, it was soooo worth it! It was a joy to see these children completely happy. Thank you all for your prayers and for your support of us! We need you! love to you all! Missy

Happy New Year!

New Year's tradition has been born! We decided to end the year with eating a Thanksgiving meal at around 10 pm on New Year's Eve. It was so much fun and this turkey was the best we had ever eaten! Yummy!

As you can see we cleaned that turkey good!

 Oh, how it was delicious!

We took it over to our friend's home, sat around a fire, drank hot cider and then got ready for our meal.

Our menu consisted of Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole and corn. We served it up for some of our friends to taste for the first time. It was funny to see their expressions when they saw our food. They immediately added tortillas and salsa to the meal which we thought was funny. It seemed to go over pretty well. 

Here are Alex, Clay, and their friend Eto as they got ready for fireworks.

They also hit pinatas in the middle of the street, this is something our kids look forward to ever year! (This was Clay's turn up to whack it)

He was happy with his success! Of course what he got from inside of the pinata he couldn't even pronounce! He is holding it in his hand. It is a kind of vegitable that they cut up and eat with salsa. It looks like a root.

It was a wonderful way to bring in the new year! We love our people and their traditions and we love sharing some of our traditions with them! We hope you all had a great time bringing in the new year with your family and friends! Love to you all!

Fun with family!

Christmas morning, waiting to see what Santa brought.

Our cousin/nephew, Clay is here visiting along with Greg's mom; as you can see he is pictured here with Jer, Alex and Annie 

It's just what I wanted!

Hugging her cousin. How sweet is that?

Greg got just what he was needing, an AARP magazine!

We went to see some pyramid ruins and enjoyed learning about all of the history behind this neat place.

Grandma with some of her grandchildren in front of one of the pyramids.

We went to visit our new village today and had a picnic by this natural spring. They had fun feeding the ducks. This is a rare treat for us b/c where we live now there is NO water anywhere. We had a great day!

This is a picture of Mom with some of our good friends. She had just given them some Bath and Body Works lotion and they were very happy!

We celebrated Clay's 11th birthday by eating at his favorite place here; Pizza Hut! The pizza here is just 10 times better than in the states! He was happy!

As you can see Max and Annie are getting quite close lately. She loves him and he seems to be happy around her too.

Hope you are all enjoying a wonderful week! Hope you have a great New Year's Eve and that you all bring the New Year in celebrating with the ones you love! We are planning on a really fun night tomorrow night. I will post pictures on Saturday. Be safe and know we are praying for our friends all over the world! Love to all! Missy

Wonderful Christmas Day

Merry Christmas my friends! We had a wonderful day yesterday! We celebrated with friends and had  a great meal. Then we spent most of the day decorating gingerbread houses that our friend had made for the kids. It was a great tradition in the making! The kids all loved this and well.... I think Greg and I enjoyed it just as much as the kids did.

Since Greg's mom and our nephew are arriving today we always ask Santa to wait to bring the gifts until tomorrow. So, since Santa has such a tight schedule and other people like us need to celebrate Christmas on a different date, he seems to be okay with this arrangement. We actually like it better because we can enjoy all of the activities and then enjoy our own special day without any pressure. Christmas Day here really isn't celebrated like it is in the states so it isn't that big of a deal. We are looking forward to a great week with family here.

We do hope all of you are enjoying all of the activites that are fun at this time of year. Love to you all!

Santa came early!

 

For most of you, this wouldn't seem awesome. For us, seeing Cool Ranch Doritos and Barbeque potatoe chips, it was a GREAT day! The Doritos were a little more than $5, but the chips weren't that bad. So, we bought 4 bags!

Meet Max. This is our new dog. He is wearing a pink shirt, but he is a boy for sure.

He is really sweet, and loving cuddling with Annie!

Don't know who is happier, Annie or Max. We voted on his name. It was between Hoosier and Max and Max won.