Church and Team "Happenings"

I realized lately that our blog has become slightly family focused. Perhaps that's because mom, who is in charge of the blog, is here at home - and so that's what gets posted. Which is not to say that the work doesn't go on - and that Josh is very busy with a variety of ministry activites. Here's some highlights from what's been going on.

- The youth and the young at heart begin playing volleyball as an outreach on Saturdays in January.
- Maggie and Palmira were baptized in February!
- End of February, Roland Bowen, a member of the missions committee at our sponsoring congregation of Austin Ave., makes a visit to help out with preaching and teaching responsibilites while all the new daddies are still getting back in the groove. Thanks, Roland!
- The youth have an outing to welcome their new members at a local pool in March.
- We have a team get-to-gether on Good Friday to spend some time in prayer and give the kids a chance to hunt Easter eggs.
- We celebrate Easter Sunday with an evangelistically focused service, inviting lots of friends and canvasing the neighborhood. The kids and youth perform some special skits, and the fellowship meal afterwards allows us to visit with the many visitors (we had about 80 in attendance!)
- Our small group, which usually meets at the building, decides to rotate the last Tuesday meeting of every month in members' homes to allow for a little more familiarity.
- And please be praying for this coming weekend: Josh is teaching a weekend course(the last weekend of March, April and May) at the contact center on preaching and Bible exegesis, which is open to churches across Bolivia. He's expecting 10-15 students - and they'll have lunch at our house - my first big hospitality event since Jana's birth.
-The first weekend in April marks the men's annual campout as well. Please be praying for that too.

Saturday volleyball


Palmira's baptism


Roland preaching


Our old red Chevy is well used during events like the youth outing!


Easter egg hunting


Josh preaching on Easter Sunday


Our CAFE group

Our 3 Little Ladies

We were enjoying a beautiful day outside - and this picture was the result - the first one I've been able to get with all 3 girls by themselves!

Eliana

In an attempt to be fair (like she will ever know - but to ease my guilty conscience :), I decided I should do a blog and post some pictures solely of Eliana. She is learning so many new things these days - has conquered stairs, is now moving comfortably around the yard, climbing the slide, lots of new words, blowing bubbles, dancing, eating with a spoon, putting herself to sleep (yeah!! Sure makes my life easier). But one of her favorite things, since we live in the middle of a dairy farm, is to stand at the fence and watch the "vacas" (cows) as she calls them in the neighboring field. On a side note - I think these days of Michaela at school will be good for Eliana. We'll get to spend some time together and she'll get to play a little without her older sister bossing her around so much. Sisterly affection and rivalry sure starts at a young age : )

Michaela starts "school"!

Today was Michaela's first day at her day care. We've been looking for a good fit for us for a while - thinking that Michaela would enjoy the social interaction and that it would really benefit her Spanish. We checked out quite a few - some were not too thrilled with our desire to send her only 2 days a week; others were too out of the way; others not clean enough.... We finally decided on one right on the way into town - Christian, bilingual, a nice garden/play area, smaller with only 10 kids in her class. They even get to go to the tennis club on Wednesdays for tennis lessons. The first day went well - she went in happy and came out happy (although we did have a little resistence in putting on the uniform.) Here are a few pictures.

Michaela - ready to go


Michaela working with her new friends


The play area

Thank Goodness for Teammates!

Josh always buys a Sunday paper - it helps us keep up with news politically, but also helps us know what's going on locally. A couple weeks ago he saw advertised a Russian ballet on ice, coming to Cochabamba. Who would think? So seeing as we had been reading a book to Michaela about ballet, we bought tickets. Sunday night at 7:30 was sold out, so we bought tickets for Monday. They wrote 5:00 on the tickets, and we were excited, thinking that was a much better time for us and we'd be able to take all 3 girls. We showed up at 5: 15 - better late than never, right? - and stood in line, thinking they would open the doors soon. We waited and waited - and finally struck up a conversation with the lady next to us - turns out the thing didn't start till 7:30! Here we are with 3 kids standing on a street corner in the middle of Cochabamba. Not to mention the fact that the only reason we brought Eliana was because she would be happy at 5:00 - we knew she'd be climbing a wall at 7:30. At this point, it's 6:00 - so I pack up the kids and take them to get something to eat at CineCenter while Josh calls our teammates the Sandovals to see if they can watch Eliana. As we're walking into CineCenter - I see Butch coming toward me, talking on the phone to Josh. Wonder of wonders - they were there eating as well - so we got something to eat, I passed off Eliana and we went back to find Josh (who had stayed in line) just as they were opening the doors. In spite of the crazy time factor - the ballet was lovely. Michaela was enchanted - Jana slept the whole time. We ended up leaving at intermission (too much of a good thing is not good at all) because it was getting late. But I'm very thankful for flexible teammates who will baby sit at a minute's notice. Not to mention all the other things our teammates provide for us!

One Month Old

I wish I was more of a photographer, especially after seeing some other baby pics on other blogs - but this snapshot will have to suffice for now! Jana is now one month old. Eating well, sleeping - well, she has her good nights and her not so good nights. But she's taking a bottle (praise God! Eliana never did!) And a pacificer (Amazing! I can't believe it - my other 2 never did that either! It sure makes my life easier.) And at the least she's survived her 2 older sisters for a month! We've even gotten a couple good smiles out of her the last week.

Team Picture

Our team has changed a lot in the past 8 months! We are now only 4 families, and just recently added 3 new team members: Malakai Forbess, Jana Marcum, and Grant Bull. Welcome to these 3 new little ones!