St. Jude

Be forewarned this post is about my friend and her efforts to raise money for St. Jude.

Maria is an amazing young lady who served with Dad in Cali. The Air Force injured her knees and she was not suppose to be able to run again. But Maria has a heart for St. Jude and the amazing work they do to help children with cancer and their families. In her stubborn way, Maria is determined to be able to run the St. Jude 5k and to race $1,000 for the cause.

If you all could be in prayer for her as she continues to train and for both of us as we travel to Nashville to run this race in the end of April that would be greatly appreciated.

Second, if you would like to support St. Jude and Maria in this undertaking here is the link to her page. Donate Here

Sorry everyone for the shameless plug :-)

Life Update

Hello Everyone!

Sorry I have not written in a while, writing becomes a chore when you are in school. Life is going well, I have settled into a routine in VA. Last semester was a time of adjustment but God was good throughout the process. This semester is a time to thrive!

I am taking five classes this semester, a premarital and marital counseling class, my second homiletic class (for all of you who served as guinea pigs as I learned to preach, Thank You!) and a chaplaincy class are all normal sixteen week classes. Then I am taking two intensives where the whole semester of learning was crammed into eight days then there is assignments before and after the class meets, both of those were chaplaincy courses. I am on track to finish my m.div in May of 2019.

I do have my assignment for the summer. It is a great location where I will get many opportunities to learn from some fabulous chaplains. For all my friends wanting to know it its near ya all, no it is not :-(

Please be in prayer for my classes, summer, ministry opportunities and future ministry.

Maria is an amazing friend. She was a family friend from when they were stationed in Cali, but she moved to VA this semester. Now she is working on her health care chaplaincy m. div and we get lots of time to study aka "hang out"

Norica is a friend and fellow chaplaincy student (although she is making the mistake of going Army)

This is my house

Serving Communion at a Field Service (part of intensive)

Classroom part of the intensive

My fellow intensive classmates and are fabulous teachers

A couple shots of me preaching during the field service

Mr. Gingerbread Man

My family does a gingerbread competition on New Years Eve and the winner this year received the honor of hosting Mr. Gingerbread Man. He was passed off to me in Colorado, so he could come enjoy Mexico for a bit.

At first Mr. Gingerbread was not thrilled, he was complaining that I lied about Mexico being sunny and lots of children for him to become friends with. It was rather sad that the first three days were stormy and I had finals so I was a bad host and didn't introduce him to people.

However, the last week and a half have been what I promised and he has made many great friends and been enjoying some sunshine.

Haircuts

This past Friday I decided it was time to trim my hair before COT, have to be in regulations and all that, and I decided that it would be fun for L and Ju to go with and get their hair cuts. At first when I told L that we were going to get our hair cuts she was not happy, she thought we were going to chop all her hair off because of lice, but once I convinced her that she was going to control what was done and she didn't need to cut it all off she cautiously came with.

We had to wait a few minutes for our turn and so we thumbed through one of the books, the girls picking out ridiculous styles for all of us. Neither of them wanted to be first so I went first.

L decided she was ready to go second and jumped up their and I was telling the hairstylist that she only wanted a little off. When L asked for the book and opened it right up to a picture and declared that is what she wanted. L ended up getting 4inches off and bangs. Ju went last and she wanted what big sister got. They both look adorable. My cut was rather botched and I look slightly ridiculous but that's the best way to go meet new people! ;-)

J's Birthday!

J is about four years old, unfortunately his birth certificate is missing and Lilia and Artura have not been told when his birthday is. We all decided it would be fun to throw him a birthday party, so yesterday (yeah we're caught up!) we declared it was J's birthday and had a party.

It was a lot of fun and J was so excited! J's face throughout the day was full of joy and it was amazing to see him happy.

Optometrist

The children at Imuris love to play with visiting people glasses. As the children would take our glasses and try them out we started noticing that some seemed to be seeing better with them, one of the youth repeatedly tried to buy Kent's glasses. After making this observation and talking with Lilia, it was determined we need to go see the optometrist.

There was an optometrist in Magdalena, that offered free exams so that is where we decided to go. The first trip we made it was Kent and I and seven children. We went after lunch which allowed us to take the youth who were done with school and the kindergartner down. We knew the place was by the bank and I had driven to the bank twice with Lilia, so we figured we could find it. Well we had gone to two different banks, I really thought the second one was not the same and was super confused, so I had no problem taking us to the first bank but we needed the second bank which proved challenging because I hadn't realized it was two different banks. After a couple loops and asking for directions we found it, it was two blocks away from the first bank.

Amidst all the driving in circles J (for security reasons not using his name) had a coughing fit. The poor kiddo coughed so hard he threw up. J managed to lean forward to throw up on the floor, unfortunately since he was sitting in my lap that meant it went all over my legs, purse, and water bottle.

When we found the optometrist office the younger children went racing to the door and crashed into it. Kent then talked to them all about how it was a doctors office and we needed to be calm and behave. After this discussion, we went to enter the building and J, the first one in, tripped on the door jam and sprawled across the floor. He had an open bottle of water which spilled everywhere. It was rather comical to see the receptionist face as we made this grand entrance.  

The next day we went back in the morning and took eight children, the once with school in the afternoon. The visit went much smoother the second go around.

The initial exams were done by the technicians who would determine if they needed glasses or not, those that needed glasses would then need to see the doctor to acquire their official prescription. So on Friday we took the seven who needed glasses, plus two whose initial exams were inconclusive, and two who still needed to be examined, and Lilia (are hero!) and headed back to the optometrist. After all the exams were done the children and youth picked out their glasses.

Everyone in the office did an outstanding job at helping us and getting the children what they needed. That being said 17 exams, 3 trips, 11 pairs of glasses and we are done!