July Recap

One week from now, the six of us will be en-route to Quito. Wow, the summer's flown by!! Here's a brief update on our July adventures.

- We visited my parents in Syracuse for a week. Some highlights of our time there are picnicing with extended family, golfing, fireworks, Rudy's, Olive Garden, Chuckie Cheese, road trip to Rochester, smores, recycling bottles and cans (really, that's a highlight- ask if you want to know more), and of course SWIMMING. We spent a lot of time in Mom and Dad's pool. All four kids loved it and were in the pool as much as possible. Shea and Jads stayed a few extra days and went to VBS at Mom and Dad's church.

-Jod and I took a Spanish class at the community college in Lancaster. It was a very informal non-credit class with lots of conversation. It was great to be able to learn and practice more. I learned a lot of things I'd been saying wrong for the last year, too;-).

-Alex, Di, Keeton, CeCe,and Ansley (Jodie's brother and family) moved back from Turkey on July 15. It's been great to spend a few weeks with them before we head back to Shell. One of our highlights together was the camping and boating trip for the 13 of us at Raystown Lake. Tubing, water skiing, swimming, campfires, bugs, went tents- all sorts of fun things.

-The kids have been busy. Shea and Micah went to soccer camp at a local church and Jadyn attended a 2 day butterfly themed camp at a different church. The last 2 weeks the 3 older kids have been taking swimming lessons at the county pool. Luke's been a good sport about tagging along everywhere. The kids have also been busy at home biking, swinging, reading, and playing PlayStation.

-We've had opportunities to share with a few churches and many individuals this month about what we're up to in Shell. One of the cool things about that is also being able to share what many of the other missionaries in Shell are involved in. From aviation to translation, discipleship to medicine- it's been a blessing to report on how God is meeting the physical and spiritual needs of the people in Ecuador.

The next week should be pretty stressful for our family with to-do lists and goodbyes. We're so thankful for the opportunity to spend this summer with our family and friends and are praying for a smooth transition back to our "home away from home" in Shell. Next post will be from south of the equator!

Coming to America

In honor of the 20th anniversary of this comedy classic, I'll give you the lowdown on our last 3 weeks back in America.

the trip home: Things went pretty well, considering all 6 of us were traveling for several hours. Waiting in line at the counter in Quito, it looked like it could be a real long day(s?) when it showed the flight to Panama was delayed. But after some brief and heartfelt prayers, the board showed the flight was back on time. We still had to hurry through the airport in Panama (Panama now joins Taiwan as countries I've been in, but only in the airport) to catch our next flight to Washington. We arrived in Washington about on time at 1 a.m. and got throught immigration and customs without to much trouble. Our conversation at customs actually went like this.
Customs agent: "Do you have any food?"
Us: "No"
Customs agent: "O.K., have a nice night"
How excited we all were to see Jod's Mom and Dad waiting for us when we walked through the doors a couple moments later!!

culture shock about coming back to the US:
-Strangers talk English
-It's still light out past 6:30. One of the first nights Luke said "It's not bedtime, it's still light out"
-$1.50 for a a 20 oz. soda
-Restaurants have lots of items on the menu. We sort of miss almuerzos being the only option

our week in Massachusetts:
We had a great time hanging out with our friends and without our combined 13 kids. It's so cool to have such great friends. We had a fun week filled with hikes, rafting trip, mini-golf, tennis, Wii, cards, foosball, and lots of sleeping in. A highlight of the week was on Thursday night when we prayed together for each of all of our children.

back in Lancaster:
It's been pretty busy with appointments, meeting w/ friends, Spanish class, phone calls and other stuff. Worshipping again at our home church has been very refreshing! The kids are keeping busy and having fun (for the most part). They've been enjoying spending time with Grandpa and Grandma and seeing some of their friends. Tomorrow we leave for Syracuse to spend a week with my family.

Hope you're all enjoying your summer!