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!