Little Evelyn Dancing

Yesterday, we had a despedida (a farewell program) for a visiting team.  Some of the girls did a dance for the team.  Little Evelyn was not part of the original dance team, but she really wanted to dance.  She is so cute.  For those that know her, you will really appreciate this.

Rock Climbing

Today the staff at Esperazna Viva was treated to an outing.  We all went to a rock climbing facility here in Puebla.  It was a special outing for all the hard work everyone did for Es Tiempo.  Erin had a blast climbing and did some rather challenging climbs.  Afterwards, we had a lunch of hot dogs, chips, and fruit.  It was all very yummy.

Here is Erin getting her harness on.

This is the first wall she climbed.

Jonathan is helping Lydiah on one of the smaller walls.

Here she goes again on a wall that's a little harder.

Moving up to a harder wall.  This one was pretty tall.

This one was a little too hard.  She made up some of it though.

This was the wall to beat all.  Erin made it up as far as she could.  The rocks just became to far apart for her to reach.

Of course there were breaks to hold the babies.

Yesterday we had rain, rain and more rain.  It must have been cold on the top of the mountains because today, they were covered with snow.  It was just beautiful. 

Encouragement

     What a wonderful weekend this was.  We had a conference at our church here called Es Tiempo de Entregarse (Time to Surrender).  It was a weekend of worship, speakers, prayer tents and encouragement.  One blessing we had was four men from our church in Oregon came to minister at the conference so we were able to see some familiar faces from our home church and receive some personal encouragement.  In the past, we have always enjoyed times with Ron, Todd, Wally and Mike.  They have prayed over each team we have brought down to Esperanza Viva in the past so it was such a neat time to have them here with us.

Not many of our pictures from inside the church came out but here is one of Todd praying for someone.

Outside in the tents during the ministry times.

Ron

Wally

Mike

     After church, the guys came to our house for a time of fellowship and good food.  I had made some homemade chili and guacamole with chips.   We also bought some of the local bread to go with it.  Later we had some traditional sweet breads and coffee.  The fellowship was wonderful and there were many gut wrenching laughs had during our visit.  What a refreashing time. 

Visiting at our house in the afternoon on Sunday. 

Ron is catching up on Facebook.

Erin is becoming friends with Ron on Facebook while sitting in the same room.

     Here is a video of the last worship time for the conference.  The youth that wanted to totally surrender to the Lord were called forward for prayer, which was almost all of the youth.  It was an intense and awesome time to see so many youth go forward.  There was also prayer for all the parents for wisdom and direction in raising and training these young people as arrows being shot forth for the Lord.  After the prayer time, there was the final worship.  It was so fun to see Ron take part in the dancing.  We had to get some video of it.  It's a little long, but this is how many worship services go with the youth here.  It is awesome to see.

Busy Week

     It has been a very busy few weeks with teams here at Esperanza Viva.  This week we had our first mission team from the states.  We have had three work teams here in the past month who were here totally to work out on the land.  A mission team is one that comes, and although they do some work out on the land or some other work project in the morning, they do activities with the kids and their main focus is the kids.  We love working with the teams that come down.  We enjoy helping out with the activities and it really helps my Spanish.  The team that was here this week did some really cool activities.  Several of their activities were food related.  They made trees from ice cream cones, frosting and sprinkles, popcorn was then used to look like snow.  They also made edable play-dough out of peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey.  Erin enjoys participating in the activities.

Edible trees.

Edible play-dough

Jonathan preferred to spend some time in the tree. 

     Last Sunday we had the treat of watching the Vikings vs. the Saints play-off game with the two groups that were here.  We all watched it at the Nielsen's house and had pizza.  Many of the missionaries here are from Minnesota so they were cheering for the Vikings.  But some of the work team were cheering for the Saints so it was a great game with lots of shouting as the teams went back and forth.  Unfortunately, the Vikings lost but we all had a great time.

    This weekend we also have "Es Tiempo de Entregarse" or "Time to Surrender."  We have speakers coming from Mexico and the United States.  It is a free conference that is being held at Nations Church tonight, tomorrow and ending on Sunday after the regular service.  We have four men from the Encouragers Team from our church in the states that have come and we are looking forward to seeing them.  Three of these men have been to another Es Tiempo here at Nations but this will be our first time attending one of the Es Tiempo conferences.  We are excited to see what God will do.  Both Jim and I have been helping out in whatever way we can for the conference.  We have been doing a lot of driving and I helped out with the tickets. 

We have also had some awesome views of the moon this week both during the day and at night. 

Jonathan was really in awe of the moon out during the day. 

Then last night, as Jim and I were walking, we saw this view.  It's a little hard to see but if you look close, there is a huge ring around the moon towards the bottom edge of the picture.  It was very visible in person.  It is awesome to see all the wonders that God allows us to see in this world we live in.

Making New Friends

Today, we met a family that came to play with the kids at EV.  They are from Canada but live here in the area.  They are working on a church plant here in the area and they desire for their church to have an outreach to the kids at Esperanza Viva.  They have two children here ages 10 and 16.  Jonathan and Ian, their 10 year old son, hit it off quite well.  He's already asking when we can get together with them again.

Jonathan and his new friend Ian

Ian liked doing some magic tricks for the kids. He was pretty good.

Judy was reading a book about pyramids and mummies to one of the kids.

We hope to see this family again and be able to have Jonathan and Ian playn again.