The good cards

Sunday morning we went to a "new" church called El Camino. It was AWESOME!!! Joy was quite sad to leave DBC and the awesome worship, and her favorite songs. In fact on her last day playing some of her favorites were played before service, as sort of a last time thing. Well, this church had some of those exact songs in the service Sunday, just in Spanish. They actually may sound even better in Spanish.
At the beginning of the service we heard from a Guatemalan missionary to India. He was talking about his church planting and how many new churches they have started in the last 8 years. It was a lot, like 1000 churches. If they are anything like this church India will certainly benefit.
The pastor of the church is a TCK who grew up in Colombia, and gave a wonderful sermon on Matthew 5:31 and other passages related to divorce. We were shocked to learn that Guatemala has the third highest divorce rate in the world. Kenneth didn't get much out of the sermon, and that is a drawback. We are discussing the option of going to El Camino in the morning and, when it starts again in August, an English service in the evenings. It was so exciting to find a church where we felt comfortable, and welcome. Pray that Kenneth will quickly begin to understand more.
After church was a hard day, as we normally spend time with family and friends, and well...they kind of weren't here. Joy cried herself to sleep while Kenneth made lunch for the girls. Praise God some new friends of ours called and came over for a game night that night. That was fun!

Monday we were due to receive our new bed, but it never came. Joy still slept fine last night though, as she made the bad decision to read a whole book Sunday night, and didn't turn the light off until 4am. Too bad those girls didn't sleep in, whose genes are those? The bed finally came today, and we really are looking forward to a comfortable nights rest.
We were invited to dinner last night, at a fellow CAG staffer's house. It was a lot of fun. The wife is Guatemalan, so it was nice for Joy to be able to speak Spanish outside of school (and stressful telephone conversations.) We were there until after 9, so went just about straight to bed when we got home. Sad, huh - we're so tired all the time, it's annoying.

Abigail was really excited to get a package of pictures from her friends in children's church (or maybe Sunday School) at DBC. She immediately came home and hung them on her wall. Thanks to whoever set that up..Wendy and Camden..it really meant a lot to her to know that people still are thinking about her and care! Feel free to keep pictures coming from her friends.

We learned today that we really can't receive much in the way of packages without having to spend a ton of money. For example, one of the teachers was sent a DVD, and had to pay $10 just to get it out of customs. Books apparently aren't much of a problem, since we are a school, but they also aren't as desired as some other things (like Bath and Body Works lotion.) We were told the best way to get stuff was to have people bring it down when they come. Too bad we already packed suitcases for the people we knew were coming.

This is our last week of language school, and boy are we happy. Speaking of language school. Today, Abigail came down from her table at the end of the day, all excited that she had just beat her teacher at Uno. She then turns to Joy all proud and says "Mommy, guess what? When Soraya was in the bathroom I looked at the cards and changed them so that I had all the good cards like draw two." AARGH! That was darn smart of her, but we did have a long discussion on how winning by cheating is never acceptable. Some days...(And it's ok to laugh, we did.)