2 Months here

Chandler receives an IPOD!!

December 30, 2007

Now we have been here 2 months. At times I am amazed at the Spanish we have learned and then often reminded of how little we know. But, I am pleased with all of the other things we are learning!! We had a fun Christmas week with Grandmadele, Annie, and Karissa here! We spent 2 days at their hotel and I even got to take 2 hot showers! I think hot water is what I miss the most! It was a nice break and we so enjoyed the visit with them! The hotel is “a small distinctive hotel” called Casa Turire and was very quaint and lovely. We all enjoyed our time there and the food was a treat! Thank you Grandma and Annie for everything! Christmas day they arrived with 3 suitcases full of goodies for our family! Gifts from them and the Shankle’s. One case of completely full of candy, pop tarts, nutrigrain bars and all sorts of things! It was exciting for all of us! My grandma brought one box especially for me. I opened it to find 3 bags of Velvet Cream Popcorn!! It has been a tradition in our family and a favorite of mine! It brought me to tears and everyone thought it funny that I would cry over popcorn, but what can I say? Pops sent baseball gloves, Grammy sent a Magic Bullet, wonderful craft supplies from Aunt Summer, Moon Sand from Uncle Ben & family, and also our Christmas Jammies arrived just in time! Everything was as perfect as it could have been without actually having the entire family here with us. On Christmas Eve we received our box from Grandma Barb & PapPap too! It was so fun to open each gift! We received Spanish worship music, candies, Spanish children’s books, jewelry, so many wonderful things. It was all such a treat for us! Thank you all!!!!

Goodies from Grandma & Annie

We have become increasingly frustrated with the inconveniences here! I think we are the only people in the town without a phone and we are having a terrible time finding one to purchase. Every day we are confronted with a new issue because we don’t have any way to communicate with other people when we need to! We have spent many hours waiting for people to come that never do or walking or taking a bus somewhere to wait more! No one can contact us to change the plan or give us more information! It has certainly tried us and I don’t know if we have “passed”, so I guess we have more to learn in this area. This month, what I have to say about our conveniences and technology is this…

I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!!! :-) No, really, I thought once we got here we would think we have too much and appreciate too little. Partly, that is true, but what I hope to take from this is to use our technology and conveniences to the advantage of our family, not to do more, but to have more time with our family and friends and ministering to others around us. We are blessed in the U.S. that we don’t have to spend the entire day- every day- doing laundry by hand, cooking everything from scratch, walking to the store, the bus and everywhere. But, somehow we fill our days with all kinds of other things ( well, at least I do) And then I still don’t have time to play with my kids, visit with my grandma, or talk to the lady next to me in line at Wal Mart. I want to use technology and modern conveniences to my advantage and the advantage of Christ.