Friday Night Festivities

So we decided to do something more exciting than study on Friday night this week. We invited over another couple from our class, "companeros de escuala", I think is what you might say in Spanish. Their names are Rob and Laura and they have 2 kids, ages 3 and 5. The kids seemed to enjoy playing together, and Faith especially enjoyed cooking and hosting again, something we haven't been able to do in months. It was neat to talk and hear about how God leads and provides for all our needs as we trust Him. It was also neat to find out that they also love to play Settlers and Ticket to Ride. Whohoo!

A funny, or not so funny thing that also happened was that we received a note in our mail about some meeting at 7pm, but since we had company, and since it didn't seem that important, we didn't end up going. Well, it turns out that we missed out on a big party that the returning students threw for all us newbies. Oh, well, maybe next time.

This weekend we finally got our van fixed (the AC needed recharging) and so maybe we'll go to the beach tomorrow before the hurricane hits. Also, we have both been really struggling to find time, energy, and motivation to keep up in our studies. It seems like such a tall mountain to climb at times. We know that it will all be worth it in the end. I say that on my own strength I can't do this, but I really need to begin to believe it and put it into practice.

We trust that all of you are enjoying your last long weekend before school starts. We are definitely anticipating the extra day off, although it is too bad that we can't watch any Labor Day football!

New Pics

Check out our new pics of August. Click on the slideshow to the right.

7 Months Old

This time is Emma's turn to be shown off. So here is our baby girl at 7 months old.

Make a Smilebox postcard

A is for Apple

That is what Brooklyn has been learning in daycare this week. It is so exciting to see her mind expanding, and that she is excited to be learning new things. She loves that she can bring papers home on the stuff she's learning and tell us about it. It's amazing how thrilled someone can be over an apple tree. So I guess her experience of "school" so far is good. We'll see how long that lasts.

Emma Update

What an answer to prayer. Emma's fever broke sometime over night, and thankfully she slept straight through and had an excellent sleep. Which means we had a very restful night. She woke up with no fever, and she's been so happy today. She is still really stuffed up, which makes it really for her to eat and drink her bottle. But slowly that too is improving. So I am sure in a couple days it'll all be cleared up and she will be able to have her whole bottle before growing tired of sucking and breathing. Thanks to all the prayers going up for her.

Prayer Request

Our poor little Emma has now been fighting a fever and congestion for 3 days. The fever comes and goes, but she is feeling awful. She hasn't been the biggest eater at all, so we were quite excited tonight when she finally had 3 oz (she usually has 6) of milk at one time. Her nose is so stuffed she can only have tiny bits at a time, so it takes awhile for her to eat. Poor girl. If nothing is better by Monday I will take her to the doctor here on campus. But we sure thought the fever would have broke by now. This is the longest either Emma or Brooklyn has ever had a fever, so I am starting to get a little anxious. So if you can pray for Emma, and for us (we don't have much energy left), we'd really appreciate.

We'd also like to ask you to pray for us as we are feeling exhausted half the time from school, culture shock (it's very latin here in Edinburg), and still getting used to being away from home. This does feel like home, but not like home. I'm sure you know what I mean.

Well, we are enjoying a quiet evening today. Brooklyn was sleeping before 7:30 since she wouldn't have a nap, and Emma just went down. I think we will enjoy some reading, yummy iced tea, and quiet. Y'all have a great weekend now, you hear!?! (We're so far down in Texas we don't even here the Texas accent we were expecting.)

Rain, Rain, Rain

Okay, so we thought it was never suppose to rain here. And as much I love rain, it doesn't cut the humidity and mugginess. There has been rain in the forecast everyday this week, and it's suppose to rain all weekend again as well. It hasn't rained all week, but at least one hard stretch almost every day. With thunder, lightening, the whole bit. It's fun, but I really want to go to South Padre Island, and right now it's looking like it may have to wait at least another week. Bummer.

Huge Thank You

Thank you so much to every one of you who has prayed for Brooklyn, and her adjustment to daycare. Today no tears were shed when we left her, and that is a huge accomplishment for her. We are so proud. Over supper this evening, she was even asking if she could go to daycare right now. So it has moved from a fear to a very exciting venture for her. I think next week she will start on a curriculum with numbers, alphabet, colors, etc. Right now she's in the younger age group, 2 and unders, but if she keeps this up she may move to the 2 and up age group. Either way she'll get to learn tons of new stuff. So thank you very much for praying. We know there were many of you, even one of Brooklyn's friends from church. Thanks Julia.

Las Ninas Que Bonitas

I don't really have much to say today, except that I'm hoping we can go to South Padre Island this next weekend, as our plans to do that this past weekend didn't work out. Rain and no air conditioning in our van made us change our plans. We still had an okay weekend. Only okay because we really missed home, so there were many tears. But we did take the time to go for a walk and take some updated pictures of our girls. I'm hoping, sooner than later, to put some up to date pictures of them on our wall. It's been almost 7 months since I have updated any pictures. Here is a couple of them, but I have no idea how we are going to chose the final ones. Especially for Emma, she had a blast being the center of attention for a few minutes. Brooklyn is 26 months, and Emma is 6 1/2 months. Oh how time flies.

What a Sunday

What a day it was indeed. It was quite stressful to say the least. We couldn't get ahold of anyone who could tell us when church started at the spanish speaking church we were to attend, so after much debating we still decided to go, and decided that 10:00am was probably a good time to leave. When we got to the church, (after accidentally ending up at the McAllen airport) we noticed that others were also arriving and entering the building. Good, we thought to ourselves, we're not late. Ah, very incorrect. We entered through a door that led us into the back of the sanctuary and the pastor was in the middle of speaking. We tried to slide unnoticed into the back pews, but since we are the only non-latinos in the building, and there were only 20 people inside, well, it was pretty obvious we were late. We kinda played follow the leader, standing when they stood, bowing our heads when they did, and pretending we understood.
The people were so gracious, though. Very friendly and encouraging us in our studies. They even invited us to the front and prayed for us alongside all the other students going back to school. We later found out that we had walked in on Sunday School and that the main service started at 11:00. By the strength of God and the graciousness of those believers, we were able to fellowship the same God together. We even got to sing my favorite hymn, 'How Great Thou Art' in espanol. That was quite cool. We hope and pray that this congregation can become our church family here this year, because in the unfamiliarity of Iglesia Bautista del Cordero, we especially miss our church family at EFC.

Until next time, hasta luego!

Early Morning

This picture is taken at 6:30 yesterday morning. The girls were so awake it was hilarious.

Yay for the Weekend

What a week. Full of classes, making this more like home, encouraging Brooklyn for daycare, and trying to find a little time for relaxing. Makes for a crazy week. Classes have been going good but overwhelming. Lots of repeating our vowels, over and over again. It gets quite tiring on the face, using muscles we're not used to using. It has been more or less the same class all week, phonetics, and orientation. On Monday we'll start our regular class schedule including chapels, and starting to learn a bit about Latin culture.

This week I also took the time to put some of your friendly faces up on our walls to make it feel more at home. Brooklyn was quite excited to have me put some pictures of her friends, and family. Naming each and every one of them. I still want to print more to put on her wall for her.

Today we spent part of the afternoon at the local pool with almost all of the language students and their families. It reached about 35 degrees today, but the sun is just penetrating. So it felt good to be at the pool and cool off.

This weekend we are hoping to go to South Padre Island, which is by the Gulf of Mexico. It's about an hour away and I am very excited to finally see the ocean. It'll be a first for me. So hopefully it doesn't rain like it is supposed to all weekend. It's also our first Sunday to attend our Spanish church. We've been assigned to a Baptist church, but I forget what it is called and exactly where it is. Hopefully we'll be able to find directions before we have to leave.

This is a long post but I may as well update you all on how our girls are doing. Emma is sitting extremely well, and has now eaten, other than cereal, bananas, peas, and carrots. She loves carrots. She does well in daycare, the biggest adjustment being having to have her morning nap while kids are playing and being noisy. So she will just slowly get used to that. Brooklyn has been having a harder week with daycare. The first day was okay, but it slowly got worse from there. This morning from the minute she woke up she cried that she didn't want to go. She stops crying a few minutes after we've left her there and has a great time. Today she seemed to have tons of fun and was hyper after because of the excitement. So we just need to get used to the actually going to daycare and have her excitedly running to daycare. That will make it easier on me to leave her. It's tough leaving a screaming child. Otherwise she is doing great, loving our home here, and learning so much everyday. Talking non stop, and extremely clearly.

Well that's probably long enough for today. Thank you all for your prayers throughout this week.

Our Texas Home

Here is a video to show you all our new home.

Spanish Here We Come

Very very slowly anyway. Today was our first official day of classes, and we felt overwhelmed. Trying to figure out which books go with which classes, and the starting of sounding out vowels, and practicing over and over again. I can tell already that I will be so tired of saying the same "noises" all day. That's how it will feel for me, but really the "noises" all have different sounds. We're feeling a bit better about it all tonight already, once we've had some time to study by ourselves, and time for it to process. Tomorrow and for the rest of the week we work mainly on our phonetics, so we start off the year saying things correctly. Or to at least get a good idea of what it is suppose to sound like.

What was exciting this afternoon was that I met another Canadian couple from the Bible Insitute here. They are from Vancouver, and she was quite excited to know there was a few more Canadians on campus. So now that makes it 7 of us. That'll be nice once Thanksgiving rolls around for our own little gathering. That's my plan anyway.

I better go get ready for bed, as morning comes far too early.

New Pics

I have finally had a bit of time to update some pictures from the last few months. So if you click on our slideshow to the right, you will find two new albums to enjoy. We have recorded a taping of our new home here in Edinburg, so hopefully in the next couple days we'll be able to post it. Have a great night:)

Something Old, Something New

Well the something old part of today is that we did more shopping and more unpacking. But I think we now have everything we need. Monday will definitely be the day for more grocery shopping, after some meal planning. We are also almost all unpacked and settled. A very good feeling since Monday we start with school.

The something new of today was that we were going to go to a rodeo with Dallas and Tara. A free one we read about. We got there and there was hardly anyone there so instead we went in search of ice cream. We found some and it sure was good. Now the kids are in bed and Dallas and Tara are about to come over to play a game. It's time to relax for the weekend. Hope you are all enjoying yours.

We've Arrived and are Moving In

So we thought we'd have more time and internet access as we drove down here, but it turns out we didn't. So here is a rough idea of how our trip went. The girls did really well with driving so much, thanks to presents from grandparents, and some friends. We had trouble finding hotels 2 out of 4 of our nights, which meant driving another hour or so till the next town to sleep. But we eventually arrived here in Edinburg Tuesday evening. Spent another night at a motel and more swimming, and then came to find our new home Wednesday morning. We definitely have it nicer here than we were expecting, with lots of furniture and a slightly bigger apartment than our house in Steinbach. I hope we can soon take some pictures (once we're totally unpacked and it actually looks like a home) and post some so you can all see where we're living. I would say the girls are already getting use to this being home. Brooklyn mostly loves that she can have her toys again, and that there's a slide in the backyard (that we can't play with cause the mosquitoes are so bad from hurricane Dolly). Oh, and she has her very own bunk bed. That was an extremely exciting surprise for her. She wants Emma to sleep on top, but I don't think that'll be happening anytime soon.

LeRoy and I are adjusting well. I miss home extremely much, and definitely have up and down moments. We are slowing unpacking and trying to get used to this heat. Thankfully we have AC that at least keeps us cooler than it is outside. Last night at 10:00 it was still 33 degrees Celcius.

We now have internet once again so you can all contact us that way, and we can update you all on how we're doing down here. We hope to have phone soon so we can let you all know what that number is too. If any of you have Skype, we do have that too.

I better get back to unpacking. Thank you all for praying for us as we travelled down, we definitely felt those prayers as absolutely nothing went wrong. We miss you all.

I feel like Joseph

Yesterday we spent from 8pm till 11 looking for a place to stay the night. We were all quite cranky and wanted to sleep, plus we realized that we hadn't called back to Canada like we had promised and that was probably making some people anxious. Like I said in the last post, there were two instances where we really felt God beside us as we made decisions. This hotel searching was the second. Friends of ours recommended Holiday inn in Watertown, but since there was a huge free concert at the Ridlin museum (wish i could have gone inside, Trevor, it looks spectacular from the road) there was no room at the inn. There was also no room at the next town, or the next. Well, actually the third town had a biker rally (Sioux Falls), and we did eventually find one of the last available rooms in this town and that was nothing but an answer to prayer! (Sorry, Lisa, we didn't get to actually see the falls)

We hope to get to Dallas, TX tomorrow, and we will try to post a few pictures that we took along the way. By the way, the most interesting sign we saw today was posted along the interstate in Iowa and it simply said........ VENDING MACHINES

"We're not in Kansas anymore"

Unlike in the Wizard of Oz, we are actually in Kansas. We've had two long, hot days of travel. Actually, yesterday was overcast, only today was sunny and hot. When we left Mom and Dad Reimer's yesterday, I told Brooklyn that we were having tears as we were saying goodbyes, and that it was just like the rain that was falling. Soon the sunshine would come out and then we would also have sunshine on our faces.

Well, I don't think it is quite that simple. But the sunshine was out in full force today, and we have joy in our hearts knowing that God is going with us and ahead of us. Two very simple examples of this came yesterday. We were running low on gas and since we have never pulled a Uhaul before, I overestimated how much gas we had. So... to make a long story short, we took a scenic detour to a casino to find some much needed fuel. It's never a bad teaching time for Brooklyn so we asked if she wanted to pray with us for gas (she gets a kick out of "Daddy, buy gas?") Needless to say, God proved faithful, even in the small things.