Long, Long Ago in a Country Far, Far Away

Twenty eight years ago last Friday Joe and I went out on a date for the very first time. Whodda thunk that we would end up like this?

* With eleven kids
* Missionaries living in South America
* The happiest married couple I know
* Serving our Lord together

You never know how one day could change your life forever. Take advantage of every moment you have and live life to the fullest.

I´m so thrilled that I said I would go out with that cute blond headed boy that I met in high school. I love him more now that I ever have. He´s the best! (and cuter now too!)

BTW, the pic is not our first date but one a couple of years later.

100 Posts!!!

According to my "dashboard" this is my 100th post. Yea! It´s been fun blogging and keeping up with you all via the internet. As a missionary I am so glad to live in a time when we can have such good communication all over the world. I am encouraged every week through emails, phone calls, and internet communication. I hope you all realize how much it blesses me for you to keep in contact with me. I´m glad you´ve been able to walk a bit of the journey with me. It´s fun having you along. So, thanks, my friends.

Jake´s First Time Leading Worship

Jake has been on our church´s worship team for a few months now. Right now the ´normal´worship leader is out of town so Jake is filling in for a few weeks. He´s doing a great job if you ask me and of course I´m totally unbiased even though I am his mom. :^)

Here´s Ben running the slides for the church service. His ministry in the church is putting together all the worship and sermon slides and then running the program during the service. Caleb does the same ministry for the Youth Worship on Friday nights.

Faith Took Babysitting Lessons From Caleb

Here she is trying her hand at it. :^)

Actually, she is a big help with Mercy. She even likes changing dirty diapers. She is going out to help out at Casa de Amor this Saturday. Casa is an orphanage started by our friend Jennifer about 6 years ago when she was only 20 years old. Quite an amazing gal! Faith is really looking forward to helping out with all the babies there.

Spring Thanksgiving

As most of you know in the Southern Hemisphere Thanksgiving and Christmas are in the spring and summer instead of in the fall and winter like I´m used to. It´s been hard to adjust to. I think I will always consider November and December to be in the fall and winter. Today was wonderful because since it is now the rainy season we had a very hard rain which cooled everything off. It reminded me so much of fall in Virginia minus all the beautiful fall colors. I actually hope that it rains on Thanksgiving so it will seem more like Thanksgiving and maybe we could even use our fireplace. That would be nice. Last Christmas was fun because we could ride the bikes we got, but it was a little different wearing short sleeves and getting sunburned on Christmas Day. We´ll see what this year holds. In the meantime I´m starting to plan our Thanksgiving feast. Someone gave us a turkey and we´re excited about that. Turkeys are very expensive here as they are considered a ´gringo´ thing since Thanksgiving is an American holiday. An average sized one costs about $50 and we need a big one for our family. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving celebrating traditions with family and friends. I know my Dad will be watching the Cowboys. We´ll be thinking of you all and creating some new traditions of our own. Things might be different here in Cochabamba than we are used to, but we have plenty to be thankful for!

Update on Joe´s Facial Hair....

I just realized I never wrote a blog about whether Joe kept the goatee or not. Thanks for all of you who weighed in with an opinion. In spite of all the positive comments on it he decided to shave when I told him that I liked kissing him better without it. :^) Then about 3 weeks ago I asked him to grow it back since I really like the way he looks with it. He did as you can see from the pics of his first Spanish sermon and the one above. Isn´t he handsome? Now the goatee doesn´t bother me at all when we kiss, but it does bother his other girl (Mercy).

Joe's First Sermon in Spanish

Our pastor and family took a much deserved vacation a couple of weeks ago. He asked Joe to preach for him while they were gone. Joe decided he wanted to preach in Spanish and not have a translator. This was his first time to do that. A big deal. Now our pastor and his wife are going to a conference in Venezuela so Joe will be preaching in Spanish again this week. Our church has one Sunday morning Spanish service and one English service; we also have a Sunday night service as well as a Thursday night service. So what this means is Joe, being Joe, plunged right in. He went from never preaching in Spanish to doing 6 different Spanish sermons and 2 English ones within a couple of weeks. Crazy boy. He did a good job and I´m very proud of him. I'm still at the "My-name-is-Denise-I-have-11-children-I-don't-speak-Spanish-very-well-but-I'm-trying" stage. That's okay because once I get to the I have 11 children part of the conversation they don't hear anything else I say. :^) Actually whenever we tell anyone we have once (the Spanish word for 11....pronounced ¨own-say¨) children they just think we don´t know our numbers very well. So we end up saying....¨Yes, eleven, ten plus one¨. But I digress. A missionary friend asked me to speak for a few short minutes this week at a parenting conference for young moms in her church. Joe has inspired me and I´m going to give it a shot in Spanish. You can definitely pray for me!!

Before the service we were goofing around. Here´s Mercy´s first Spanish sermon....