Home is wherever I'm with you: color.

This past week has been such a blur. Everything is so new and interesting and fun. We thank the Lord for safety, overall health, cold medicine, new friendships, adventures, and new ways to be challenged and stretched.

Husband had his first day of student teaching this week! And he looked fiiine. Here he is with his teacher, Claudia Fuentes:

He promises he will get on and write for our next post, so GET EXCITED.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin describing the week. Here’s a collection of words and pictures:

We’ve been awed, sitting on a giant porch with a majestic view of the sun going down and creating a gorgeous sky-painting with the clouds over the volcano Pacaya, with Christian brothers and sisters around us, worshipping God with our voices and music.

I’ve been speechless, standing on a hill, looking down below at the City’s dump, big yellow trucks filing in and people fighting their way to the front for the ‘good stuff.’ The smell is nauseating and there are hundreds of big, ugly, black vultures swarming overhead.

I’ve been queasy, yet remained strong and standing, as I assisted Dr. Riviera in prying off the infected toenails of a frightened teenager, squirming and shrieking on the table as he hugs his mother and they both cry.

We’ve been frustrated, to see that the little boy who was selling chocolate in the mall before the movie a couple hours ago is still here, and it is 10 o clock on a Friday night, and he is still by himself and eating McDonalds in a booth right next to us, finishing his work day. We talk and he says his parents are at home. He will take a taxi. He can’t be older than 10.

We’ve been amazed, that some of the children at the orphanage I described in the previous post are finally going to be able to go to school for the very first time at 7 years old, because they have a sponsor who has given in faith, and it will be received in love.

I’ve been out of breath, running around a weedy soccer field with laughing children, playing freeze tag and speaking broken Spanish but more importantly, learning the language of love, which defies cultural, status, age, and religious differences.

We’ve been grateful, living with an extraordinary couple who have huge hearts and are so helpful to us, they show us around and take us on new adventures and have made our transition to a new country an incredibly smooth one. Wow. Blessed.

I’ve been totally lost, trying to understand why on earth a recipe would call for the burning, yes burning on purpose, of random ingredients (tomatoes, bread, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and more) and then blending them up and mixing with chicken to pour over rice. But hey, it tasted good.

Some photos!

some pictures i snapped at the orphanage: