Gringogiving and a Visa Trip

In a culture with no Thanksgiving to celebrate in November, the celebration of Christmas is already in full swing. We've witnessed some amazing Christmas themed fireworks and seen some beautiful Christmas displays already. At first we were ambivalent about celebrating Thanksgiving because it seemed sort of like going backwards. Do we really need turkey? As it turns out, we will be out of town Thursday anyway (more about that in a minute) so we were even less inclined to celebrate since we won't be home. Interestingly, since there are a lot of gringos in the city, local merchants have figured out they can sell frozen butterballs, cranberry sauce, Stove Top, and canned pumpkin to a captive audience with little competition. Said Butterballs are quite expensive, however, which was another discouragement. But then, this week as I thought about the last year of our lives, my thoughts were how could we NOT celebrate Thanksgiving, whether we had turkey or not? Everything we have in our lives right now is just pure blessing. We definitely needed to take a time out and return some thanks in a specific way. In the end, I found a small budget friendly turkey breast, and today for Sunday dinner we enjoyed a few of our Thanksgiving favorites. We invited a couple of friends, and we prayed and ate and talked through a quiet afternoon. We even watched a little football this evening which seems fitting for Thanksgiving as well.

Our Thanksgiving ended up as kind of a holiday mash up as we decided to get a Christmas tree today. We went to Novex (our Lowe's like store) and bought a base model slightly better than Charlie Brown's and a few inexpensive decorations. So decorating and Christmas music accompanied our meager feast. Even though the weather hasn't changed much here and our Ohio brains aren't sure it's November, today helped put us all in holiday spirits.

For our first Thanksgiving outside the States, we will be on the road. I used to hear missionaries talk about "visa trips," and thought it seemed kind of inappropriate. Were they all taking vacations on credit cards? But now in my cultural education I have learned what a visa trip is. Every 180 days, we have to leave the country to renew our Guatemalan visas to be in the country. Eventually we will apply for residency which will alleviate this requirement. Long story short, if we're not planning a trip to the States, our closest choices are Mexico and Belize. So, we will be heading out Thursday morning to spend a few required nights out of the country in Belize. In know, poor us, we have to go check out the Caribbean. And for those of you who are familiar with our history of road trips in Guatemala, you will be relieved to hear that a Guatemalan friend who is a mechanic is driving us. So, here's wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family, whether you're in Cincinnati or at the big parade in New York. We thank God for you all and how you've touched our lives. We thank you for all your love and support that sustain us here. Thank you to amazing friends here in Guatemala where after only six months we have awesome friends to take care of our dog, house, church, or anything else that needs taking care of. We love you all! And if you see a picture of  us on the beach, we are not vacationing on our visa, but getting our 90 day visas stamped.

Those Crazy Kids

Most people's first concern when talking to us is the kids. We thought this would be a good experience for our kids, but in the back of my mind I could picture Caleb in his therapist's office saying "when I was 12, my parents sold everything we owned and moved us to another country..." I am happy to report that our kids are amazing. They are tough and resilient. Hiking across Antigua with backpacks to the grocery, living three different places, starting with zero Spanish, they have overcome some difficult circumstances and are thriving. They miss their grandparents, cousins, and friends, but rarely dwell on it, and are happy to talk to them as often as possible. Everyone has had a moment or two of homesickness or cultural frustration, but fortunately they've kind of taken turns which makes it manageable. Our pastoral care team, the Burgers, visited us a couple of months ago, and they said we appeared to be doing well, but that our kids seemed to be outshining even Chad and I in their ability to adapt to their new environment.

Here's a quick run-down:
Caleb, more than any of us I think, LOVES his new school. He is playing soccer and really sharpening his trumpet skills. He is active in youth group, enjoying learning Spanish, and has a lot of good friends. He is maturing into a teenager  who I really like a lot.

Aleksandra has good grades, is playing the clarinet, has a beautiful Spanish accent, and has several good friends, including a fellow Russian adoptee! Her middle childness is somewhat appeased by being the new kid in school. If you know her at all, you know what I mean. She is loving life.

Sterling is growing so fast! She is talking all the time and really starting to pick up Spanish quickly. Recent additions to her vocabulary are "zapatos" (atta girl) and "No me gusta!"She goes to child care at school while I'm teaching, and she loves it. She looks forward to playing with her friends every day. She is also like the honorary CAG mascot. Everyone on campus adores her.

Visits from church friends and grandmother have helped along the way, and looking forward to more grandparents visiting (soon!) and more friends in the spring and summer help us all from getting too homesick. I'm pretty amazed when I see how well the kids are doing, even though there are times when life here can get intense and I know they see Chad and I under stress. But they are also seeing as God provides for us time and again, and they are developing servant hearts toward the people here. The education they are gaining in this cross-cultural-spiritual adventure is greater than anything I could possibly teach them, so I'm just grateful. For awesome kids, for their good transition, for the opportunity to be here. So thanks for making it possible because if you're reading this you are probably a part of it all in some way.

How are we really?

Lately I've gotten a lot of messages from friends that all say the same thing: how are you?  And they seem very insistent that they want to know how I really am. Not just the happy stuff that goes on social media. We've been gone long enough that I think people really do wonder what it's like to be in our shoes. It's been 6-9 months since most people have seen us, and what must it be like to be here this long? Many times I start to tweet or post about how amazing/beautiful/scary/overwhelming it is here, but I just stop. It's too hard to communicate in so few words, pictures, etc. and who would understand anyway? But I feel a tugging that I need to give some of the real stuff. The nitty gritty day-to-day stuff. And if only my friends and family who really want to know read, that is fine. If nothing else, I figure I need to find a way to record some of this incredible experience, because I'm not keeping track of all those thrown away thoughts that have never become social media sound bites.

There's also this looming shadow of a really great blog that somebody else in this house puts a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into. He's an amazing writer who is philosophical, theological, poetic...and then some. He tells our story so beautifully that I almost don't want to interrupt it with the mundane. But then I take another deep breath and acknowledge that there's not too much about this life that is mundane. So, I'll take this step out of my nicely protected thoughts. If you really want to know: we are good...except when we're not. But God is good all the time, and our life here is a testament to that. So, if you care, stay tuned. Daily life of ordinary people living in a place where they don't know from one day to the next what might happen...that's all I can chronicle for you.