~A peak into my Journal....~

I keep a journal each day, for our lives are so filled with excitement, then discouraging times, then God working things out, etc. that I want to be able to remember it all one of these days. Besides, since we were engaged, I've written down the ways God has worked in our lives, so on those discouraging days, I can give the devil a BLACK EYE, and show him that God does know us by name and have the hairs of our head numbered! =) On Saturday, I finished writing the 150 Thanks You notes to our supporters, that I've been working on. We have just found a secure way to send out Thank yous from here, so we're trying to catch up on getting our Thanks yous written. The only time that we had mailed something to the USA from here (using a local company) the box had arrived EMPTY to the USA. =( But, we have now found out that we can send a package of Thank You notes that doesn't weigh too much by Fed-ex or DHL, doesn't cost too awful much, and they arrive safely there in the USA. Praise God! I also baked one of the small pumpkins that I had purchased, roasted the pumpkin seeds with some salt (yummy!) and then made 2 homemade pumpkin pies. Now, if you are sweltering hot, and wanting to drink ice tea and go swimming, those pies probably sound "out of season"...but you have to know that here in Bogota, usually the weather is like FALL year around. I have always LOVED Fall! I was born in the fall, and I've always loved the fun memories of BEAUTIFUL FALL LEAVES, smelling them burn, carmel apples, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin cookies, or gingersnaps with pumpkin dip, school days, wearing sweaters, plaid skirts, etc. Then, Phillip and I started dating in the FALL, so that just made me love the fall all the more! Thank the Lord my pies turned out yummy, and my family has enjoyed them this weekend. ~I used a little pumpkin cookie cutter to put pumpkins on my pumpkin pie!~Sunday was a more busy day than usual, IF THAT IS POSSIBLE! We had a good service Sunday morning, and God answered our prayers and He met with us. God helped Phillip preach and there was conviction in the service, with at least 2 women weeping, and later an alter call and 2 ladies praying. We thank God for His presence, for without Him being there, it's not worth going to church. RIGHT?! Kimberly had 11 kids in her Sunday school class, and God helped her. Her story this week was Noah's ark, so she made each child an elephant puppet (with a whole for the trunk where you put your index finger), and then since I had some foamy animals left from Noah's "Noah's ark" room, she passed those out to her happy S.S. kids too. After service, Kimberly's best friend, Diana, had a birthday dinner, and we were invited. We ate quickly, promised to bring a gift for the birthday girl next Sunday (since we didn't know about her birthday until we arrived that morning for church,) thanked them for their kindness in including us, and ran home. Got home, and since we were already full, we didn't eat the "Arroz con Pollo" (rice with chicken) that had made for lunch, but I made some fresh grape juice (I had to make it, for I was afraid the grapes wouldn't last another day) and we had a piece of the yummy pumpkin pie, and then we grabbed a 20 -30 minute nap. Jumped up and ran to our evening service. We had no electricity in that area, so had church with no lights, and no piano, but we had a good service, and God helped us. (We have a big window and a HUGE garage type door, so we had enough light coming in for service.) Jumped on the bus came home at 8:00 PM, stripped off our "Flea church clothes", ate a bite, jumped into more clothes, did our hair, and ran out the door to an ALL NIGHT SERVICE (9:00 PM-6:00 AM) that we had been invited to. Some of our friends invited us to participate in this service; Phillip was to preach, our family was to sing, and Kimberly was to play her violin. (Sarah is doing good on her violin, but has really only been playing for one month, and we didn't think "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" would be appropriate for church, what do ya think? =) We were aware that the service was going to be interesting, for not only are we in a Different culture, but a different church than we are used to. It was different all-right, and we're thankful to God that we still have our hearing today. =) This culture LOVES LOUD MUSIC, SPEAKING, ETC. and so we nearly went deaf, and we were sitting pretty far away from the speaker. Phillip and Noah were wearing an ear plug in their ear closest to the speaker, and I was "casually" plugging my ear too, WHEW! It was VERY LOUD! BUT, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, Noah fell asleep on the bench in the midst of all of that noise, I Have NO clue HOW! There was a band that played...and then Phillip preached and we sang.Poor Sarah fell asleep on my lap, while I was sitting on the platform, while Phillip preached. I told her that she could go to sleep, but that I would wake her up when it was time to sing, and I did, and she woke up fine and sang well. We were not really wanting to sing and play the violin, for after a BAND, our music was quite different, but we asked God to please help us, and take away our nervousness, and He did help us, and for that we Thank Him! ~Kimberly, Phillip and I singing a trio~~Sarah and Kimberly singing, and Heather playing for them~
~A close up of the girls singing.~
~Kimberly playing her violin.~After that there was another band, and some interesting prayer time, and then we were taken out of the church and they fed us a snack. ~Noah found some new friends that let him ride a little rocking horse, while we were eating our snack.~Then we came home...arriving home at 2:30 AM. We were afraid if we stayed the last 3 1/2 hours, we'd have been deaf for life! =D! After church 2 different people from another church asked for our phone number to have us come and sing and preach at their church, Help...maybe you should pray for our hearing if that happens. HA! No, Phillip said he won't be exposing our kids to this again. We had no idea what we were getting into. Even though we felt like a "fish out of water" there, they were very kind to us, and treated us well. God helped us, and gave us a good weekend, but we're pretty tired today! Thanks for your prayers!