~This, that, and the other!~

My friend who has things for sale on ebay left me this comment.
"Heather, I am posting approx. 25 more skirts today.. brands like Ann Taylor, Banana Republic, Tommy, DKNY and the list goes on! I just wanted to let you know in case anyone else is looking. I will be posting continuously for the next month or so.. so if there's something you or friends are looking for and can't find... check back!! =)"
(See post below "Ladies, looking for some nice new clothes..." for the ebay link.)
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IF YOU HEARD ON THE NEWS THAT COLOMBIA HAD AN EARTHQUAKE WE DID! YESTERDAY PHILLIP HAD TO RUN AND DO SOME LAST MINUTE ERRANDS AND THE KIDS AND I WERE AT HOME WORKING. I WAS SITTING AT MY SEWING MACHINE IN OUR DINNING ROOM FINISHING SOME MENDING BEFORE I PACK THOSE CLOTHES FOR THE USA! ALL OF THE SUDDEN, THE HEAVILY LADEN BOOK SHELVES BEHIND ME STARTED SHAKING BACK AND FORTH. THE HUGE CHINA CABINET TOO. THE MIRROR ON THE WALL SWUNG BACK AND FORTH AND THE REFRIGERATOR RATTLED AROUND AND THE THINGS IN IT. OUR HOUSE STARTED SHAKING BACK AND FORTH TO THE RIGHT AND LEFT LIKE A PENDILUM. (LIKE A TOY THAT ELIJAH WOULD SWING BACK AND FORTH IN HIS HAND!) LITERALLY! IT WAS VERY FRIGHTENING! (YOU SEE WE LIVE ON THE 3RD FLOOR. OUR BUILDING IS NEW AND IS CONNECTED TO OTHER BUILDINGS ON THE LEFT, BUT IS NOT ON THE RIGHT. SO OUR BUILDING REALLY SWAYED WITH THAT EARTHQUAKE! IT WAS A 5.4 ON THE RICTOR SCALE! I WASN'T SURE IF WE WERE GOING DOWN (AS IN OUR BUILDING COLLASPING), IF WE WERE GOING UP (AS IN TO HEAVEN), OR WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN! =D
THANK GOD FOR HIS PROTECTION, AND THAT NO ONE WAS HURT!
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~At prayer meeting the other night, Kimberly was asked to get up front and read a Scripture before the offering. She did a good job.~~On Friday, I met my friend Marisol. She Elijah, and baby and I had a nice visit. It was hard saying goodbye to another one of our dear Colombian friends!~
~I forgot to get a picture of us sitting down at our table. So, here we are leaving the restaurant. She gave me some beautiful flowers. I gave her a loaf of my french bread and a jar of jam. She LOVES my french bread.~
~On Sunday, Phillip preached and the Lord moved on hearts and there were 6 people who came forward to pray at the altar. (The altar is a new thing here in Colombia, so we were glad that they felt free to come and pray.)

~I made 74 oatmeal raisin cookies to pass out to our church people. These are their favorite cookie that I make.~
~Kimberly with several of her Colombian friends.~
~Our dear friends Edgar and Joanna had us over for a Delicious Sunday dinner! Here I am with my salad plate "resting" on top of our baby girl!~
~I was sooo glad for the invitation, so I didn't have to cook Sunday dinner. (On Saturday, I had made a call on a Lady, and what I thought would be a "short visit" turned into a 2 1/2 hour visit. She told me that the Lord had sent me to visit her, and God gave us a nice time together. When I got home at 7:00 PM on Saturday night, I still had to mix up 2 batches of oatmeal raisin cookies and bake them to pass out at church on Sunday. So, I was VERY THANKFUL that I didn't have to cook Sunday dinner!) We had a lovely afternoon with Edgar and Joanna!~
~Some of the baby gifts that we have received for our precious baby girl. On the right are 2 adorable dresses that we have purchased for her. We are so excited that it won't be too many more days and we will get to hold her in arms.~

~Our 2nd Independence Day.~

We are VERY BUSY sorting, organizing, packing, cleaning, running errands, saying goodbyes, etc. Please pray that we can get it all done! Thanks! =)
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July 20th is Colombia's Independence day. Jimmy and Farly invited our family over for a delicious meal!

~Arroz con leche~ (Yummy Rice with milk.)~
~Then we all cut out Betty Lukens flannelgraph figures. If you have never had the privilege of cutting ALLLLLLL of those out...you'll not know how much your Sunday school teacher/VBS worker LOVES YOU! =) About 11 of us cut for HOURS and we only got 80% done. My finger is still numb, 8 days later! We had a great day listening to beautiful hymns, laughing and fellowshipping together, snacking and cutting, cutting, cutting!~
~Before we started cutting...the HUNDREDS of figures!~



~Poor Farly's house was a disaster filled with flannelgraph scraps EVERYWHERE!!!~
~Jimmy and Phillip kept up with putting each figure in their boxes as we cut them out!~

~Visitors~

Please go to the post below to get the link to my friend's things she has for sale on ebay! She is adding more items of quality each day. =)
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We leave for the USA in just 8 days. Our baby Girl will be born there, Lord willing. (In October.) It is MUCH easier to have our baby be born in the USA. (Not even talking about the medical reasons like: Most doctors here INSIST that all the ladies have to have a c-section, I would have to go in alone, they don't allow the husband to be with the wife, etc! UGH!) =(
Also, If our baby were to be born here in Colombia, we would have to wait weeks, months or even up to a YEAR... to get her paperwork. Which means, that she could NOT enter into the USA until she had her papers. If an emergency arose and we had to go back to the USA before she had her paperwork, our family would have to LEAVE HER HERE. NOT!!!! So, it's just easier to have her in the USA, and get her passport there, and then when we get back here to Colombia we register her here and then she gets her Colombian visa. =D
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~Since we are leaving soon, we have been having lots of company over saying our goodbyes. Here are our good friends Carlos and Gloria that we had over the last Sunday in June!~
~The kids' table~
~Sunday, the 4th we had Jimmy and Farly and their girls over to visit with Daryl and us. Sunday, the 12th, we had a family from the church over for Sunday dinner. We had a great time with them. Here Nubia is helping me in the kitchen.~
~Their daughter, Sarah, and Noah.~
~Us eating Indian fry bread tacos. We had tables setting everywhere. Ha! I miss having my big wooden table that we had in our first house here, but that table took up the whole living room and dinning room in this apartment, so we traded the church that wooden table and chairs for some smaller plastic tables and chairs! =)~

~Then we looked at my scrapbooks. We had a nice visit.~
~Sunday, the 18th, we had another 2 families from the church over.~


~Here are Cindy, Myself, and Doris in the kitchen.~
~Their youngest daughter is named Sarah too, so here is a picture of the 2 Sarah's.~
Now that we have the couples dinner behind us, and we have pretty much had all the company over that we wanted to have over before we left, we can start packing and weighing suitcases to get ready for our big trip! =)

~Ladies, Looking for some nice new clothes...

My friend will be putting some 'Modest / High Quality' Ladies Apparel on ebay!
In her words,
"The items I have are all 'High Quality Brands,' and most are NEW or in LIKE NEW condition. I have a LOT of skirts, that have no slits or are full that can be sewn up by the buyer. I have a TON of long skirts, denim, career... and all are very nice. I also have a few maternity items and several tops/suits that I will be selling as well. I have a few other miscellaneous items and Scrapbook stuff that will be listed as well."

So you could go to ADVANCED SEARCH / BY SELLER... and then enter her seller ID...
Seller name
'ijer2911'

otherwise you can go to this link and find it that way.
http://shop.ebay.com/ijer2911/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=50

Please keep checking back on ebay, if it's not up there, it will be soon and she will be adding a lot more things in the next few days.

I have received clothes and shoes from her before and they are all great and the best of quality! ~Heather

~Happy Shopping!!~

~Our Couples dinner~

If you thought to pray for our couples dinner last Saturday night, Thank you! This dinner was to encourage those couples who are having problems, to edify all the couples, and also to encourage the couples on the fringes of the church that are living together and aren't married, to get married. The Lord gave us a wonderful evening!
~Sis. Farly asked that I make a certain salad and some cakes. So, here are Kimberly and I chopping up about 8 heads of broccoli, and 6-7 heads of cauliflower to make the requested cauliflower/broccoli salad.~~Here I am ready to add the bacon and cheese to all of our bowls of salad.~
~I also made about 56 heart shaped pink and white cakes to take to the couples dinner. They don't like a lot of sweets here, so I just put a dollop of cool whip (I made a recipe for Mock cool whip so it wouldn't melt) and a cherry on top for color rather than a bunch of sweet icing.~

~On Friday our family went to a floral shop of a Christian lady who has made flowers for us before. We asked her if she could make me a corsage with 3 roses in it to wear on my shoulder. Evidently they had never heard of such a thing, so she made me 3 individual boutonnieres. Help! When Phillip asked her how much we owed her, she said, "Nothing! Just please pray for my family!" How sweet! But....now I had 3 boutonnieres on my hands. So, Saturday afternoon I googled "How to make a wrist corsage" and also called my sister Laura. Between the two I was making my own wrist corsage one hour before we were to leave for the couples dinner. =D The Lord helped me and I was happy with how it turned out. =) The Ladies liked my corsage, although they had never heard of one before. The other husbands each bought a bouquet of flowers to give to their wives at the dinner. (That is what they do here in this culture in place of corsages.) Here is my corsage.~
~Here is a picture of my sweetheart and me before we left for the dinner.~
We passed out a piece of paper for each person to fill out about their mate. This paper contained questions like, "What is your mates favorite food, shoe size, favorite verse, favorite hobby, etc." They were to answer these questions without asking their mates. We choose 2 out of the highest scores to get a prize. We also passed out prizes for the couple who had been married the longest, the one with the most kids, the one who were the youngest when they got married, etc. We passed out some prizes to the couple most faithful to church, the newest couple in the church, and 2 of the couples who were just visiting got a prize too. (We had them choose a number between 1 and 10, for there were several new couples.)
~Here is one man THINKING REALLY HARD about the questions about his lady.~ =)
~These are the cute fun gift boxes of chocolates that we bought to pass out for prizes.~
~Here is our place setting. (Before we were served our food.)~
~Here we are at our table.~
~Jimmy and Farly each gave a challenge to the couples.~
~And they asked that we do the same.~
Thank the Lord for Jimmy's aunt. She caters meals and so she decorated everything, and made the main part of the meal. She served us a yummy fish fillet with a shrimp sauce over it, and rice. I made the salad and the dessert, and Sis. Farly made the delicious strawberry lemonade.
~Here is the pretty centerpiece.~
~His aunt is the one in the pink and black. Sis. Farly, Cindy and Joanna helped serve.~
~We had a good attendance. There were 4 tables, with about 17 couples or so! Here's one table.~
~Another table.~
~Our table.~
~Another table.~
~Here Phillip is presenting Pastor Jimmy and Sis. Farly with a gift.~
~Several couples renewed their vows. (It would have been hard for us to do so, since Phillip was performing the ceremony for the rest of the couples. HA!)
~More couples renewing their vows.~

~Then we took a picture of each couple. I'm just posting 4 of us couples. Here are Edgar and Joanna.~
~Jaime and Sofia.~
~Yours truly and her sweetheart. (and our PRECIOUS baby GIRL!!!!!=)~
~Pastor Jimmy and Sis. Farly~
~We got home at 11:50 Saturday night, and I was having 8 guests for dinner the next day. WHEW! It was a tad overwhelming, but my family and the Lord really helped and we had a nice Sunday dinner together.