New pictures on picasa album. Pictures of the new girls are on there:) ENJOY

To clarify on the books....especially Spanish. At the same time my children had to leave most of their books behind and they get hungry for good reading books, too. Alsoeducational books with lots of pictures are educational whether they can read them or not..so some english ones of those are great as well.

Not sure what is of upmost importance to write today..we are doing well, not without stressful moments but all lives have that so in that we are rather normal:)

A cute moment recently was on Saturday when a group of 30 people showed up and wanted to bless the children...they had games and songs prepared and stories, they also brought lunch and bags and bags of food so that was all very sweet...but the sweet moment for us was when the one lady was telling a story and asked the children if they had a father and the littles all chorus together,"Papa Rey" :)

Saturday was a really full day because we had those 30 people show up without warning, then Bryan's mom and 2 sisters came and Victorias mom and brother and sister came PLUS we had a neighbor man who came to make bread..to us, women make the bread, but in Mexico men are the bread makers so Evelyn got to watch Mexican bread be made and found it to be truly interesting and the bread is so yummy coming out of the oven!!

Brothers are working at building more showers...2 showers for 30 to 40 people makes quite a line up in the evenings:) We are completing 2 more now but they have walls built for a total of 8. We heat the water with a wood burner but hope to set up 4 of them to heat the water with solar. As with times of construction there is always a mess so as thankful as we are for the extra showers we awill also be glad to be done with the mess:)

Have to go..more another day!!

The 2 new girls are here...Juana is 19 years old and Gumercinda is 14 years old...they are very shy and barely look at us in the eyes but oh so hungry for love...the younger girl hugs very tight when I hug her and the one night I was working in the kitchen she kept peeking around the corner so I go to check on her and could tell she was begging for a hug so I hug her and stroke her hair and tell her "te amo" and she chuckles with delight and I say buenos nochas and she then is ready to let go and go to bed...its easy to tell they haven't had a good life and there is such delight in being privileged to love them both and give them a better life...and Dora comes to me and said she noticed that their shoes were wore out and someone had given her some pesos , could she please buy them shoes...so I couldn't turn down her sweet heart so I helped fill in the needed pesos and we bought them shoes...they barely even respond but we know they are thrilled:)These girls are good workers so its a great blessing to have them here...I just couldn't figure out how to school and be sure lunch got cooked and tortillas done but now these girls definitely know how to do tortillas so I can totally put that in their hands so thats a relief...I am very german with my thinking of time and being on time is an issue to me but here I am trying to have a complete mind set change because time is not an issue here and even if we say lunch break is at 11 and food needs to be ready....well that hasn't happened yet:)...so I am trying to think differently rather than be frustrated:)

The new teacher for the older children came today so I am glad that need got met and I pray GOd gives her lots of grace and wisdom for this bunch of kids!! Its so exciting that they get the chance to learn to read......which reminds me of a particular need I thought of...I was organizing in the kitchen and put the childrens books in a basket...about a dozen spanish books and about 15 little english books......I couldn't help but remember the book cases full of books that I used to have at home and just wanted to put out the thought that even if a person only sends 1 book after awhile we could have a bigger selection....I had found several spanish books at the salvage store before I left and the kids love them!!!...so anyway just thought I would put out that thought!!!!:)

We are once again at the time of the month that it rains every day...we have been observing and have discovered about a week before full moon or even 10 days it starts being more rainy...rains every day and sometimes rains all day...but then a few days after full moon we enjoy sunny days`again with scattered rainy times...be assured that was Asher that figured that out:)

One more little story about our little girls...Anayi and Victoria, both 3 years old....Nicole had sat down to talk to them the first morning they were here and this is what there conversation was......My daddy drinks and when he comes home we run behind trees so he dont beat us and the other girl says my daddy drinks too and he came home the other night and fell and his bottle broke and there was blood running everywhere...which was true stories so once again we are so glad these little girls do not need to fear daddy coming home and they need to hide

Must go for now...

Hi friends! This week was time for running the half marathon at the beach that we have so looked forward to......Evelyn DID IT!! Edith had a great time playing in the sun the day before but got too much sun and was sick and could not run the half marathon so that was disappointing for her:( They all came home very sunbaked and exhausted...Asher and I stayed home to do chores and keep an eye on the village...we kept the 3 little boys,Pablo, Carlos and Roberto and our 3 youngest,Emily, Michael And Rafael. For their enjoyment we will go to SLASH next week(a pool with a slide) since they had to miss out of the beach. Altho for Asher and I we think we got the better end of the deal...we had work to do but the mental stress was less so it ended up being quiet, restful, and refreshing for us:)

Now Nicole has some busy days getting her last minute things done before she leaves on her trip for 6 weeks to the states. And she just asked me this afternoon what I think of 2 more girls coming...their stories are awful but where do you say we have hit our limit? Where do we turn into an institution because there are so many rather than a home? these are the challenging questions we face because there is no end to the need...pray that Gods Spirit will lead us and nothing but HIM. And then if its Him , His grace will abound.

Internet is not working in the village but when we get that up I will try to blog more regularly:)

With Nicole leaving we have all 3 of the boys again...Pablo, Carlos and Roberto:)...it was cute to watch Asher with his little boys while everybody was gone:) I do want to get a picture to put on the blog of Rafael riding on the horse while Papa takes him out in the morning to tie up for eating grass:)

And by the way, Michaels birthday is the 21st of this month...I am hoping lots of people will send him mail,etc:)

More another day:)