Quito Teachers Teaching Teachers Conference

I had the honor and challenge of presenting in the auditorium.

Ben and his protoge's in the bubble.

Over 400 teachers from secular and Christian schools gathered in Quito to attend this conference. Ben and I were asked to present in it. Bens seminar was about The Bubble project and mine was on Understanding our Personalities and Dealing with Conflict. It was a great way for our school to colloborate with secular schools and develop relationships with them.

LAF and POKENO

LAF stands for Ladies Afterschool Fellowship. You really do laugh and have a great time. After being here a couple of months I really felt the need for fellowship amongst all of my colleagues. We have such a variety of ladies in ages, marital status and cultural backgrounds that our hope was to provide a venue where we can just sit down talk and have fun. So I approached the directors wife and asked her if she would be my hosting partner and then we recruited a sweet Ecuadorian and we began. First it was our mini ladies retreat and now were just doing gatherings rotating between our homes for games. All of you Ft. Worth ladies I introduced them to POKENO.

Girls Only Chats

One of the things that I enjoyed starting up at our school is our Girls Only Chats. The counseling dept. meets once a month with all of the 6th grade girls who come voluntarily during their recess and lunch time. We talk about different girl topics and do a craft. Their are about 16 girls whose backgrounds vary from Asian, Ecuadorian and US American.
This past weeks chat was on Being Yourself, Knowing Yourself.

I am proud to be an American...

On February 26th I became a US Citizen. So now I am officially a Mexican American.

Thank God this done and over with. Thanks for all your prayers.

In the Jungle the Mighty Jungle.....

We stayed at a monkey refuge. The monkeys ran wild and came right up to us. Sometimes a bit scarey!

Ben braved through with the boys into this cavern that has a lagoon.

Feeding the cute little monkey.

Hiking through Paradise Island another animal refuge where jungle animals run wild as you trod through their paths.

Inside the cave with mud on my face b/c the guide insisted it was medicinal.

For the first time we headed to the Jungle in Tena. There was much adventure to be had and we had as much as this little family could handle.

Our little speed racers

Milestones come and go and pass in a minute but memories we cherish forever.

It seemed a little strange that our boys just learned to ride bikes and we had decided we would not buy them any here b/c Quito streets/sidewalks are not safe to ride bikes on and they are also very uneven with hills. But after a while we thought it would be horrible if they were on training wheels as teenagers.
Here they are at the park showing off their new skills!

curse or blessing

My time and pocket cant keep up with all the ideas that spew out of my head. I know the Lord blessed me with this but sometimes it feels like a curse because I can't keep up. I must realize that I need to keep up not on my feet but on my knees.

The new year holds a lot of these ideas and none of these ideas. Establish the work of our hands sweet Lord.

mari

Quito at night, its beautiful!!

Kids helping Kids!

these are our kids from the Quito projects singing and serving

this is our students from Alliance. we go out weekly to do a bible club in the Quito projects

the kids from the dump are patiently waiting at the table for their opration brown bag lunch. Recognize any of those bags kids?

Ethan loves being my little helper when we go out and help kids!!!

Its packed with over 100 kids, crazy if you would see the size of this room.

Cowboy, fireman and construction guy help decorate our tree

Our little helpers
We are sooooo glad that we can get Christmas trees here in Ecuador and not only that but this huge tree that touches our ceiling cost us $30!

the lower, left part of the tree was inundated with ornaments thanks to our little helpers

Our boys hamming it up!

In this country the month of December is kicked off with "Quito Days" its a weekend celebration of their independence. Aidens preschool had a Quito Day program for the parents. They had to come dressed up like little gentlemen and ladies "Chulleno y Quitenas".

Ethan with his kindergarten class during a thanksgiving performance.

My sweet boy!

Turkey, sand and friends

Our thanksgiving spread! We were thankful that this country imports turkeys so we can keep on our tradition.

We spent thanksgiving at the beach! It was a first and it was fabulous. One of Bens students was so kind to offer their beach house to us!!