just a january day

Our visitor season begins tomorrow! We have been so blessed thus far to have so many of our family and friends visit; something I never expected or dreamed of when we first made the decision to move to Ixtlan. Support has been overwhelming. We're looking forward to the arrival of Ben & Hannah tomorrow, good friends and former neighbors. And we have visitors coming nearly every month this spring. So hopefully soon there will be more guest posts on the blog.

We finally got around to celebrating our family Christmas this evening. At one point while we were home over Christmas, maybe Christmas Eve, I had a panicked moment and realized that as much time as I had spent on preparing gifts for others, I had completely forgotten about Ivory. And its not a huge deal, not something she'll really remember, but after all, it is her first Christmas - and I knew if we didn't do something about it, I'd wish later that we had. But there wasn't time then to think about it, and so we decided to wait until we got back. So, now that its January 21, celebrate we did! Her gifts were pretty simple, either secondhand or homemade (or a Target $ bin purchase, or a Vera Bradley headband, or a toothbrush), but she was delighted and that's what counts. At first I was kind of kicking myself because I didn't have any Christmas wrapping paper, but after picking up tissue paper and using that, I decided that's the way to go for a baby. She loved being able to open it herself.

Daddy made her a wagon!

This weekend is going to be a big one! Mike & Deb are coming, along with another Elder, and we have baptisms. Please pray for those who will be baptized - that the weekend will be a blessing and a milestone for them in their spiritual growth. Also, Adrienne Lehman is coming for a while to help out with English classes at the school.

Other than that, life pretty much continues as normal. Roberto is doing well coming to school; some days are better than others but overall he's making progress. There are still days when we're a little unsure of our purpose here; I think probably everyone struggles with that no matter where they're at from time to time. I'm learning so much though, about how my identity is, or should be, in Christ - not in my list of successes and accomplishments as a missionary (or lack of said list), not in how others view me and/or my abilities and talents, not in how good or bad my Spanish is, not in how good or how poorly I'm doing in forming friendships with people here, not generally in anything other than Christ! I shouldn't need a title, a role, a purpose, a calling... other than serving Him. Sometimes I forget that, and I want to justify to all of you what we're doing here and why we're here. It's especially hard when I don't have that much to write about, and I worry that people think we're just here twiddling our thumbs. But the long and short of it, is that we're here because we're supposed to be here. And we're here because God knew we needed to grow, badly. The other day, I opened a Dove chocolate (well, maybe more than one, but that is irrelevant), and while I don't put too much stock in tinfoil wrappers, the message did catch my attention: You are exactly where you are supposed to be. It was a very timely reminder. And all of that said, we do know for sure that Roberto is a big part of what we're doing here - even if we don't feel like it's much. God is truly doing more in him than I would have thought. An answer to many prayers.

As a side note, if any of you tried going to the Titus 2 website and it did not work or said it was password protected - please try again! I think I fixed it.