Sigue Adelante

Z has started using Spanish words at home! 

    Sigue Adelante!  My Spanish teacher says this to me almost every class.  It means "keep moving forward", and I have needed to be reminded of that frequently in the past week.  I feel like I am at that point in my language abilities where I know enough to be frustrated by how much I don`t know.  Eloisa keeps reminding me though that it is poco a poco.  Little by little.
   What is wonderful though is having a Spanish teacher who loves the Lord.  Yesterday I was having a terrible day in class, just could not remember how to say the things I was trying to say... and she stopped and prayed for me, hugged me, and told me that she was proud of me.  It meant the world to me, and popped the bubble of anxiety that I was trapping myself in.  I am so thankful that God has brought her into my life, she is such a support to me.  (Plus, we really are learning Spanish quite quickly, even though it feels slow on the day-to-day level.)

Crepes and pancakes are still our favorite foods

    Life continues forward, we are still helping with kids club at the base, and Spanish school five days a week.  Dave has started helping in the kitchen (no big surprise there!), and I`ve started bringing a craft to do with the girls at kids club while the boys play soccer.  This past week I had almost ten little girls who all did the craft, and then read a Bible story with me.  We had supper with some friends from Guatemala City the other day and will be starting to help them with a ministry they run in the village of Puerta Abajo.  (We did a VBS to that village during our DTS Outreach.).  We`ll get started with that in a couple weeks, which is going to be nice to have something that takes us outside of Antigua every week. 

      We have decided that we are going to move closer to the base at the end of the month.  We need to save money on rent, plus I really want to get chickens!  This isn`t the reason Dave would give for wanting to move of course, but this really is high on my list!  (You can take the girl out of Quadra, but you can`t take the Quadra out of the girl!).  We found an adorable little house just around the corner from the base that has a little grass yard for Z and the chickens.  A neighbor let us in to see it, but we have yet to meet the landlord, so we`ll have to see what happens about that. 

Z napping on Mom and Dad`s bed... SO CUTE! 

     As you can tell, there`s nothing super new to talk about, but we continue to work towards speaking Spanish fluently, setting up a home where we can stay for a long time and save enough money to eventually buy a place here, and just trying to work through the emotions of living outside of our home culture without our families.  We`ve been out of Canada for more than 6 months now... it`s started to feel like a long time, but we are still convinced that God wants us to be here, so... sigue adelante!

    "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us."  2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NLT