April 26, 2010

Well, it appears that we're finally getting into the winter months here in Santa Cruz as we've had cooler temperatures and some rain off and on for the past few days. Typical to winter here, I expect that it will warm up one of these days and we'll have some beautiful days before it slips cool again! For now, we're enjoying wearing long sleeves and sweatshirts! I personally however, would appreciate it if it didn't get any colder than this (currently 65 degrees)! :)

This past Saturday was the Princess Conference for girls ages 8 to 12. You may remember me asking prayer for this event in my prayer letter and in past blog up-dates. As the head coordinator for this conference, I was a pretty nervous about how things would go. However, there was no need for me to be worried about it! Thank you so much for all of your prayers! Things went very smoothly...much better than I expected! We had almost 70 girls come in all with the two sessions combined...and about 15 or so accept Christ as their Savior! What an encouragement it was to get to be apart of this great adventure! I thoroughly enjoyed it! Join me in praising God for all that He did to make the conference a success and for the girls who He called to Himself at this time in their lives! Continue to pray for their Spiritual growth and development.


After the conference was all over and we had cleaned up...Chelsea and I quickly changed clothes (so that we were REAL princesses...as our friend's 3 year old son told us), and headed off to a wedding. You may remember Graciela who lived with us for a few months last semester. She and her fiancee got married on Saturday night. The wedding was beautiful and we had LOTS of fun...visiting with friends, eating, and dancing! We left a bit on the early side at 12:15 AM...but were too tired to make it any later! :)

Finally, on Sunday after church...I went with several other missionaries to the river. The intern who has been here for a few months, Tara Dakin...was saved only a couple of years ago and wished to be baptized before returning to the states in a couple of weeks...so she asked Jeff HAuse if he would do that for her. We packed lunches, loaded up in cars, drove to the river...then all loaded in the back of the Strebig's truck and drove along the river until we could find a spot deep enough for a baptism! It was loads of fun and pretty exciting too!

If you'd like to see some pictures of the Princess Conference, the wedding, and the baptism...feel free to check out the following link!
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbNnDNm5btmSt

Needless to say, I arrived in the house, Sunday afternoon, pretty exhausted! I tried to get some rest so that I'd be a bit more ready for the week! This week, I need to plan for a workshop that I'll be teaching out in a small town called Villa Cruz. Chelsea is going to go with me so that I don't have to take the bus alone. The workshop will be starting on Friday night and will go through Sunday afternoon...then we'll take the long bus ride back...arriving Monday morning, EARLY! I'd appreciate your prayers for this workshop and the planning that I have yet to do. Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support...I can definitely feel God working and moving through them here in Santa Cruz!