Summer So Far

Us being us, we are staying very busy.  However, as occupied as we both are with work and ministry we are also managing to have a little fun, so don’t feel too bad for us.

We spent the 4^th of July weekend here around town – went to the rodeo and on a hike to Tamolitch Pool.  With the same friends, different day.  We love this couple!

brave scary cliff sitter...

Mike power washed our deck on July 5^th because it’s never supposed to rain after the 4^th.  …Well, as many of you know, it did…a lot.  So our deck has yet to be re-stained since Mike’s been traveling again.  But there shouldn’t be too much damage…

Sydney and her dad were gifted 2 amazing seats at a phenomenal performance of Beethoven’s 9^th symphony.  They had a blast!

Mike BBQ’d for a ton of people at our house one night on our little tiny BBQ.  It seemed hilarious but actually worked out perfectly.  Since most people arrived at different times, we rotated out the food well.  We’ve been enjoying weekly BBQs at a different house each week this summer with all the 20s & 30s people from church.  It’s been fun hanging out with friends and meeting new ones!

Sydney has kept busy with a new Bible Study she started a couple months ago – they meet at 6:30am, the crazy girls – and also with the local missions stuff at church.  It’s been fun keeping up the new blog she created.  If you want to see what we are up to, see the blog here and click “Join this site” on the right.  Of course, her regular job of accounting for Extreme is about the same and most people don’t want to hear about spreadsheets and numbers, so we’ll just move on now!

Mike gets engineering jobs from time to time but is mostly kept busy with his Extreme position.  His last trip took him to Colorado where he met with lots of people/churches/supporters.  He also was able to spend an evening with some good friends of ours and Sydney’s great aunt (also a friend ).

Just this last weekend, we were blessed with a visit from Jessica, Sydney’s long-time friend/roommate/matron of honor/etc.  Mike happened to have a little college-friend reunion with some of us buds in Portland so the girls had a fun weekend, all centered around HP7B….Sorry, if you don’t already know what that is, you wouldn’t understand. Heh.  Jess’s husband was a wonderful daddy staying home that weekend with all 3 little kids under 5 years old.  Thank you, David!

We have LOTS more planned for the summer – a few more business trips, some camping, hiking, lots of church stuff and more.   Hope all the rest of you are also having a good summer (or winter, depending on your hemisphere).  Blessings.

 

Kinda Like Legos…Only Bigger

The first foam block chapel was built outside of Arequipa in June!!!

In eight days, it went from bare ground to this . . .

. . . and then to this.

All in eight days!

Mike was there for the inauguration.  Additionally, he traveled around Peru to meet with nearly all the current 40/40 teams.  Here are some photos:

Me with Pastor Solano and his wife.

My first time to Puno and my first time to meet the 40/40 & Cluster team living there!

Puno Pier.

My good friend, Pastor Elvin, in front of his Nazarene church, Alto Libertad.

And last but not least…the doctor that God used to SAVE MIKE’S LIFE!

Dr. Luis and me in the Lima hospital I spent 9 nights in.

We are so thankful for this man.  It was a huge blessing to go back to visit him!

 

Moms, Tigers, and Testimonies

The rest of my stay in Colombia was very full but unforgettable.

The church has 6 services a weekend, soon to be 7.  Besides the one we went to Wednesday night, as I talked about in the last post, we attended the Saturday night service and the first one on Sunday at 7:00am.  The Saturday service is geared towards teenagers and it was incredible to see the church packed with a couple thousand teens hyped up on nothing but God.  It lasted over 3 hours, too!

The Sunday service was unique in its own way.  By far the most packed (closer to 3K people, maybe?) but still so powerful in Word and Spirit.  When it ended a few minutes before 9, we (all few thousand of us) were herded out one main set of doors while the next few thousand standing on the street/sidewalks began pouring in from the other main front entrance.  Unbelievable!

For Mother’s Day the zoo in Cali was letting all moms enter for free, so a little group of us went and checked out the zoo for both fun and research for short-term project tours.  It was a great zoo.  Here’s another little slideshow of several different parts of my week with descriptions.

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The most memorable part of my week, though, was when I was asked to share my testimony at a cell group.  For those of you who don’t know, cell groups are a huge part of the growth of this church… Anyway, my new friend Maria, a leader of a couple cell groups, had a new Christian lady in one of them.  This lady’s husband was in a terrible car accident, causing a lot of brain damage.  He seems to be improving slowly, very slowly, but she has to take care of him, help him walk, help him do many things.  Maria wanted me to share specifically my story of Mike, of his medical crisis last year, and some other things I had previously shared with her on the subject – mainly the strength that only God could have given me, the endless miracles we have seen through it all, and the indescribable power of prayer.

I talked about the “why” a little, too – that we may never know why we had to go through this or that we may find out later, too.  I gave a couple examples, including the fact that, because we had to come home early, I was blessed with an entire extra year with my friend Alicia before she died.  Isn’t God just so creatively Good?  Please remember these new Christians in your prayers this month.  Here is a photo of all of us that night – the wife and husband are standing on the left, Maria is in the jeans shorts, and the rest are all family members of the wife.

 

Being Blessed in a Very Hot City!

Last week was my first time in Colombia!  I spent several days there working with the Corks (who are now some of my favorite people in all the world) in setting up all sorts of things.  Mike and I, of course, had some great experience in hosting short-term teams so we spent a lot of time going over different aspects/details.  It was a very productive week that hopefully was a good help to them to feel not so overwhelmed in taking on this new huge project all by themselves!  Remember to pray for them as they continue to figure out a very different culture, grow relationships with the church and its people, and prepare for the very-soon-coming first project team!

I was also blessed BEYOND measure with being able to attend a few services at the largest Nazarene church in the world!  (At least, it’s closely competing with one in Brazil anyway….)  Alyson and I went to a service Wednesday night.  Pastora Nineye (the pastor’s wife) preached and it was unbelievable.  Not only her words and passion for God but also the vast numbers of people there and the power of Christ that was among us.  It was AWESOME.

~2,000 people at the Wednesday night service.

We had a lot of fun surviving in their bare apartment, too.  Fortunately, the church was wanting to take care of them and find everything they needed from within the church body, so they had the necessities!  Here is Wellington helping me warm up my dinner.

Also, a quick shot of Alyson & me working in the church building.  Normally, we were able to work upstairs in their communications/tech office where they had a lovely little A/C machine (no windows so it was a bit necessary), but sometimes we worked downstairs.  Sweating can’t kill ya!

And, as luck would have it, I was there when they HAD to check out some “tour” options for our short-term volunteers so we had a friend take us to the old part of the city and see some really cool old buildings, churches, and more.

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I’m only going to write about the first half-ish of the week because this is already long and I have more to say!  More soon, amigos. Dios les bendiga.

 

The Corks in Cali, Colombia

Watch this short video of our missionary friends, Vince & Alyson Cork, as they update all of us on the project beginning in Colombia!

 

Cohort 1 Complete

Do you remember when our first 40/40s arrived on the field?  And when, after all their language & ministry training, they moved to Puerto Maldonado?  And, once, Mike shared some pictures about the completion of their house construction?

Well, we can hardly believe how time has flown.  This first group has completed their term in Peru with SEVERAL new church plants completed along with many dozens of new believers.  I don’t have official numbers for you yet, but God has certainly done some great work through our 40/40 missionaries in this difficult society to penetrate with the gospel.  Please pray for them as they all transition to a new chapter in their lives.  Some are being called back to the States while some are continuing in their ministry with Extreme in different capacities.  We are excited for the work that has really just begun in Puerto Maldonado.  Extreme returns with a short-term team of missionaries in July to build our first chapel for the stronger church plants.

We are excited at how God’s working!

 

April Updates

April is still going on and we have a eventful weekend ahead of us, but I’ll try to catch us all up anyway!

A couple months ago, I was hired to make some cake pops (“some” meaning 100!) for a large Eagle Scout Ceremony for 2 boys in our church.  It took a few evenings to get it all done, but I had great sisterly help on the last long night.

Chicha tried out for the Donkey part in the Easter production as did many others, but an actual donkey won out in the end!

Mike and his brother, Jon, had been waiting for months to use their free passes to Mt. Bachelor.  They were able to get a few great runs in before Jon broke his collar bone again.  They sledded him down the mountain, pumped him with ibuprofen and went to Urgent Care in Eugene to get him all fixed up.  At least they got to spend the day together!

EASTER was a huge event that we’d been rehearsing for months.  It was very successful in many ways and the boys had way too much fun putting makeup on each other!

We have a missions event in Salem this weekend, missionaries speaking at church on Sunday, and then I (Sydney) leave for Colombia and Peru on Monday!  Stay tuned for updates on my travels soon.

 

March Updates

For some reason, we don’t “see” blog posts at every event in our lives anymore.  I think it’s more fun to blog in another country!  But then I realized there actually has been a lot that’s happened since we last wrote, so here we are to update everyone.  I’ll split up March and April into 2 posts….

At the beginning of March, Mike went to Alaska for his Extreme job.  He was their for our fellow missionary friends’ homecoming as they were ending their term in Peru and he met lots of great people up there!

Plus, just randomly enough, he was there for the opening weekend of the Iditarod Race and was able to watch the ceremonial start of it!

March held a pretty big tragedy for us, too.  As many of you know, my close friend Alicia died in a car accident on March 12th.  She was dear girl to everyone and, though I still miss her terribly, it’s comforting to know she had her faith and is all with Jesus now.  That is certainly nothing to be sad about!

Our local church also had their Faith Promise event this year that included a “World Missions Fair.”  Mike and I ran a booth for Extreme Nazarene and it was a lot of fun giving out hundreds of Peruvian bracelets to people who came by.

Later that same night, we were drivers for the Youth Group’s Amazing Race they held.  It was CRAZY and I forgot how competitive my sister was (haha).  Her team won (first picture) but OUR team was definitely the most fun.  It was great getting to know a few more teens we hadn’t really known before.

My uncle flew me down to Salt Lake City the last week of March to help him pack.  I guess I’m weirdly good at that kind of stuff!  It was a blast hanging out with him and organizing/packing all week. 

So, there was our March!

 

Mike Went to Kentucky…and Indiana

This week I (Mike) traveled to M11 in Louisville, KY.  It was a great time to meet face-to-face with my fellow Extremies that live around the country.  We were able to spend valuable time together planning for the next year and getting to know each other better.  The USA-based side of Extreme is very spread out and the isolation Sydney and I feel not having other Extreme missionaries nearby has been/is a challenge for us.

At the conference Extreme unveiled the ChurchMobile.  It is a scale model that will travel around the USA to promote awareness of what the approximately 70 Extreme missionaries are doing in Peru right now.  It will make appearances at churches and other venues over the coming year or so.

More information on the ChurchMobile can be seen here.

The ChurchMobile Facebook page can be found here.

After the conference ended I had a little free time before flying back home to my beautiful wife.  I couldn’t visit a new state without seeing some of its famous sites!

 

 

Chicha’s First Snow

See what happens when Mike goes out of town?  I start hearing dog voices!

[First time out this morning.]  ”Why are you making me go to the bathroom on this stuff?”

“Can we PLEASE go back inside?”

“Okay, I changed my mind.  It looks kinda fun out there!”

“This stuff tastes pretty good!”

“Mmm, and so does that treat in your hand…just can’t…quite…reach it…”

“What?  Can’t a girl enjoy some snow?”

“Why do you keep calling me over to you?  I want to run!”

“I’m already wet and stinky, so can we please just play a little more?”