Finishing 2008 and Entering 2009

The speed in which we come to the end of one year and begin a new year often catches us by surprise. For us as a family this year it has very much been the case.

It seems like no time since we said goodbyes to the cooler weather of our winter and were encouraged by the emergence of the sun once again, September really only seems like a few weeks ago! For us the last few weeks of the year provided us with some variety to spice up our lives. we will try to summarise some of the goings on and give you an insight into the plans for the next couple of months.

At the beginning of December, I (Dave) had the opportunity to accompany the Mision Rescate team that we are overseeing to Puno. We had joined up with Lourdes Brew in order to help her distribute some Christmas presents to children who attend the Sunday Schools in and around the Puno area. The journey up to Puno provided much more activity than we had anticipated. As 10 of us set off in the minibus from Tacna we did not really anticipate the climb from sea level to about 5000 metres to have such a dramatic impact but altitude sickness which resulted certainly made the journey much more interesting. Fortunately the recoverey from the journey was relatively quick for most of us. However some of us were quite amused that on arriving at the hostal half the team were assigned a room on the 5th floor!

As we travelled around some of the churches giving out presents to the children who had attended Sunday School faithfully throughout the year it was a real pleasure to see the faces the kids and the appreciation they showed. It certainly made us think twice about taking things for granted.

Whilst in Puno we had a few days of fellowship with the Pastor of the Central Puno church and his wife. We stayed in the care home that they oversee and really enjoyed playing with and getting to know many of the children who had been taken into care as a result of their parents not being able to care for them. The highlight of the time there was being able to buy a cake for the children and watch them enjoy eating something that they very rarely get.


While I (Dave) was in Puno, Alicia was left back in Ilo to look after the kids. She was very grateful of my return and although I really enjoyed the visit I was glad to get back to the kids and Alicia. The weeks after the Puno visit were occupied getting ourselves ready for Christmas and planning activities in the Ite Church as well as helping the team make their preparations for their Christmas dinner. The team decided that they would spend Christmas together, roast a chicken, have hot chocolate and Paneton, a real traditional Peruvian Christmas. As well as their own dinner the team got an invitation to help with serving the Christmas dinner in the Ilo church (they obviously didn't go hungry either!)

On Christmas eve we finished our preparations and entertained some friends before heading off to bed for an early night. Christmas morning was probably our most exciting yet as we were able to watch Sarah thoroughly enjoy the unwrapping of her presents. She also proved to big a big help to Joel in doing the same! We think she was hoping that as Joel couldn't open the presents he also would not be able use them and she would get them!

Instead of a traditional Christmas dinner "Norn Iron" style we decided to opt for a more Australian approach, the barbie. This proved to be a great success in the 25+ degrees tempertures and was a rather more appealing way to celebrate rather than sweating over an oven for 3 hours.

On Christmas Day afternoon two of the Irish members of the Mision Recate team arrived at the house to stay with us (babysit!) for the week, while the remainder of the team returned to their families for a break from team life. Sarah particularly enjoyed the company and the way Simon and Roberta played with her was obviously much more fun than the way mummy and daddy play!

Since the weeks break for the team our task has been motivating all seven of them to get their sleeves rolled up once again, get out of Christmas mode and into work mode. January will involve some practical work and preparation work for the Camps which will be held in February. sandwiched in between days of working have been some days at the beach for the team. It would not be fair that they didn't make the most of the good weather!

Just prior to Christmas Sarah finished her first year of nursery school (class of 3 years), the fact that nursery school is much more focused on learning through play here was highlighted by the report she recieved. In the report there were around 40 different areas of assessment including aspects of coordination, communication and other developmental areas, we were pleased and very proud that she received a report with all "A"s although to be honest think she is perhaps a little too young to be pushed. Our task now is keeping her occupied over the summer months although she really has taken to the team and has a ball being around them which makes it easier to combine work and family life. During the last couple weeks of January her school is running "useful holidays" which is somewhat like a summer scheme where she is taught how to swim, do crafts or another thing of our choice, we hope to enroll her.

Joel has decided that crawling is about as useful as the Manchester United team that faced Derby tonight (incidentally his preferred team is Liverpool, just like his dad and sister!) and so has resorted to rolling mutiple times to get to the destination of his choice. To date nothing seems to be painful to him apart from hunger and being left without constant company! This week we moved him into his own room and have been praying that he will adjust and sleep all night.

In June we received the wonderful gift of a new alarm clock in the form of Joel. The only problem was that the alarm seemed to go off numerous times throughout the night! When we eventually managed to stop the waking during the night he decided that 5am was a good time to begin the day, this decision was not well supported by his parents but eventually his dad decided to give in and make the most of the early starts, so since Christmas I have been rising from my pit with much more enthusiasm (exaggeration!) and going out running with my good friend Freddy. After a number of runs we managed to make it to 15km and were delighted with our progress but it seems that since that feat fatigue has set in and the marathon that we thought would be within reach soon seems so much further away now. We plan to keep running and hopefully we will well on way to our goal again very soon.

Finally I began the blog mentioning how quickly time seems to have flown over the last couple of months. with this in mind it makes our return to Northern Ireland in March seem so much closer. Wit alot to do between now and March no doubt the time will once again fly by. We really look forward to seeing many of you during our time at home. Again we thank you for your continued interest in us as a family and the work we are doing.