I’ve finally been able to upload the last few updates, I hope that you enjoy them! Hopefully in the future I’ll have a connection to the internet so that I can update the blog more regularly.
Monthly Archives: December 2010
Our First Anniversary
On December 26th, 2009 last year we were joined in marriage before God, our family and our friends. We are so happy together!!!
We marvel at how God has worked to bring us together, how He provided for all of our needs with the wedding and visas, and how He has blessed our past year as we went to the US and now have returned here. If you haven’t seen our wedding website, you should check it out!
We also spent time planning and praying for this next year. We would appreciate your prayers also as we get adjusted to our new life here and get into ministry. We know that God has great plans for us and we’re excited to be used by Him to share His love with others!
Merry Christmas!
Christmas is celebrated very differently here. The major day is Christmas Eve where they wake up early to start making tamales. I tried to help out with the whole process to learn how they do it, and I’ll post a few pictures later.
Towards evening people make small fires on the curb in front of their house and everyone hangs out around it and says hi to neighbors. At midnight the whole country goes crazy with fireworks. It’s an amazing sight! Everyone then eats tamales and drinks a hot fruit punch drink. After that they open presents and then play games and talk until everyone’s too tired to stay awake. We were up until 4! On Christmas day everyone sleeps late and just relaxes.
We hope that you have a merry Christmas! It is a great time of the year to reflect on how wonderful God is to us and how incredible His love and blessings are for us.
The drive to Guatemala
We made it! Driving through Mexico was an experience we’ll never forget! We left Austin, TX on Thursday morning and on Monday, five days later, we arrived in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. Our poor little car was packed completely full with everything we needed and wanted to bring to start our new life here in Guatemala. It was so full that we couldn’t see out the back, and it drove sluggish. But we were blessed to make the journey without any real problems and the car made the trip just fine.
This is how full our car was, and we also had the space for Yuli’s feet filled up too.
Driving across the Rio Grande from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo.
View across the river to the USA from the place where we got our passports stamped and our car permit.
The first two days we drove through north Mexico. There were very impressive mountains and LOTS of cacti.
As we left the city of Puebla, we saw this snow covered volcano. I think that it’s called Citlaltépetl.
The third day definitely had the greatest views as we entered a mountain range surrounded by clouds. It was this little winding road along the sides with bridges to span the gaps. It was about impossible to get a picture that captured how high up we were, but this one looks back on a bridge that we had gone across.
And the road had three tunnels cutting through the mountains.
At least we got to enjoy the fine cuisine of Mexico. Here Yuli’s enjoying the enchiladas and I’m trying out the local mole.
One hotel we stayed at had the sink in the shower!
On the fourth day we came down from the mountains to the pacific coast where there were hundreds of windmills.
Boy, this sign got us excited. we were almost there!
Finally, we’re leaving Mexico…
…and we’ve made it to Guatemala!
We still had 5 more hours to go, but they were all roads we’ve been on before. What an amazing trip! But we were really, really exhausted and happy to make it to Yuli’s family’s house. Now we get to rest and relax for the next few days and enjoy celebrating Christmas with the family.
Our car is packed, we’re ready to go…
We are starting our drive down to Guatemala tomorrow morning bright and early! We’re planning on the trip taking 4 days, so we should in Guate on Sunday.
We would really appreciate your prayers for us during this trip! Mexico is a BIG country, and our car is packed completely full.
God has brought us miraculously here to the US for this year, He has blessed our time here this past year, and we’re going in confidence that He’ll be with us as we return.
Route through Mexico
Driving through Mexico is about 1,350 miles long and takes about 24 hours to do. We’re mapping out the course and planning to make the whole drive from Austin to Guatemala in four days.
It seems like there’s so many details to prepare for with crossing different boarders and figuring out the best routes to take, that it feels a little overwhelming at times. But it will certainly be a trip that we’ll never forget!
Packing, packing, packing
We’re driving our little car down to Guatemala in about a week and a half, so we are packing like crazy! Our car is going to be completely stuffed full, and we have a lot of furniture that we still have to get rid of.
Back from our trip
We made it back safely on Thursday from our 5,00 mile trip around the USA. We ended up staying at 11 different places and had a fantastic time visiting everyone. Even with all the traveling and visiting, our thought at each place was, “If only we could stay here just a little longer…” It was just wonderful spending time with our families!
Here we are at Times Square in New York City. We got so many great photos of everyone we visited, and I hope to put them up soon.