The U's visit the U's

     How cool is that to have your two sons and daughter-in-law come to visit? WAY COOL. That's how cool. So Greg, Fred and Lauren were here for a little over a week and we had a great time (as we always do when family visits). We started off by climbing Magote on Sunday morning and then several waterfalls including Agua Blancas, an hour and a half away. We visited La Presa (local dam) and still got a lot of work out of them at a couple sites and at the base. As we were coming home from the beach on Friday afternoon/evening, Fred asks me how hard it is to find the drive to Magote in the dark. I

Greg, Marcy, Fred, Lauren, Janae at Salta Baiguate.

was reading his mind and said well we need to leave for the airport by 11:00 tomorrow so we would have to leave the house by 5:30 am to have time to climb it and back home again. Greg pipes in with "ARE YOU NUTS? I am not climbing that thing again!!" So at 5:25am Fred, Marcy and I headed out for one more trip up the mountain. It was a great time and a great view, again. Thanks to all three of you for taking your vacation time to spend with us. It meant a lot to all 5 of us.
    We now look forward to a couple of women from our home area, Kris Bontrager and Bev Hooley, that will arrive on this coming Saturday to help out SI with the annual Pulga. We look forward to having Kris back again. She and her husband Fritz spent a week with us in February and it will be a treat to show Bev the North end of the island as she was on one of the trips that our church made to the South side a couple of years ago.

Janae and Marcy's first day of school

       Things are going well here. Marcy and Janae started school on Monday of this week at Doulos and they both like it a lot. Most of the SI staff send their children there this year so it is great to see the SI family dropping off and picking up kids along with us. Karen has been getting Genesis ready for the teachers to come back tomorrow and then the Genesis kids return a week from tomorrow. I have been doing what I do with site maintenance except without Marcy. This last week I had Greg and Fred help me out but now I will be on my own for a while. God continues to bless us here and we feel the support from so many of you. Thank you for that.
   This morning at the English church at CMA, Scott preached from Genesis 3 and how we live in a fallen world. Things will go wrong because of sin in the world and not always because of something we did to deserve it. He used the term "it's just not fair" often during his sermon. But yet the one thing that just hit me head on was in verse 9 when Adam and Eve had just eaten the forbidden fruit and God asks "Adam, where are you?" I had to think maybe the last while God is asking "Mike, Where are you?" Not necessarily because I am intentionally hiding from Him, but yet do I come to Him on a regular basis? Then at the afternoon service the sermon was based on Genesis 3. So I had one more opportunity to have God speaking to me saying "Mike, where are you?". When ever I get a double reminder like that so close together, I always feel sorry for the other 200+ people that had to sit and listen to a sermon that was obviously intended to for me. I just challenge all of you, is God asking you "Where are you?"  Think about that.
            Mike, for the family