Time is a weird thing. While many of our friends and family just experienced their longest day of the year, we just experienced our shortest. The difference in times and rhythms of the year continues to throw us even as we’ve lived here more than ten years. In this liminal space of disorientation, we trust God’s spirit to continue working on us, in us, and maybe even through us.
So much has happened this first half of the year that it’s hard to know where to start. We continue to be deeply thankful for life and work right here where we are. We have found good rhythms of family life and ministry. The kids have settled into their new school. It’s been a huge challenge for them that they’ve responded to incredibly well, taking steps to learn French (most of their classes are in French, the rest in Spanish, except for English class) and make new friends. Adileen is doing 5th grade math in French when at the beginning of the school year (March) she could barely count to 20 in French. So we’re proud of them. Kinney is playing soccer and happy with World Cup fever.
Surely you know by now the devastation that two recent earthquakes left in their wake in the northern part of Venezuela. This comes while Venezuela remains in crisis-mode, 10+ years and running, which means that the Venezuelan diaspora spans far and wide. Some of our closest friends are from Venezuela, and when the level of destruction was made clear to them, they quickly responded by asking our church to help gather some funds to help in their hometown, also impacted, but forgotten in the wake of much bigger cities that were getting most of the attention and aid.
