theYoakums.net

**We still don’t have Internet at our house.  Sorry for the long catch-up post!

Our house is totally awesome.  We hope you are making plans to come visit us!  We’ll have a comfortable place for you to sleep waiting for you.  Though it took us a while to find it, we knew the Lord would provide us with just the right house and shower us with His blessings.

Everyone is sleeping well at night in each of our own rooms and on our own beds.  Well, Derek is still in his pack-n-play.  We’ll be getting him a bed soon, but he’s doing fine in his home away from homes.  The poor kid has literally spent the majority of his short little life sleeping in one.  Wes and I had our bed shipped down here on the container, and we had a very happy reunion with it after a year of it being in storage.  Our bed and Jake’s were the only pieces of furniture we had, so we went several days without any furniture at all.  That.  Was.  An.  Adventure.  Have you ever tried to feed a toddler and a preschooler three meals a day without a table or any chairs?  We don’t recommend it.  McDonald‘s and Pizza Hut know us well.  We finally went down to the Metro (a store that is much like a super Wal-Mart) about 10 blocks from our house and bought a card table with four chairs.  Shortly after it crossed our threshold I stopped growing grey hairs on my head.

We think that Jake and Derek are so priviledged to grow up in this place, this city, this home.  We still don’t have all of our furniture, but it is already feeling like a haven and exactly where we are supposed to be.  Two of the reasons why I feel this way right now are both physical and spiritual.  Physically, the boys have a lot of run around space to let out all of that energy.  Besides our great backyard, this is the first time we’ve ever lived in a two-story house (as the vast majority of homes here in Lima are).  So, often throughout the day we hear Jake calling, “Mommy, where are you!?” or “Daddy, where did you go?!”  We answer back, “Jake, I’m upstairs!”

Spiritually speaking, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our choice to be here has put us in a postition to be the primary Bible teachers for our children.  It’s both a blessing and a challenge.  Not that a spiritual upbringing would not be a focus if we were living in the States, but here we are planting churches, so there is not much dropping off of the kids for Sunday school class going on.  WE are their Sunday school teachers.  Like I said, it’s a blessing, a challenge, and a priviledge.  Anyway, more on all that later.

As I write this Wes is gone playing soccer with the other guys on the team and a few Peruvians that our teammates have been developing a relationship with over the last several months.  That’s something to pray about.  Their names are Carlos, Eli, and David.  Also while I write this, I’m boiling water on the stove in an attempt to fill our bathtub up.  I haven’t showered in a day and a half, because our water heater stopped working.  The electrician is supposed to be here in two days to check it out.  Yes…I said two days.  Things happen a tad bit slower around here.  Before the water heater stopped working we couldn’t run our clothes dryer without turning the water heater off, so there’s no telling what’s happeining on the inside of these walls.  Also, we don’t have a dishwasher.  Hey, I said our house is awesome.  I didn’t say it was perfect.  It’s crazy, though, because I don’t think they even sell dishwashers here.  We haven’t seen any, and we’ve been shopping for a lot of appliances.  I guess it’s because most people here are either expected to have an “empleada” (housekeeper) or wouldn’t be able to afford a dishwasher.  We don’t have one yet, but hopefully it won’t be long!

Well, I’m going to get back to my “nesting” while I wait for my water to boil.  Did you know that if you looked up “nester” in the dictionary, you would find my name beside it?  Hallellujah, I finally get to nest!