next to last weekend

This weekend was packed full...Elvis was healing from having his wisdom teeth out on Friday afternoon (you couldn't even tell he had them out if i didn't tell you!), we celebrated the wedding of our friends Luis and Rebeca who have been dating for 13? 14 ? years:

Sporting our new glasses!


Can you please check out Marlana's stance as she is preparing to leap into the air, catch the bouquet, and tumble back across the end-zone with a perfect quarterback technique?


After the wedding, we had some gracious friends come over and help us put prices on everything and set everything out for the garage sale the next day: (there were tons of things on the other side of the room too)
I was thinking back to how I came to the country with a trunk full of clothes (who travels with a trunk these days anyway? That thing weighs 20 pounds itself!), a guitar, and another suitcase of clothes and books. That's all. When we started renting our house in Feb 2006, we had a telephone and a hammock. That's it. For our dates the month before our wedding we would go by bus to our new house, buy pupusas next door, and sit in the hammock and eat them and talk before going by bus back to drop me off at my apartment. By the time we were married in march, we had a bed, fridge, sofa, 2 chairs, washing machine, stove. Not much. Now look at all the stuff we accumulated!

I simultaneously feel blessed by God's provision (we didn't have to spend money on hardly anything in our house) but also a strong desire to never accumulate so much stuff, especially stuff we don't even use anymore. Kinda makes me wanna pack up about 5 t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and fly to California with only that. On the other hand, I want to be sure we take lots of Suzy's things so that she feels at home in Pasadena. Yesterday she would see some stuff at the garage sale and say "this is Suzy's!" You can pray with us that she can adjust easily and feel secure in our love for her despite everything else around her changing. If you ask her where we are going she eagerly says "California!" and says she wants to go, but obviously has no concept of what "california" really is.

Last night, we had our Christmas dinner at church. It was lots of fun, and they took advantage of the fact that everyone was together to say goodbye to us as well. They made a sweet video of our time at "Ruta 3:16" and people shared stories about how we had touched their lives. They also prayed over us and took up a love offering for us which is really meaningful because everybody has scarce resources and pitched in to bring stuff to the dinner as well. It's hard to imagine not being in the middle of that community anymore... they aren't just our church family, but our friends and the people we spend our time with and celebrate together and weep together and visit each other in the hospital and cook together and go to the beach together and help each other out with garage sales.