Halfway?

We are all marveling at the fact that yesterday, Saturday, February 20th, marked the halfway point of our time here! We've tried to give you a glimpse into what has happened here in the last 40 days, but there are many details and stories that as yet remain untold. I'd like to give you a few highlights...

• Ashley was scheduled to leave today, but changed her airline ticket and will return to the States on April 2nd. We are absolutely thrilled that she is staying! A great deal of rejoicing took place here when she announced her decision to remain with us. :)

• We are experiencing great growth in our language skills. Some of us are now able to speak in complete sentences (with correct verb conjugations!), and others of us have honed the skill of pointing to, acting out, and using voice inflection to communicate wordlessly that which would usually require verbal output.

• The state of our health has greatly improved, and today was a significant milestone: it has been two weeks since anyone has experienced severe illness!

• A great deal of learning has taken place for all of us as we have worked into the schedule and flow of life here at The Ark. We've been learning about organization, relationships, guidelines, and balance of work and rest.

• We've grown together as a team, and we enjoy our times of sharing as we read through and study Ephesians. We're learning to appreciate and gain insight from the perspective of others. We're also learning how to be flexible with and to support eachother.

• $0.18 is the fee for a bus ride into the city; this has opened up opportunities for us to view the culture, eat the ice cream, and expand our comfort zone.

There have been many moments of laughter, some tears, a lot of prayers, moments of asking questions and sorting through issues, and excellent times of building relationships with our family - God's family - here in Ecuador.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your support and prayers and communication. We look forward to hearing from you, and we are delighted to know that you stand with us in this endeavor! Thank you for your investment in us, and in the ones we are here to love and serve.

Just a note: we will have great fun reporting things like the number of diapers we changed, the number of bottles we administered, the number of Spanish words we learned, the number of hours we spent playing with the children, etc. One thing we will neither report nor record is the number of pounds of chocolate we consumed in the space of 80 days...