Banff National Park

We have been in Banff National Park for a couple of days now and we are loving it. The beauty of God's creation here is spectacular. When we asked the kids if the mountains are what they expected them to be they said 'no' because they couldn't even imagine what it would be like...they are definitely impressed.

Today (Monday) we went for a good long 5.5 km. hike up to Johnson Canyon Falls. The weather was perfect (as it has been since we left home) and they all were troopers to finish the hike. The falls were awesome and we took tons of pictures.

Family shot at the Johnson Canyon Falls...

Our beautiful hiker kids...

We have been slowly relaxing more and more each day, especially after several weeks of craziness leading up to the decision to go to Mexico. Thank you for your prayers in this regard!

Tomorrow we are planning on going up the gondola to the top of Sulfur Mountain and then on Wednesday our plan is to go into Calgary and check out the world famous Zoo...that looks like it will be a fun but tiring day.

Now...off to go and do some shopping in downtown Banff...

What Are We Going To Be Doing?

On the map to the right you can see where the city of Cuauhtemoc is in relation to Chihuahua city and El Paso Texas. From 1993-96 I lived in Chihuahua city doing church planting and youth work. I am reasonably familiar with the surrounding area, including where we will be living now in Cuauhtemoc.

Many people are aware that there are a lot of low German speaking Mennonites who live near Cuauhtemoc and assume we will be working with them. While we will be connecting with some of them during our time down there, our work will not be with them directly but rather with the Mexican people.

The work required of us while we are down there includes taking over responsibilities that are left from the missionary lady we are replacing while she comes back to Canada for a time of rest and reporting, often referred to as furlough. We will live in her house and work in the church she was a part of.

Sandy will continue homeschooling the children (Olivia - Kindergarten, Caleb - Grade One, Andrew - Grade Three). While this is not a burden to her, doing this in a new country with less support then we are used to will be an added challenge. We are also looking for someone to come into our home a day or two a week to provide some tutoring for her as she feels the need to brush up on her Spanish as well. Pray that we would find someone, perhaps from the neighbourhood, who would be able to do that for us.

I (Gerald) will also be teaching during the last Saturday of every month at the Saturday Bible Institute that our mission is involved in. This means preparing material for two 3-hour classes (the book of Ephesians and our Conference Statement of Faith) each Saturday and then also preparing a pile of homework to send with the students who have 4 weeks to work on before the next class. All of this, of course, is in Spanish, which I know will need lots of brushing up also.

Beyond that we will be connecting with many of the pastors and leaders in our mission churches as well as lots of dialogue to determine their needs and outreach needs for future missionary teams to become involved in.

All in all it looks to be a fairly intense five months but also filled with tons of opportunities for our family to get to know a new culture, trust and depend upon the Lord, grow in unity as a family, and discover our gifts as we serve as a family.

With Thanksgiving!

Preparation Time?

Our summer plans have changed a lot in the last six weeks...we have had to have several "talks" with our children trying to explain why we are postponing building a tree house, not going biking as often as they would like, not going to our favourite campgrounds like we usually do, and so on and so on.
Overall they have responded very well to all the changes that await us but we certainly would appreciate your prayers for us on this issue of "change."

It has been over a year that we have been planning a vacation out west to see the Rocky Mountains and so even though it makes our summer even busier, we are leaving this Friday morning, July 20 for Banff. We will be gone for 2 weeks and are all really looking forward to this trip.
We will be home for about one week before we head for Mexico, so you can see that our preparation time to go is quite short indeed.

VBS is in full swing at our home church, Steinbach EFC, and our kids are loving it as are Sandy and I as we look after the snack times (Sandy has made some amazing snacks to serve to these 100 plus kids). VBS goes this week until Thursday and then on Friday we leave on our vacation.

Blessings!

Our Assignment Is Approved

The EMC has approved the assignment for our family to go to Mexico for nearly five months. We will be leaving on August 12 and return at the beginning of January, 2008. We are all very excited but the kids think it is a bit of a long time to be away from their friends...please pray for them that they would be able to mentally and emotionally be prepared to leave on this journey.

We also need prayer as we have lots of work to do to get our house ready for renters...pray that we would finalize that in the next few weeks as well. Sandy has been working extremely hard over the past two weeks cleaning, sending loads of stuff to MCC, throwing out bags of junk and more cleaning...let's just say the house is cleaner than it ever has been since we moved here.

A couple of shots of the boys soccer teams...I coached Caleb's team! I am very proud of how well they both played this year...great attitudes and hard working!!!

Caleb is standing in the back row - second from the right.

Andrew is in the back row with the blue cap - second from the right.

Thanks for your prayers and support!