An Overdue Update

Well, a lot has happened since I last wrote. Sorry for the long silence but April was pretty crazy. We moved out of our apartment, put our things in storage and two days later left for a 13 day tour of the South East US where we went on a whirl-wind tour of Atlanta, Chattanooga, Gainsville GA, Jacksonville, and Orlando spending no more than two nights in a row in the same place. Some of the highlights were introducing Isabella to the some of the family, seeing a few friends, and Isabella being dedicated by Pastor Wes (who married Jessie and I) at Switzerland Community Church. I'm coming to grips with the fact that now in the presence of my celebrity daughter, I am more and more like that guy that dies in the opening scene of the movie that no one remembers anymore.

We returned safely to Bogota and two days after our arrival moved into our new little house in Tenjo. It is very cute and will be a great place for Isabella to continue growing and for Jessie to finally accelerate her language learning. With the arrival of some new girls at the Home this week and next week, there will be 50 girls plus all the staff for Jessie to interact with. It's amazing to see how much she has already learned in the week we've been out there. The distance makes my commute a little longer; it now takes me between an hour and an hour and a half to drive into the office, but I won't have to make the commute every day which will help. Ransom also loves being out there since he loves kids and dogs and there are 50 kids and 5 dogs for him to play with. Hopefully he'll lose a little weight now that he's not cooped up in the apartment any more.

We are still waiting on some shelving and cabinets to be installed, so there is quite a bit of stuff in boxes and bags still and the living room still doesn't really have any furniture yet, so it's not quite home yet, but it is getting there. We are also missing the gate to the little wall that surrounds the house, which we are looking forward to since it will help keep the myriad of inquisitive eyes from staring through the windows and tracking our every move.

With the move to Tenjo, has come our latest challenge. Jessie and I have lived in Colombia for more than five months now, but in many respects we are starting all over again. We now face the challenges and blessings of figuring out boundries and routines, learning names, making relationships, discovering how we can best serve and help, and in general entering a new less-lonely but more challenging stage of our time here with CDA.

We don't have internet out at the Home yet, so communications and the sharing of pictures will be a little slower in coming than usual, but Lord willing, we will be back to normal in two weeks.