Merry Christmas 2005 and Happy New Year 2006!

It’s been awhile since our last posting, so we’ll try to catch everyone up on the goings on in Chile. The most exciting news is that Gabriel, one of the youth who began studying the Bible at the end of November with Rodrigo and John as the silent partner, made his decision to be baptized the week before Christmas during the Bible study. Praise God! Gabriel has been very active in the group since moving to Santiago from Venezuela recently.

For our last English class of the year, we had a Christmas Party. Everyone brought a wrapped gift (with a value of less than $2.00) and we had a white elephant gift exchange game and had a great time watching everyone open their gifts. The gifts were chocolates, candles, fresh fruit, and even cat food! We then shared a meal and decorated cookies for dessert. For the last activity of the party, we decorated the Christmas tree together.


The team shared Christmas fajita dinner on the 24th at Zane and Tae Perkins’ home. They had also invited us to spend Christmas day with them and as they have four kids under the age of 7, we enjoyed watching all of them tear into their presents. We spent the day with their family and Nathan Young, and a couple of church members as well. We were very grateful for the Perkins’ hospitality, and the chance to share the holiday with them.

We were able to leave Santiago for a few days after Christmas and enjoy the beauty of the mountains, relax and do a bit of hiking to some waterfalls near a town called San Alfonso. Though many of the youth had left for the holidays we continued with once Wednesday evening and soccer time at the park on Thursday afternoon in addition of our Spanish classes twice during the week.

For the New Year, we went with Eduardo and Jill to Eduardo’s mom’s house for a barbeque with his family and a few others from church. We ate way too much and got lots of good Spanish practice, and enjoyed a fireworks display a few blocks from the house after midnight. Thanks for keeping up with us and we wish everyone a Feliz Año.

We are having some issues posting some of the pictures of Gabriel's baptism and of the Christmas party. We will post those as soon as we are can!

Love you so much!