Our family loves to go to the park! Quito has two great parks located in the northern part of the city where we live. Parque Carolina is a large family oriented park located in the heart of the north part of Quito. On any given weekend you will find it filled with families riding bikes, exercising, playing football (soccer), dance classes, and it even has a beautiful botanical garden inside. The other park we often frequent is Parque Metropolitano that sits high on the west mountains of Quito and is sometimes referred to as the "lungs of Quito" because the air is so clean - full of trees, green grass, playgrounds and trails. We are so lucky as to live across the street from this park so have an amazing view and clean air to breath!
Oscar and his daddy at Parque Metropolitano.
Here you see some of the roses in the gardens. Roses are a product of export in Ecuador where we can usually buy 2 dozen long stem roses for about $5. You can't see it on this photo, but these roses are actually about the diameter of a softball!
One of our favorite activities to do these days is to take Oscar Andres to the Park. In fact, I usually try to take him there as often as I can because Oscar Andres is now 22 months and has mastered walking! He loves to walk, in fact he would be content walking all over the park all day long if we would let him. True to his father's gene's he is an outdoors kind of little guy. Just pulling into the parking lot is met with kicking legs and squeals!
Oscar Andres will probably ask me someday why I made him wear a mickey mouse hat... well - it just looks so cute on him! In addition to walking, Oscar Andres likes exploring, opening and shutting cabinets, rearranging the DVDs, cleaning off our papers from the desk, removing books from the book shelf and looking at books with lots of pictures and textures! He is fast approaching two years and despite the hurdles of being born prematurely, with the help of patient parents, great therapists, and a fabulous pediatrician - he has progressed beautifully and we rejoice that he is a healthy, happy, normal little guy with great plans for the future!
I have been mostly occupied with being a mommy. I continue to work part time and recently took a trip to Argentina for some continuing medical education (see previous post). Having a toddler makes getting to events a bit more challenging, but I have continued to do Beth Moore's online teachings through living proof ministries. If you haven't checked out her website - she has some really great teachings you can watch for free! The other project that has been of interest to me is learning to cook more vegetarian and gluten free. We are neither vegetarians nor gluten intolerant and I still do cook meat, but we just have wanted to look at healthier options. One website I have found a lot of great recipes on and was recommended by a few friends: Gluten Free Goddess.
Oscar (dad), is busy as always, but one of the many, many things that I love about my husband is the fact that family always comes first. When he comes home from work, he sits down and starts playing with his son right away and it is a much enjoyed activity by Oscar Andres. Oscar Andres is really into imitating his father right now. If dad is doing it, he wants to do it also - it brings me such joy to see my son adore a father who is so amazing! I find the imitating issue to be particularly helpful when it comes to teaching skills such as brushing teeth. He just doesn't have the same drive to brush his teeth with mom like he does with his daddy:
Oscar has been getting steady seminars for work and recently did a huge convention for a major pharmaceutical company in Banos. We are thankful for God's provision in work for us. In addition to his job as a corporate trainer, he continues to put in full time hours as Pan de Vida's executive director. The ministry is doing great - we are still serving around 1500 persons per month with the Word of God and a hot meal. Last month we saw about 20 persons receive Christ in their hearts through our programs. You can read our latest ministry newsletter here
Eight months ago we started the process of raising funds as missionaries for Pan de Vida and we are still in that process. It is our hope to be able to focus more on furthering the Kingdom of God by continuing to serve at Pan de Vida, but until we have raised full support we must continue to work our full time jobs. At this time we are most in need of monthly financial supporters. If this is something you feel lead to help us with please visit our Donor FAQ webpage or email us
As always we welcome you to visit us in the southern hemisphere - we'd love to see you personally, we'd love for you to send teams down to work at Pan de Vida, or for you to come an volunteer for an extended period of time.
