Just an update on life in general

I've not written anything recently, so there are several items to be covered.

Power Outages: Every day (for about a week now), at approximately 6:15, our power goes out, for about half an hour. We don't know why. We've had some lovely candle-lit dinners recently.

Guests Coming: We have a family arriving to stay with us for ten days, arriving tonight. They are good friends I've known for years but never actually met. (The wife is an internet buddy.) They have a 7 year old son, 10 year old daughter, and 14 year old son, so there should be lots of fun times for all ages at our house!

New Year's Eve: If you recall from last year, the big event in Gracias on New Year's Eve is the burning of the Muñeco (here's the link to the post from last year). Burning is perhaps not the correct way to put this. . . the Muñeco is made of fireworks, so the Exploding of the Muñeco is probably more accurate. At any rate, our new house is less than a block from the location where this big event will take place, so we are certainly expecting an exciting and loud New Year's celebration at our house!

Christmas Gift Distribution: This process has been complicated this year by the early arrival of lots of gifts specifically for children, and the not-yet arrival of the rest of the donated items, to make complete gifts for the pastors and their families. We've delivered the gifts that only go to children (to orphans, feeding centers, the Special Needs kids, etc) and we've managed to put together about 40 of the pastor-and-family gifts. This is a rather small portion of the 250 or so families to whom we will be giving gifts. Lots of the presents will not be distributed until late January, but this has happened before, and isn't really a problem here. Hondurans are used to waiting for things, and are remarkably patient when things don't happen on schedule.

Sickness: Gus has been sick with nasty swollen tonsils for waaaay too long now. We've attacked with three different antibiotics, one after another, without success. We're pretty much resigned to the fact that those tonsils are gonna have to go . . . we just aren't exactly sure how to go about this. We'd feel most comfortable having this surgery done at a missionary hospital on the north coast, but that hospital is about 7-8 hours drive from here. I'll keep you posted.

That's about it for now.