Life in Leticia: Picture catching up

Since I only seem to get to this about once a year, I decided to make it good and loooong!! So these are spread out over the last year, and some events. We had a lot of people here for conference in December and January, but I was pretty busy, so don't have many pictures of that time.

OUR SUMMER TRIP 2010

Crepes and Waffles, Bogota - he had to get the Tin Tin Sundae!!

(He's a Tintin fan)

At the Greenfield Village, Detroit with Whitakers

Listening to "Huck Finn"!

at the glassblowers shop

In Chicago with Steve, Rene and Paul.

Pella Conference

Matt's buddies

Out West - Washington and Oregon

At Melvin and Susanne Rogers

Em and Charlotte loving it up

At Great Wolf Lodge - what fun!!!

Some of the kids in the wave pool.

Just playing around !

Paul with sweet little Luci!!

Playing the Wii with Ty

At Multnomah Falls with some of the YP.

Em and Bethany on the way to Morning Star

opps, sorry

tentmates- Susanna and Susie

Fun horsebackriding!

Em's grad party

Rockaway Beach, OR

The house that Em, Matt, and Bet built

A baby seal waiting for it's mother to return from fishing. The mother returned the next day to get the baby after it had been there for at least 4 days. People there guarded the baby every day so that nobody would touch it.

Sunset.....

At the pond in Gresham:

Someone's being annoying...!!! bugger brother...

Hamer Bay:

Swimming.....

...and more swimming.....

Caleb ;)

Now.....Back in Leticia, the river was sooooo low, the lowest in years.

These are pictures of the slough, they were getting stuck on the way in usually.

-this girl sunk to her thighs in mud! ugh!!

The blue balsa is a friend's, and ours is on the right. They had to be put in the middle of the river so as not to hit bottom. (that is an island in the background-more Amazon on the other side)

Fransesca with new baby Devid, Oct 22/10

Proud papa Jairo! Their first boy after 4 girls.

Fransesca still looking lovely after a gruelling night

He looks quite pink, but he is already quite brown now at 5 months old.

Bethany with Durley on her birthday.

Now some river pictures and river trips:

Sorry-blurry, but look at the load!!!

- and again!

-'ladder' up the bank

-monkey and jaguar from a village. They will release them back into the wild later. Sometimes the mom has been killed.

Nubia, Christina, Nathan Sutherland, boatman, Minajen, Ruben Oscar

Nubia and Cristielle

-a well-kept house

-typical village house, they will add on as they can afford it, or keep it open on purpose for air

Yucca plant

-local fruit - copoasu

-typical beach front of a town, the floating docks are for the local boats to tie up to, some are "gas stations" although none in this picture are, some are houses.

Our trip to the Yaguas:

A friend we knew there.

-"telephone" trees, you hit the big roots and it echoes through the jungle and the people know you are coming. If someone gets lost, they can be found easier if they do that.

Crossing the creak. Almost lost our shoes in this one.

Pictures near and around our neighbourhood:

The kilometer road.

Our barrio (neighbourhood)

Our current house

Dinner with Nubia and Cristielle over.

At the airport to see Emily, Jake and others off.

MICHIGAN?!? (Christina's an Ohio fan ;)

Another hummingbird nest in our yard. The eggs are the size and shape of jellybeans. These were gone the next day, due to cats(?). It was only 3 feet off the ground, so....

Matt was finally successful, and this stayed up there several days, waiting so Em could see it, to prove he hit the bull's eye to her!!

Matt lounging in the hammock.

The Alaska Iditarod was followed on the internet intensely for 2 weeks in March in this household! :)

The hanger, that is now being worked on to raise the roof.

January 14, 2011 Jairo and Fransesca's wedding and the kid's baptism:

Santa Rosa, Peru

Jairo and Fransisca in front of the building where they were married.

standin' around waitin'

sittin' around...waitin'...

Fransesca's mom is beside me and her sister Margarita on the right.

signing...

and fingerprints

cutting the cake

Bethany was trying to get some good photos of the twins, but they were running all over the place so most of the pictures were blurry. They were so adorable in their flouncy dresses, hogging the balloons!

I like the half fuzzy, half focused look here a lot. - Bethany

Baby David, filled out and solid muscle!! :)

baptisms in the cistern

This is a summary of the wedding and baptism I sent out to people at the time:

Lots of you wanted to know how the wedding and baptism went on Friday.

It all went great. We went to Jairo and Franscesca’s early and had a
short reading with them, some verses on marriage, then he got his new
duds on, even shoes! and she got on her pretty white dress and white
shoes that he had bought her the day before (she looked so cute!) and
they showed us the way to the civil office. They looked a little
self-consious, with neighbours looking at as, about 12 of us all
maybe. This is the first marriage on either side of their families.
But her parents have been together for many years, his parents died
when he was young and was mostly raised by his aunts and uncles.
Anyway, we sat and waited for about 15 min. for the mayor to come.
The mayor came and read off the required paper…. They responded with
a yes at appropriate times. They signed, their friends witnessed,
they were declared married, we all clapped and off we went! I learned
a new word, congratulations, in Spanish. We left for Leticia,
planning for them to all be at the mtg room at 3pm.

So around 3pm, everyone had arrived, the 2 olders girls with new
casual dresses and the twins with new FLOUNCY dresses, Very cute!!
Dean Rule had a little talk on baptism and then we all went to the back
yard to the water tank. Ruben baptized them, even the 2 mth old baby
David, as well as another neighbor girl, Erika.
Then we all went back for another short mtg by Dean on marriage, and
then we brought out the cake that Bethany had made into a 3-tier cake,
and ice cream and got some pictures of them cutting the cake. Her
sister, Margarita, and Mom and Dad got to everything too. On the way
back to the river, Bethany said that Fransesca kept thanking us and
said that she didn’t expect us to do so much, actually we really
didn’t do much! It’s hard to know the happy medium of doing too much
or not enough sometimes.

OUR TRIP TO SAO PAULO Do OLIVENCA, BRAZIL

to visit Allen and Kim Yoder, missionaries in Brazil about 125 miles downriver.

Our wet welcome! (it was pouring rain when we got there)

Matt got bored and cleaned the business' store front, swishing water into the gutter ;)

Up the street to our hotel, a flowing river!! Well, it cleans up the city streets anyway!

The hotel owner even bought us new sheets for our beds! too funny! (And to top it off, "Sabana Matrimonial" means "wedding sheets"! Christina and I almost died of laughter when we saw that ;) - Bethany

Our, umm, dirty smelly bathroom, that got hit with a full quart bottle of bleach. Straight!

Some street scenes:

Looking down our street from the top.

View from our veranda

The electrical tangle.....

Beautiful sunset!!

Bethany's photography....

Our very hospitable friends, friends of Alan and Kim.

A huge moth, wider than Paul's hand.

Matt has been told many times he looks like Justin Bieber, so this proves that he doesnt!! ;)

Allen and Kim's houseboat they live on.

Outside their kitchen window

Carpetball in the Amazon?! (Allan had built this himself)

They have YP out to their house and this is their 'rec room' on the mainland

Allen has made a path in the jungle, I think it was a half mile long maybe, don't remember.

The prospective plane

(Note: Walmart bag, can't even get away from it here! :) )

Paul's 60th Birthday Party:

A total of 7 nationalities attended: Us and Coy-USA, and Priscilla-Brazilian, David-Korean and Jessica-British, John-German, Ruben-Argentin, Martha-Canadian (yes!)