Don’t yet sponsor a child through Compassion? You can do so here.

Little Christian is a Christmas baby! Just look at that face, people.

Name: Christian Anciano (PH8860125)

Birthday: December 25, 2005   

Age: 4

Gender: Male

Region: Asia

Country: Philippines

Program: Mahayag Alliance Developmental Center

Personal and Family Information:
Christian lives with his father and his mother. At home, duties include running errands. His father is sometimes employed as a farmer and his mother maintains the home. There are 2 children in the family.
Christian is not presently attending school. Playing with cars and hide-and-seek are his favorite activities. He also attends church activities regularly.

Christian needs you. Your $38 a month will literally change not only his life right now, but the landscape of his future. You can click here to sponsor Christian or click here to view other children in need of sponsorship.

If you choose to sponsor a child today, please email me and let me know!

You can also text ‘disaster’ to 90999 to donate $10.

If you live in the Nashville area be sure to get tickets to this amazing event being held at Ryman Auditorium at 7:30pm central time.

Tell your friends. Tell your family. Tell everyone. Haiti still needs our help.

Those of you who like lists (I love lists, btw) will get a kick out of this post. Here’s our tentative itinerary for 1/21-1/25.

Thursday, 1/21

• 6:00am DELTA 5960 Indianapolis to Atlanta (track us for free at FlightAware), arrive at 7:38am local time
• 9:50am DELTA 693 Atlanta to Guatemala City (FlightAware), arrive at 12:20pm local time (gaining an hour)
• Afternoon – Up in the air at the moment. We have to do some grocery shopping for our Friday morning Compassion visit (which we may have time to do Friday morning). I believe we’re also going to try and visit the Buckner baby’s home.
• Evening – dinner at Casa Chapina, Cafe Sayul or NAIS Aquarium.

Friday, 1/22

• 7:30am-11:30am Wendy and I get to meet with Sammy, one of our sponsored Compassion children at his home, then Jody gets to meet with Miguel, one of her sponsored Compassion children in his home.
• Afternoon – Spend time with the boys at Eliza Martinez, starting day one of our three day life skills courses. We developed these in response to the regular needs boys learning some skills they’ll need to operate as productive citizens once they come of age and leave the orphanage.
• Evening – dinner at Casa Chapina, Cafe Sayul or NAIS Aquarium.

Saturday, 1/23

• Morning – possibly more time at the Buckner baby’s home
• Afternoon – more time at Eliza Martinez with our continuing life skills courses.
• Evening – dinner at Casa Chapina, Cafe Sayul or NAIS Aquarium.

Sunday, 1/24

• Morning – unplanned at the moment. This may end up being some much-needed downtime
• Afternoon – Our final day with the Eliza Martinez boys. We’ll be wrapping up our life skills courses and cooking lunch with the boys (spaghetti, garlic bread and salad). This will be a hoot!
• Evening – our final dinner in Guatemala for this trip. Undecided where we’ll go at this point.

Monday, 1/25

• Morning – packing and travel to the airport
• 1:50pm DELTA 692 Guatemala City to Atlanta (FlightAware), arrive at 6:25pm local time (losing an hour)
• 8:30pm DELTA 5949 Atlanta to Indianapolis (FlightAware), arrive at 10:07pm local time

Today we’re highlighting Felahadin from Ethiopia.

Felahadin needs you. Your $38 a month will literally change not only his life right now, but the landscape of her future. You can click here to sponsor Felahadin or click here to view other children in need of sponsorship.

If you choose to sponsor a child today, please email me and let me know!

These past 10 days have flown by. Things are a blur and yet there are so many moments that reside in my brain (read: my heart) with such amazing clarity.

Jose making it to the top of the climbing wall.
Crystal yelling “Net? Net!” for Nate because she’s just so in love with him.
Jody getting groped by Miguel.
Sammy joining my family.
Roca (quite likely) joining Scot’s family.
Rachael pouring herself out to every kid she comes in contact with.

This is going to sound cliché but I’m leaving a piece of my heart in Guatemala.

And because of that, I’ll have to come back.

Today we’re leaving for the airport at 4:15am (yikes), departing Guatemala at 7:00 am or so and arriving in Dallas around 11:45am. We’re hoping to get an earlier flight out of Dallas but who knows if that’ll work out. If it doesn’t we’ll arrive home in Indiana around 7pm.

Pray for smooth re-entries into normal everyday life for Scot and me. We’ve been living on mission, all day, every day for the past 10 days and, frankly, my emotions are threadbare.

I’ll likely have PMS (Post-Missions Syndrome) for the next few days so if I’m crabby, I’m sorry. Please bare with me.

See you soon.

/s