Old friends, new friends

Yesterday, we had dinner at Lou Malnatis' (perhaps the best deep-dish Chicago-style pizza) with Corey and Karen, who we last saw before any of us were married! Corey's family used to live across the street from my family in Holland and we used to play ping-pong all the time!


Church was really great this morning, in spite of the heat. I couldn't believe that, in a church with no air conditioning, all the worship leaders decided to go ahead and wear robes for the service on a 95 degree day! We are nuts.

Here are a few photos from fellowship time after the service. Eric and Jesus, both with a relatively limited grasp of each other's native language, managed to have quite a long, involved conversation. Eric's Spanish is coming back to him pretty quickly, and I'm sure it will only get better.



Sisters Jovita and Maribel, and some of their girls--Roxana, Yesenia, Zayra, and Esmeralda.


Marta and part of her family--Sandra and Marta-- with one of Jovita's grandsons, Miguel Angel:


Ana Karen with Ricardito, another grandson of Jovita. He had been crawling all over the place outside!


Jessica just became a member of the church last Sunday and is very proud of her certificate:


Hanging out in the church garden--a small but precious green space that is all to uncommon in the city! Thankfully, the ice cream man came by a few minutes later to offer refreshment (Lalo offered a bit of his own refreshment now and again with that hose).


It has been so great spending time with and starting to get to know these wonderful people!

When we got home, it was too hot to stay inside, so we headed across the street to the beach. We waded out to our waists and started throwing the frisbee around, and soon a couple of kids came over and started trying to intercept it. The group grew until there were about 15 kids shouting--here! here!!--and diving all over to catch that frisbee and toss it to someone else. It was lots of fun.