We are back

The kids and I have returned from our fast trip to the states. We had a good time with family. I stayed a week at my grandmothers and then a little less than a week at my sister's house in Tulsa. It is a new and beautiful house. I had lots of fun playing with my niece Elizabeth while there.
I was blessed with a car and cell phone to use during the time that I was there. It came in so handy to have my own car when lugging around the three kids. Thank you so much James and Marilyn for lending me the car etc.

We are working on getting back into the swing of things. This Sunday we have a get together in the afternoon with a family that we have been getting closer with and a group of their friends. We are excited about this and can't wait to see what God has planned with these families. Please keep this in your prayers. Norma and Rodolfo are the couple that we know out of this group. Norma and her family have a great heart and are very humble loving people.

Please also keep in your prayers a new outreach that we are planning.
We have been feeling for a while a call to minister to the poor. We would like to go into the poor neighborhood and minister to their needs but also plant some new churches. We are still unsure exactly what our plan is going to be. We don't know the best way to go about it but we feel like it has been on our hearts for a long time and we want to take action. Pray that we will get the guidance we need to know how to go about it.

On a much lighter note I have been tagged. This is a game in the blog world and, much like my friend Carolyn who sent this to me, I am too non confrontational not to play. So here goes.

Here are the rules. 1)Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. (2) People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules. (3) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. (4) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I like the color pink. I never would have said that before I had girls. In fact I didn't like pink util Abigail was born. Now I really like the color a lot.

2. I was the football manager for our High School football team. Until I had girls I was much less girly than I now am. I wanted to play on the football team but of course that wasn't allowed. So, I just became the manager. I loved it. I have great memories of my 3 years as manager and even got a Football letter!!

3. I volunteered at the Oklahoma City Children's hospital in the burn clinic. I started there a week before the OKC bombing. Every child from the bombing (except one) came to our clinic/ICU. I was honored to get to change their dressings, care for their wounds and speak with family members.

4. One of my favorite things in the world to do is cook. I often dream of opening my own business. I just can't decided if I would want to open my own restaurant or bakery. Both sound like so much fun to me.

5. I detests cats!! When I was in High School I got a job cleaning the neighbors house. They had a cat that would wait for me to go down to the basement and then would sit at the top of the stairs and trap me in. When I would pass by the cat would hiss and scratch me. It would also hide behind furniture and jump out at me. Before this I liked cats!! Needeless to say they had a really clean basement because I learned to just stay in the basement and wait for the cat to move.

6. I love school. I loved college and would go back in a heart beat. Sometimes I think I would even go back and get the same major just because I liked the classes so much. I dream of going to graduate school one day. FYI my major is in Human Development. FYI I just had to ask Cory what my major was!! Maybe I do need to go retake the classes

7. I am a penny pincher. There is nothing I love more than a good bargain. Coupons are a great friend of mine. Clearances excite me!!!

8. My wildest dream is to meet Josh Groban. I would love to go to one of his concerts and then have him over for a good homecooked Italian meal. Of course Cory would be invited as well.

I am tagging the following friends - Kim Rush, Monica, Timbra, Heather, Lucy, Jessica Johnson, Erin

Alton Gale Witcher

I am writing from Oklahoma. I am on an unplanned trip. On Thursday the 13Th I received a call that my grandfather passed away. I quickly got on the Internet and found out that the only flight left for the day left in 3 1/2 hours so I bought the tickets and packed fast. I brought the three kids because Cory is in Lubbock.
The funeral was on Saturday. My dad preached and did a wonderful job of remembering my grandad and his great characteristics. He was a very good man who loved people. He loved honesly and fairness. Wish you all could have known him.
There wasn't much time between his passing and his funeral but still so many people from around the world found out about it. I am very thankful for the many people who have shown love to my family during this time. I received a phone call today from Mexico and it was a great blessing to me. We were very blessed by the group from Yukon that attended the funeral. There were three carloads from Yukon and I can not express how grateful I am to you guys for the love you have showed our family the past 29 years and especially this week. God has truly blessed us through you.
I will be in the states until the 26Th. I figured if I was going to buy three plain tickets I was going to make it worthwhile. I will be going to Tulsa on Wed or Thursday to spend some time with my sister and her family. They are in a new house that I am super excited to see. My one year old niece is going to ditch daycare and spend the day with me - I can't wait.
Please say a special prayer for my grandmother. She has been surrounded (literally) by a lot of family. There are 9 of us that are still staying at her house this week. After this week everyone will go back to Croatia, Tulsa, South Dakota, and Mexico. She will be left with no family any where near. She has some great friends but they are ALL sick, having surgeries, loosing relatives of their own, or have sick spouses. Pray that God will give her strength.
My grandfather will be greatly missed. Even Josiah was so sad when he found out. He said to me "I am really sad that Grandad died. We had a lot of fun together. He called me Curly (that was their nickname for each other"

Abigail and Spanish

Abigail has really been speaking a lot of Spanish lately. The best thing about a kid learning another language is that they don't worry about what anyone will think of them. They are not self concious like adults.
She was outside playing yesterday and something made her sad. In Spanish she told me "I am about to start raining (llover)". She intended to say crying (llorar). Then today she wanted to say that "we were out of ice cream" (nieve) but she said "we are out of a boyfriend" (novio). There was a Mexican in our house at the time and she thought it was really cute and couldn't help laughing at Abigail.

PRAYERS

Just left Abigail's room from nigh time prayers. Here is her prayer word for word
"Thank you for this day. This is Cinderella and she speaks English. Robots speak Spanish. Amen!"
She is three and it is hard for her understand what she is doing when she is praying. It is interesting to me though because she knows there is something special about it. When she prays she talks different than at any other time. Her prayers are ALWAYS amusing and I know God enjoys them a lot.

I have been trying for a really long time now to get a good picture of the kids. I finally got one!!

Marathon

I am so proud of Cory. Yesterday he ran his first Half Marathon!! He ran it in a little over 2 hours. I believe it was 2:05. The most amazing thing about it is that he took the summer off from running and just started back about two weeks ago!! How many people can run a half marathon after only two weeks of running?
The run was part of his training for a Full Marathon in December. I think I am more excited about the Dec Marathon that he is. It is at the beach and a few other missionaries are running in it. I am excited to get to visit with the wives!
At the end of the Half Marathon Josiah got to join Cory and run the last 100 yards. When they got done Josiah said "Dad isn't it great that I can run as much as you!" he is still convinced that he ran just as much as Cory did. This morning Abigail got up at 6. I told her to be quiet so that Cory could rest since his body was tired from the race. She made sure to remind me "and Josiah too!"
Congratulations Cory - you did great.

We are starting the 3rd week of school and the kids still love it. Abigail had her first homework today. She was really excited. She loved doing anything her big brother gets to do. She was suppose to draw a picture of herself. Josiah didn't like homework much last year but he is doing great with it this year. He usually clears his plates from lunch and asks to get him homework done. He knows that once it is done he will get to go outside and play. Our housing edition has 34 houses all inside of a double gate. This makes it great for the kids because they can run around and not have to worry about cars. There are around 40 children in our edition. Just this past year Josiah has become good friends with one of our neighbor kids. Although there are so many kids there aren't really any Josiah's age. The ones that are his age are girls or they are boys that hang out with their big brothers. So he has become good friends with Mario. Mario's dad is a professional goalie for Atlas. Josiah has the jersey, bracelets, and a few signed posters! He is a big time Atlas fan (or at least a Mario Rodriguez fan). His dad played for another team a few years ago and we went to 3 or 4 of his games. He is now on a "better" team and he hasn't been able to give us tickets. Well, last week he gave us three tickets and we were really excited to get to go. We got a baby sitter for the girls and headed to the game. In the previous game Atlas played the Chivas. They are both Guadalajara teams and its is a big game every season. During the previous game Mario (The dad and son have the same name) made a mistake and the other team scored. The whole season the team has been playing horrible so far they have 1 of the 18 possible points for the season. Well, I guess that the fans need someone to take their frustration out on and who better than the goalie. The WHOLE game the crowd was boohing Mario. Everytime that he touched the ball the entire crowd would booh and say "Goal" to remind him of his mistake in the previous game. There were three men (one in front of us, one behind us and one to the side of us) whose only purpose for being at the game was to talk bad about Mario. They spent the whole game yelling abscene things to him. I have never experienced anything like this. The fans were cussing and yelling at their own team the whole entire game. I felt so offended at the things that they were yelling to Mario. They were insulting his character, family etc. I wanted to yell out that he is a nice person and tell them all the good things about him. But, of course I did not do that because I knew it would not be the safe or smart thing for me to do. I was so sad for his wife and son who were in the same stands I was in listening to all that was being said about Mario.
When Cory and I were reflecting on the experience on the way home we couldn't help but think about Jesus and his family. I am sure they felt so much worse than I did when they heard all the insults that were being yelled at Jesus. When he was being crucified so many things were yelled at him and so much injustice was done to him. Thank God that he withstood all the stuff thrown at him and died for us.