Andrea!!!

Andrea, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Hooray for family!

Hi there my wonderful amigos guatemaltecos!

Sorry to be such a lame blogger. It's funny how life just takes over, you know? I just spent the weekend with my twin brother Brian and then my grandparents. It was just wonderful to be able to talk with him and meet his friends (and especially girlfriend!), although I confirmed my suspicions that he got all of the athletic coordination and I got none. Sigh. (Oh well. I've been consoling myself with my mad Boggle skills at Windsor Park nursing home! But not quite as good as Helen's, although I suppose she's got about 65 years on me. Asi es la vida). And then being with my grandparents was so restful. It's such a blessing to allow people to care for you and love on you. And I feel even more blessed than that because my mom is coming to visit this Friday! Which means lots of homework before then (at least, when I'm not procrastinating with blog posts), but I'm so excited to be able to spend an entire weekend with such a wonderful person who also happens to be my mom.

I guess that's a bit of an update about Lauren's life. Love and miss you guys!!!

worst bloggers ever.

Seriously? Matt, Sarah, Emily- excellent. The rest of you? bleck.
Fall break = best time ever.
I went to Honeyrock(Wheaton's camp in the northwoods of Wisconsin). I shot a rifle(empowering), used a pottery wheel(humbling), canoed, ate s'mores, snuggled up by a fire to read/nap, mountain biked, shot arrows, sat around campfires, carved pumpkins, played games, made friends, watched people sail in pumpkins(it was a pretty big pumpkin...), etc... Basically, most relaxing weekend ever. My sister gets married in 4 days. AHHHHHHH. pray for me. I wrote my toast this weekend, and I'm hoping I won't be a blubbering mess when I give it. I love you all a lot. A LOT.
-Morgan

Time has FLOWN.

Seriously? It shouldn't be October yet. This is just ridiculous. This semester has gone by ridiculously fast. I've been sooooo blessed by friends, and God has continually showed me purpose here in the last week. I've struggled a lot with being away from my family in Guatemala(as my Wheaton RoHers can attest). It's been a really hard transition from mom to student. I've found it hard to talk about and extremely hard to process. I started going to the counseling center as well as opening up more about it, which I'm hoping will help. I know that God has me here for a reason, it's just hard to see in the midst of heartbreak. I'm trying to listen to him more and allow myself to grieve, which is pretty hard for me to do. I've found SUCH joy and purpose in this space of confusion, though. I coordinate a tutoring ministry here on campus where a bunch of Wheaton students drive down to the southside of Chicago every week and help kids with their homework. The kids live in the government housing projects in a rough part of town, and they're a little.... rough around the edges. This is my 2nd year doing the ministry, and last week the 2 girls I tutored last year came back. Their reaction to seeing me was pretty much one of the greatest moments of my life. It made me see a portion of God's plan for me here at Wheaton. It was as if God was saying, "See? It wasn't all in vain. I'll bless what you do."
In other news, my sister gets married in 2.5 weeks. !?!??!?! It's insane. There's so much to do, but I'm getting excited about it. I'm busy planning the bachelorette party, getting my dress fitted(because it is GIGANTIC), and talking Sara through all of the remaining details. I'm soooo excited, but I also can't imagine how INSANE that week before the wedding is going to be.
Prayer requests:
My continuing adjustment to life here, and figuring out what God wants in that
I'm speaking at Wyldlife this Thursday... AHHHHHH prayer please.


I love you all soooo much- I wish we could all live together forever. Ideally? We get one of those houses we picked out on Lake Atitlan and take all of our kids there. We all grow old together, hanging out with the natives(with our Spanish, which is obviously perfect) and eating yummy food. We'll obviously have a sauna and an in-house masseuse.

Hola =)

Hey ROH Guatemala family! This is my 1st blog ever. School is overwhelming. I have 4 exams between this next week. Just finished one of them, it was a take home midterm. 2 on Monday and 1 Tuesday night. It was a big adjustment back to college after being in Guatemala and home. Making some new friends with transfers and new freshmen that came in this year. Got sick last week with a sore throat that turned into a sinus infection. In bed all weekend through Tuesday really. Back to classes on Wednesday, so a lot of studying this weekend to make up time being sick. :( Anything I can be praying for? That's cool Allison, that Linette is staying with you.Emily, I got your support letter today! Will be praying for you. I miss all of you. Prayer requests for myself and family: My Mom is still trying to raise the air flight money to pay back her missions organization. Get totally well from this sickness. Also that I do not stress out about all I have to do this semester. My exams this next week to go well. We need to all go back to Guatemala soon! God Bless:)
Sara

Love and Miss

The title explains how I feel about y'all:)

As far as life updates go: Most of you have probably seen on Facebook that I decided to apply for the January World Race, got accepted, and confirmed last week that I'm going. So now the intense process of support raising begins. I have to raise the money kind of fast because I applied rather late. I actually leave for training camp 15 days from today and I have to have $1000 in my account, which is kind of daunting. However, I'm oddly not that stressed about it because I really feel like there's no way I'm going to raise $15,000 myself anyway and God is going to have to provide it. So I sent out about 90 support letters this morning and now I'm going to wait to see what that brings in and then start planning fundraisers to supplement. I'm excited to go to training camp because that will make this whole thing real and I'll get to meet the people I'm spending the next year of my life with. But I'm also not excited for the same reason...I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be real yet. Right now I'm living at home, spending a lot of time alone, and interning at my dad's ministry three days a week. So time is just kind of passing by quickly and I have no concept of its passing. I feel like in two seconds I'm going to wake up in a tent in Haiti and wish that I had spent the next three months a little more intentionally. So I guess my prayer requests would be my support raising, that I would have faith in that process, and that I can spend some good time with my parents and friends before I go. And I really, really miss Wheaton and everyone there so I want to get up there and spend time with people before I leave too. And as of right now things with the Central America trip that Walk Thru the Bible is supposed to take in November that I have been planning to go on are unsure. They are talking about possibly postponing it for a better time. So I guess pray that they don't because I REALLY want to get back down to Honduras & Guatemala before I leave for a year. I want to see the kids again and I want my mother to have the experience of being at Casa Bernabé so pray that the trip works out please:) Also, some of the health problems that I was having before Guatemala have returned so I think when I tell my mother that she's going to start the process all over again of me having lots of medical tests...which I'm obviously not looking forward to. I have to believe that I'm ok because I really think I'm supposed to leave on the World Race in January and if anything serious turns out to be wrong with me I won't be going so I'm choosing to believe that all the tests will turn out like before and I'll be able to go. But it's still not a process I'm looking forward to repeating. Last time it was painful, stressful, and really hard for my mother who is already under a pretty big emotional load because her mother's Alzheimer's is worsening, they just had to move my grandparents into an assisted living community, and she has to say goodbye to me for a year without knowing where I am or what I'm doing most of the time. So she's stressed to say the least. Anyway, sorry this turned out to be a kind of depressing update but I didn't intend it to be. I'm actually really excited about the World Race and the crazy year that I'm about to embark on, I just have some things to deal with first. I'm glad we have this blog so I can keep up to date on what's really going on in your lives. I'll also be blogging the whole process leading up to the WR and the 11 months and if you want to read it the website is http://emilytuttle.theworldrace.org I'm going to miss having other people, especially you Matt, to keep the blogs flowing when I get writer's block! Anyway, I can't wait to read your life updates and hear all your news!!

Amor y abrazos,

Emilia

Of course I'd have to be the one making a blog for you all.

Ok! Go! Post interesting things! Now! Do it! Now!

I'll start. It's looking like things are falling into place for me to live in Tokyo next summer. I don't know anything about what I'd be doing, but the missionary I emailed totally skipped the initial phase of "Well here are some programs you can look into" which is designed to keep overly excitable people like me from going into shock at the endless possibilities that actually exist. Nope, he was sort of a jerk, basically telling me that I could pretty much do whatever I wanted over there, even creating my own nightlife ministry just so long as I gave them the contact info of all the crazy kids I meet so they can follow up. Anyway, I have a bunch of praying to do before I email him back. I'm currently leaning toward just working in their church and asking for freedom to roam around. I dunno. We'll see what God does with this.

Prayer request: Besides wisdom for the above, do y'all remember that sinus infection I got a week or so before we left? I still have it and it's been absolutely wrecking me these past few weeks. Antibiotics didn't get rid of it and it's morphed into a really unfortunate cold/sinus monster that feels like it's trying to finish the job that the lawnmower couldn't. I hate that lawnmower! I've been having random other health issues, from multiple rounds of crazy infected mouth sores (over 3 weeks straight now) and a bruised/maybe broken nose that makes blowing the 30-something gallons of snot out of my brain cavity moderately painful. I'm soooo tired. Like, sooooo tired.

School's been great though! It started out really rough but it's progressively becoming what I was hoping this year would be like.

Anyway, I gotta go. My old dorm floor does a thing called Chill Day where they take a bunch of couches and put them outside and we play with legos and have a root beer keg. Crazy kids.

Love you all.

-Matt