Jason's New Mohawk

In honor of our 11 month anniversary and the beginning of his Spring Break ... Jason decided to sport a new hair-do. What do you think??
This style lasted all of about two minutes :)

By Faith...

My daily devotional (Streams in the Desert) often has a very good and very pointed view of our lives as Christians and the things that God sends our way in this life...

Today's verse was from Hebrews 11:8

" By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going"

It goes on to later say in verse 13

"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth."

I remember these verses catching me the last time I came across them and they catch me even now...

Something I had underlined in the devotional portion when I read this date last year was this:

"In no way is it enough to set out cheerfully with God on any venture of faith. You must also be willing to take your ideas of what the journey will be like and tear them into tiny pieces, for nothing on the itinerary will happen as you expect."

A beautiful word picture about our expectations and God's design for our lives ... Jason and I still don't know where we will be located after we leave New York in July and I have many friends who are in similar situations right now, so of course these words and these verses ring loudly in my mind.

Brooklyn Cupcakes

This weekend, we left Manhattan (gasp!) for our cupcake run. Jason had been researching the next stop on our cupcake road and had read some good reviews about a place in Brooklyn called Ladybird. It was a charming little shop for some tiny tables in the front windows and too many delicious options to choose from -- we went with our usual Red Velvet and then opted for a Black & White. They were scrumptious and we were glad to have ventured out of Manhattan.

Puerto Rican Sunshine

After four days of being warm, returning to NYC was a little difficult, BUT Spring does finally seem to be arriving here, so that takes a bit of the sting out of it. Julie & I had a simply perfect time!! It was so good just to be able to spend some uninterrupted time together...something I don't we'd had more than a few hours of since I left for Tonga. Here are a few memories and photos from our time in Puerto Rico.

Day One

View of San Juan as we flew in ... after landing we drove 2 - 3 hours to the Western (and less commercialized) side of the island. On our way, we stopped at "Taco Maker," sort of a Puerto Rican Taco Bell. It wasn't too bad...we were also very hungry!

We arrived at our guest house to find this awesome lamp waiting for us in our room!!

After our long travel day we weren't up for much more than dinner and relaxing in the tropical warmth ... and it was wonderful!

Day Two

After breakfast at our guest house, I chased a few of the very large lizards around - I was glad that they were outside and not inside our room! I couldn't believe this one with a whole moth in its mouth!

We started our day by heading to the El Faro lighthouse which was just a 1/2 mile from our guest house, then headed to a small beach to get in some serious relaxing!

We stopped for lunch in the town of Boqueron for a late lunch and our first taste of Puerto Rican beer - Medalla light. We were completely surprised to see these cars and many others like them parked around the town.

After our lunch in Boqueron, we headed to the large public beach ... although there were quite a few people, we really enjoyed all of the trees (and bathroom facilities!)

When we arrived in San German, we came again to the realization how bad our guide book was. It listed the street that this old church was on, but did not provide even a basic map of the town...we assumed it must be a very small place with the church being right off the main drag...we were VERY surprised to see what a large city San German was when we arrived. We have no idea how we actually found the church, but we did and we were SO excited!

Our last stop of the day was a trip into a Mangrove swamp to watch glowing micro-organisms glow in the water as a young Puerto Rican boy swam around stirring it up...who could turn that down? It was actually pretty cool to take a small boat through a Mangrove labyrinth until we arrived in a very calm still area, then to see the black water turn glowing green just by being stirred up!

Day Three

We had decided that today, we would go for a hike and to see a waterfall in PR's "central corridor" region. On the map it appeared that it would be a 1 - 2 hour drive to our destination...appearances can be decieving, can't they??

This is the first of many stops we took to gawk at the beautiful area we were driving through.
We stopped for lunch in a little town up in the hills ... this whole plate of food for $4.50 ... and it was delicious! This church was in the center of town - something I love about Latin American countries...every town, no matter what the size has a center square with at least one church.
We drove through some beautiful, LUSH countryside...I love the tropics!
After 3 - 4 hours of driving on extremely windy roads which were barely a single lane wide (for 2 way traffic!), we finally found this beautiful waterfall.
Sunset as we drove back to our guest house...