A Birthday Party

On Saturday the 26 of January, we had a celebration of my (Pete's) 50th Birthday Party. We invited a few of our friends plus the kids in the neighborhood. Below a few play dodgeball.

I had to prove to myself that I could keep up with the older boys so I played soccer with them for about 2 hours before my party started. We won.

These two girls are sisters and live across the driveway from Patty and I.

A few guy friends ...

One of the fathers in the hood volunteered to cook up some food. He did Barbacoa. It's meat cooked in it's own juices. It was excellent! Our next door neighbor cooked some spanish rice too. Also delicious! I thought their food made my day a very special one to remember. We used the downstairs apartment (Farm Drive's main room) for the food.

Heavy rain was forecasted for that night. It was a nice warm day and the rain held off till the party was over. Yay! Below are some very special girl-friends!

We were able to use both the downstairs apartment and the outside play area. Since the rain held off and it was fairly nice outside, we were able to be outside also. Even had our firepit going.

It was a a very special party and it meant a lot to me to have so many friends, both old and new share this day with me! Thank you to all who helped and those who attended.

Younger Boys Nite Out

Friday night we took the younger boys, (elementary school age) to Chuck e Cheese. They were all excited all week anticipating Friday night! The seat belts in the car had a hard time holding them on the way there! A night of pizza, soda, and huge amounts of tokens were all part of the action.



A few even got to meet Chuck himself.



One of them had a hard time breaking away from the action to eat Pizza. He was so enthralled with the car video game he was playing. I had to tell him the idea of the game was to stay on the road. You figure out which one I'm talking about below.

Robbie made the comment that this is the training ground for future casino players!

A Couple of Things

Around the middle of the day, I decided to go for my usual Saturday jog. On the way to the car there were a couple of guys that were out front and they asked where I was going. ( a standard question around here, they always want to go with you if they can!) I told them I was going to the local high school to go run around the track. They of course asked if they could go and I said yes but it is pretty boring around there. Ronnie (pictured below) ran with me for about a mile. I was impressed. I encouraged him to go out for the track team or the cross country team when he gets to high school.

I asked him how things are going with his aunt and their little newborn baby which has Down's. He is still in the intensive care unit in the hospital because he cannot eat on his own. I asked Ronnie if he has seen the boy yet and he said no. He needs medical records to get in and he doesn't know where they are. I asked him if he knew what Down's syndrome is and he said he did and he knew of Steve's grandson (our landlord) has the same thing. They went to the Monterey Bay aquarium once together.

I enjoy these moments when I can get these guys alone and talk.



Last weekend, Patty and I went over to Capitola to get our monthly fix of sun and ocean. We were sitting on the bench that are overlooking the beach and waves and I had my camera with telephoto lens with me. Patty asked me to take a picture of this girl that reminded her of her sister when she was a little girl. I said yeah right. Nothing like a middle age man taking pictures of little girls with a telephoto lens at the beach. I handed her the camera.



The waves, the ocean, the sun, it was a wonderful day!

Meanwhile back at the Center today. ( I said a couple of things!) A couple of nicely dressed men from the Jehovah's Witnesses stopped by to talk. I engaged them for awhile and asked them a bunch of questions. They were really focused on the Kingdom of God and Jesus's immenent return and real soon. I forgot how much they focused on this. I asked them to look around and told them they were standing on a place that God's Kingdom was already established and very busy at work. Below them at that very moment Bible Club was going on and many children were hearing about the hope that is here now, not sometime in the future. It's amazing that people can get so wrapped up in the hope of Jesus's return and the establishing His Kingdome at that time instead of getting busy and establish it NOW!

Guys NIte Out

Last night we had about 6 junior high boys go over to Robbie's parents house for a guys night out. (Thank you Chuck and Kim!) We played Halo all night, literally. Well I heard they stopped at 2:30. I didn't make it. Not that I couldn't but I had to make sure Cosmo was not lonesome! They really get into it and enjoy playing for hours.



Robbie set up 3 tv's and connected up so we played on 3 sets and had 3 teams for awhile. Then we changed and had the older guys play the junior high boys and me. (Not that I was any help). I actually figured it out that if I go into the open and draw the enemy out to kill me, that leaves them open to be picked off by me teamates. I'll do anything to sacrifice for the team!

He just got killed. Oh well, you can continue to play in about 5 to 10 seconds.

The guys. It was even hard to get them to stop long enough to take a group picture.

Email from Stacy

Here is an email from Stacy who also lives in the neighborhood. Stacy and her husband Robbie moved into the Farm Drive hood this past fall to join us in this mission field. We asked her if we could post this and she said yes.

Here's a glimpse of what goes on at the other end of the street:

Robbie and I had a bunch of kids over tonight. It started with Robbie giving Saul his weekly guitar lesson (which he is doing really well at, he's practicing!) and then Lesley came over to bake cupcakes.

After that we had all of the Barajas kids (including Anthony), Breseida, Omar, Jasmin, Alex, and for a short time Christina, Melissa, and their cousin. We had so much fun. We were all playing Jenga and Sorry while the cupcakes baked and then everyone frosted and decorated their own.

Eventually all the kids left and I walked Jasmin home. I got the chance to say hi to Elizabeth, Dariella, and Lupe; the cool part of that was that the girls gave me big hellos and talked to me in front of Herra (sorry I butchered that name). He didn't say much but I had the chance to talk to him.

The best part of the night was when I came back home. The Barajas kids hadn't left yet. Marcus and Lesley were cleaning up the kitchen, Maria was picking up the games, and Erick was getting homework help from Robbie. It was so sweet to see Robbie help him figure things out. Robbie's small group began to arrive so I had the opportunity to help Erick with his homework. The other kids left and Erick and I went into the office to finish his homework and it was so neat to be able to help him and encourage him throughout his homework. He's really good at math and he's a pretty good reader too.

I write this to you two because you know how rewarding this feeling is. I can't imagine living anywhere else right now; it is so cool to see how God works when you are where He wants you to be.

Before we left for vacation I was starting to get into a routine of working a lot because I like my job and it makes a pretty good living, but I've realized that it doesn't matter how many hours I work because when I'm doing what God wants me to do, He IS going to provide. I was starting to sacrifice my time here for work and I'm realizing that I can't do that because I will miss out on moments like tonight. Tonight was so precious and I don't want to give that up for anything, ANYTHING.

Let's love these kids, Stacy

SF ZOO

Hi all. Patty here. On Thursday, January 10th, 4 leaders and 13 kids piled into cars and drove to the San Francisco Zoo. We were worried it would rain and it did but we had several hours before it poured and we ended up seeing all that we wanted to.

The day we went was opening day after a tiger killed someone Christmas Day. That was tragic and sad but we had planned this for some time so we still wanted to go. We were glad it was opening again and we'd get to go before school started back up. We had no idea what to expect. When we were in front of the penguin exhibit (my favorite) 3 TV stations and 2 news papers stopped us and interviewed us. That night we were on channels 5 and 7. Fun! I recorded it of course so now the kids can see themselves over and over.

The best part of the day though was driving with 4 fun girls, being with all the kids, walking around, taking lots of pictures, and seeing all the cool animals. Below are some pictures of the kids and some favorite and not so favorite animals we got to see.

Thank you to Brent, Ruben and Dawn for all you did as leaders that day! I couldn't have done it without you and the kids love you too!

Body Worlds 2

Non stop fun. Patty and I took 2 older kids from the neighborhood and met Brent and Sarah at the Tech Museum and looked at dead bodies.
This was really quite an interesting exhibit. I asked everyone what was their favorite part and most said seeing the different fetus' on display. Everything on display was real. Not fabricated plastic or rubber manekins but real people that were preserved in a process called plastination.
I liked the part of the human lungs. They had one healthy, next to that one was a smokers lung, and the last one belonged to a worker in a coal mine. Pretty amazing the differences. Every kid should see that if they ever consider smoking!
But something also struck me as I walked through. There were probably a lot of people at the museum that thought these crazy, wonderful bodies we were looking at were an evolved accident! This is too intricate of a machine to me to just "happen" or "evolve". I believe we were created by a pretty amazing God.

New Years Eve

We opened the Center for New Year's Eve so the kids had someplace to go for the evening. Below is a video I captured while we were sitting around the fire pit before we made Smores.

Just press the arrow button to watch.

Listen to the music in the background. It was NOT the music that was playing for most of the night!

We could not decide if we were going to stay up til midnight or not, so we decided to see how it played out. Of course there were lots of kids still around and Patty had some Poppers for the kids to shoot off. They had lots of fun. There were also some kids that came around that are "too old" to be at the Center but they still came by. It was nice to at least say hello to them.

We had fun playing different games and of course they always enjoy making and eating s'mores. It was a little crazy when we were making them. Probably 10 kids making s'mores while we still had another 10-15 standing around at the same time!

NEW YEAR'S EVE DANCE PARTY

Some of the kids wanted to have a dance party on New Year's Eve. So here is some of it that I captured on video. This is Anthony. He is 4 years old. Just click on the arrow below the video and it will start playing.

Enjoy