Happy 2009!

With all the Christmas activities at church and then getting ready for a three-week trip to visit family in South Brazil, I've neglected to keep up with our blog. This will be a quick summary of the month of December for us.

Since every Saturday night, the men, women and teens each have their own meeting, they each also had their own Christmas party. I spoke at the women's Christmas get-together and David spoke at the men's and teens' get-togethers.


This is a pretty typical cake to have at parties. Gotta love the huge chocolate shavings on top. So good!

One of the families at Valentina have a little beach house that they graciously make available to the church for special occasions. The men had their Christmas party there.

The teens went to the beach at night and had fun playing games in the sand.



I taught the kids a couple of new Christmas songs and had them present them at our Christmas service. The picture doesn't do it justice, but the kids all dressed up in costumes -- angels, shepherds, Mary and Joseph, wise men -- and sang their songs. The first song started off by inviting children from different lands to come see the newborn Jesus, so some of the kids were dressed in outfits from different countries (hence the little boy wearing a sombrero in the manger scene) and they gathered around Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. It was a lot of work to put that short presentation together, but it was worth it and the kids did a great job.


The past couple of weeks we have been in Curitiba spending time with our families. We had some difficulty getting here since we forgot to take any kind of document for Gabriel to travel and then our flights kept getting delayed, but we made it only about 7 hours after we were originally supposed to have gotten in.

Gabriel is having fun playing with his cousins. He especially loves to follow Jeremiah around, who is less than a year older than Gabriel. I can see those two getting into a lot of trouble together ...



David and Gabriel model their Christmas presents -- their soccer team jersey. Note: I do not claim this team. I cheer for a team that's actually good. Haha.

My parents, Gabriel and I at the New Year's Eve service at the church where David grew up. The service started at 9 PM and David was the special speaker. Then we had supper around 10:30 and everyone stayed until past midnight to bring in the new year together.

So that's it in a nutshell. Tomorrow David heads to Florianopolis with his brother and Dad, so I'm guessing our next blog will be about his trip. Happy New Year from the Taylors in Brazil!