Happy New Year everyone! And I just realized now that I never did wish all of you a Merry Christmas via the blog. So with this I will say that I hope all of you had a beautiful Christmas and that it was so nice talking to some of you over the holiday!
Sorry we haven't posted in a while. I won't promise any deep or profound insights about the last few weeks, much less any lengthy descriptions about the pictures, but I will post a few pictures to show what we've been up to and will try to give a few brief descriptions.

Shortlyafter New Year's we went to Nicaragua for an MCC retreat. It was a spiritual retreat and was quite refreshing overall. The kids had a blast swimming in the pool of the hotel we stayed at everyday with their friends Isaiah and Micah. The top picture shows Zam and Isaiah preping for the MCC talent show that they never ended up participating in. They chickened out when the MC announced their comedy act (they were going to tell knock, knock jokes). Oh well, most of the fun to be had was in the planning of the jokes anyway. Ziko, Hizee, and Micah, however, pulled out all the stops as they sang We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells. It was absolutely priceless (I will post the video when we have more time in town).

We didn't really do anything touristy in Nic. as there wasn't much free time during the retreat. We did go with the group on a short boat ride and saw this monkey (who was obviously used to posing for food) and saw this amazing yellow church that the kids thought Grandma Pat would like (because her favourite colour is yellow). It was nice to have a holiday but it was sure nice to come back home to Zacongo after our first extended time away from our new home. It felt so nice to have a home to come back to.