Since our last update, we have had the opportunity to jump into a few ministries here and around Puebla and we wanted to share a bit about what God is doing and ways you can specifically pray.

Last Thursday, I (Tyler) was invited by a partner church to travel outside the city for an evening of evangelism in the community. We visited a few homes up in the mountains, sharing Bible stories and praying with the families and their friends. With my limited Spanish, I did my best to follow the conversations and learn as much as I could about Bible storying in the Latin American context. Please pray for continued opportunities for me to join in these visits, and for the families who open their homes each week to come to know Jesus.

Then on Monday, I (Rachel) was able to attend one of our church’s ministries where they bring dinner to the Children’s Hospital and pray with the parents of sick children. The church collects donations for drinks, sandwiches, and dulces (sweets), then a small group meets in the hospital waiting room. The loud speaker announces to the hospital that all parents are invited to come grab a delicious meal. While they eat, church members sit with them and ask about their children, writing down their names and sicknesses on a small piece of paper. Then, they pray for their family and the healing of their child.

The children are also prayed for at that week’s prayer meeting and then the small slips of paper will be handed out on Sunday so that the children can be prayed for by the rest of the church. I am very excited to join them for this monthly ministry, increasingly growing in my Spanish and soon speaking with and praying for the families myself. Please pray for this outreach ministry to continue to grow and for me to be able to engage well with this opportunity.

Lastly, this weekend our whole family was invited to join in a weekly outreach opportunity for kids in our community. We knew very little about it, but went with open minds and an eagerness to learn. Turns out, our church meets with two small groups of kids who are all recipients of Operation Christmas Child boxes. After receiving their gifts, the kids return each week to play games, learn a Bible story, and pray together. There were even a few kids who came for the first time and received their gifts this weekend. So cool!

Our home church in the U.S. always packs and sends so many boxes overseas, and it was such a joyful surprise to learn that our church here in Mexico is one of the many churches around the world who receives and distributes them each year. From what we understand, there are about twenty kids participating in the three month long program. Please pray for these children to learn so much about the love of Jesus and for the group leaders from our church to teach and lead well.

Two key dates for prayer:
Tuesday, February 13th at 3:30 EST: Rachel will have her first oral language interview.
Tuesday, February 20th at 4:00 EST: Tyler will have his first oral language interview.

Oral language interviews are regular assessments that we will take during our first term to help determine our current language level and areas of needed growth (which are many). We really appreciate your prayers for clear thoughts, calm hearts, and kind, patient conversation partners for these exams.

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel

Sorry, the title of this blog post is a little misleading, our new life is not actually becoming normal, but it is becoming more normal to experience new things.

We have so much to tell you!

To kick off the Christmas season, the kids performed in a Christmas play on their last day of school before Christmas break. They did such a great job, and it was so fun to see them engage with their friends and even speak a bit of Spanish. Tyler and I were surprised by some of the phrases they knew. They are doing so well. Please continue praying for Asher, Graycen, and Wrenley to make friends and stay encouraged through cultural and language differences.

One week later, we finished up our last week of school (for 2023) on December 22nd. We “fell over the finish line” and were so grateful to begin the time of rest and rejuvenation. People keep saying that language learning is a marathon and not a sprint, but I’m beginning to think they have never run a marathon before because that’s super challenging as well!

To start off our Christmas break, on December 23rd we attended a special Christmas Eve service and meal at our church. It was a great time of fellowship and cultural learning. The girls and their Sunday School class had prepared two super fun songs to sing, and it was so fun to cheer them on as they sang in Spanish and performed the motions! Wrenley still bursts out singing one of the songs from that night… “Sal-va-dor!”

There is a sweet couple from our church who has really helped us get involved. They have invited us to many events, met us to study Spanish together, and even taken us on a really fun day trip! We were so happy to be asked to their home for a Christmas Eve meal. We were a bit shocked to learn that on Christmas Eve it is traditional to spend the evening with family and share a special meal at midnight! You read that right. We were blessed to have the opportunity to be in their home on Christmas Eve night, and even though it meant we didn’t get home until 1:15am on Christmas morning, we will always cherish the memory of our very first Christmas in Latin America. Surprisingly, the girls handled the late night just fine, and were excited to get to sleep quick so they could wake up and open gifts just a few hours later!

On Christmas Day we opened presents, played with the kid’s new toys, cooked a meal together, called grandparents, and spent simple quality time together. It was different than years past, but wonderful in all new ways. A few days later, on Tyler’s birthday, we got to meet our future team leaders (once we get to Guatemala) in person! After eleven months of talking over video calls and messages, we finally had an opportunity to meet the Whites. We had a wonderful visit with them and it made us even more excited for Guatemala!!! Thanks for helping us celebrate Tyler’s birthday!

A few days later, our sweet friends from church invited us on a day trip with their grandkids to a nearby town to see a bunch of onyx and marble statues! The girls had a blast posing for pictures with all the animals and we enjoyed their company so much!

One of the requirements during our SLAM year (learning language and culture in Mexico) is that we have to be at a comfortable level of Spanish before getting a Mexican drivers license and being approved to drive. It has honestly been a pretty big challenge relying on public transportation and Ubers as a family of five, but we are happy to say that last week we took our drivers tests (miraculously passed, it was all in Spanish) and have been issued a vehicle. Now the next challenge is learning the safe and reliable routes, and navigating all the unwritten road rules. Please pray for safe daily travel to school and around the community, especially as we are getting used to this new reality. While we are sad to miss our daily visit with Samuel, the sweet man who would drive us to school and back each day, we are so so so grateful to have a vehicle now.

After our amazing break, we are back at school and getting geared up for nine weeks of classes before our next check point! We are excited to be even more intentional over the next few weeks about meeting with friends in the community or in our home! One afternoon last week we had Tania, our teacher and friend, over to our house after school. We shared a meal, played games, and had a great time together (sólo en español)! She was incredibly encouraging and so involved with the girls, her visit blessed me so much. We also took her to our playground and ran into a neighbor friend who we have loved getting to know! It was a special day for me as I felt a huge step forward in building friendships!

How can you specifically pray for us over the next few weeks? Please pray for our continued language development and opportunities to put the things we are learning into practice. We have so much to learn, and are just crossing over the quarter mark in our marathon (three of twelve months complete). Pray we can speak confidently, try new things, laugh at our mistakes, and keep the stress level low as we keep pushing deeper into Spanish.

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel

Enjoy this brief video update of our first two months here in Puebla. Thank you so much for your support and prayers!

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel

Our second cycle is complete! One of the highlights of the past three weeks has been that we were both in class together. It reminded us so much of being in high school chemistry and photography class again! This Monday we will start another three week cycle, and hopefully we can be together for this one as well. Pray for us as we continue to dig into Spanish and implement what we learn daily.

The last three weeks have been filled with many ups and downs. Our kids were perfectly healthy during our first month in Puebla, but boy have they dealt with a lot of sickness these last few weeks. They’ve had colds, trouble breathing, upset stomachs, vomiting, bug bites causing swollen hands, and even a lice exposure at school, which really sent me into a downward spiral (luckily, no signs of lice… yet).

Shout out to our doctor friends from FPO, my previous coworkers at the dental clinic, and my mom for being there when I needed them to keep me sane. Praise the Lord, as I write this, everyone is feeling well tonight. Amidst the stressfulness and sadness that comes with sick kiddos, the Lord has been with us. He has lifted our spirits, given us strength to keep going, even after many sleepless nights, and comforted us as we got to know our new home better by exploring our local pharmacy and finding a pediatrician.

We feel like we have an idea of what the typical “rhythm of the week” will be like for us. Seven weeks in and we are finding that we usually know what to expect, aren’t thrown too many curve balls, and are able to engage with people well with the limited Spanish we know. We know the curve balls will come, and not all days will be “normal” or go as planned, but it has been refreshing to feel a little more on top of things despite the sick kiddos these last three weeks!

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel

We are nearing our one-month mark in Puebla, Mexico!

Each day we find ourselves feeling more settled into our new home and more comfortable with our daily routines. We still sometimes find ourselves in disbelief that we are here, but honestly these feelings come way less often than when we first arrived. 

We have found a few grocery stores to frequent, made a few friends at school, church, and around the neighborhood, and started to get into a routine that is familiar for us and the girls. We joked that we hadn’t planned or cooked dinners since before we moved out of our house in Mechanicsville at the beginning of June, so it took us a few weeks to get the hang of cooking and planning meals again! We don’t have it down just yet, but are happy to be cooking dinners most evenings.

Our Spanish school is pretty great, and we have enjoyed our first three weeks so much! The school is broken up into three-week cycles, so every three weeks we get a new teacher, a new classroom, and potentially new classmates. I’m looking forward to the variety of teaching styles that we will experience over the next year. Tomorrow marks our second “first day” of school! Pray for us as we once again meet our new teachers and begin to learn even more in our second cycle. 

Tyler with his Level One class.

Rachel with her Level One class.

We have also really enjoyed our church! Everyone is so friendly and welcoming, and we love the conversations we have before and after the service. We spend our time trying to follow along with the message and noting words that we don’t know yet, which are a lot!

The girls are doing well! They enjoy going to school but are quick to say they miss being with mom and dad while we are away. We have found a nanny to help with the girls on two afternoons a week to allow us some kid-free time to be in the community practicing language. She knows Spanish and English and loves Jesus too! She has taken them to our neighborhood playground, colored and painted with them, and of course, given them all the snacks they could ask for!

With Love,
Tyler & Rachel

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Below, we have posted some miscellaneous photos from the last few weeks. Enjoy!

Happy 2nd Birthday to Wrenley! Her sweet teachers made her this crown to wear!

Some days school is exhausting and you fall asleep on mom during the ride home!

We are loving our weekly pizza and movie nights! We have watched Coco twice now to be able to talk to the girls about Día de Muertos. This particular night was The Jungle Book! Makes my heart happy being able to keep up this weekly tradition!

We have so enjoyed exploring the malls near where we live! The girls shopped the whole mall and picked out these craft items. That water color paint is gone now! They painted their little hearts out!

Had to end the trip to the mall with some ice cream!

We got to enjoy the famous Cemitas, a delicious sandwich found here in Puebla.

This is one of Rachel’s last classes at Starbucks (down the street from school). We played UNO and then quizzed each other on our numbers in Spanish!

Below are pictures from several of the Día de Muertos decorations around the city. We went out exploring one night this week to learn more about this holiday celebrated in Mexico.

And then yesterday (Saturday) we took the small drive to Atlixco. Here we saw more decorations for Día de Muertos and hiked a mountain with a glass overlook and a beautiful yellow church at the top.

The morning started with the clearest blue sky! You can see the view from the main street in our neighborhood! The sun was so bright! That is a mountain behind the girls, with snow on the top! To the left is the volcano but you can’t see it in this photo.

Brunch in the center of the Zócalo (plaza in the center of town).

Obviously, the kids were a little tired at this point and didn’t want to pose for the incredible picture. That’s okay!

Asher was eating it up!

Graycen preferred the shade!

And Wren got so happy when strapped to mom!

Just Dad and Asher continued the hike to the tippy top!

And here the girls are on their way to church this morning! This is our “touch the wall and wait for the Uber” spot! These kids are so great!