The Littles' quotes of the week...

• James sits down and plays random notes very seriously on the piano for about 3 minutes and stands up when he finishes, proclaiming "I like to call that..."Hibernating 'aminals' "

• Keren was holding a Cinderella school folder in Wal-Mart, opening and closing it when suddenly the corner pokes her in the eye and she yells "Owwwwww...T-Rella( cinderella) in mine "Oyyyy"(eye)!!"

• Jeremiah walks into the bathroom at our pool, shivers and says "UMM, POLAR BEARS could live in here."

• I ask the boys to go up and get ready for bed...they quickly come back with..

James:"Well!! Mom is upstairs taking a shower and we want to give her quiet time alone with no noise upstairs!" Josiah: "Yea!!" Jeremiah: "Yea! For Mother's Day!"

• Our pool that we are members of has a lazy river and the other day, it was starting to get a little crowded. Josiah sees this, shakes his head and says..."Mom, just look at all those lazy people."

• Jeremiah, James and I were playing a memory game and as Jeremiah is winning, he chuckles and says "I wundo how God made me so smart..."

• Jeremiah told me a story about an ant the other day that was walking through our house with a chip on his back and according to Jer, the ant was teasing the other ants saying "Ha, ha I have a chip and you don't! I have a chip...ha..ha." and then Jer says..." So then I squished him!! and he said "ohhh..i guess I can't tease anymore!"

(This cute picture was taken by the lovely Rachel.)

• Keren's trademark term is "Aww!! How T-yoot!!!" which translated means, "How Cute." and she says it about babies and little cute animals or baby anything's. Its her favorite thing to say. She can't say it with out shrugging her shoulders up, squinting her eyes and clasping her hands. It's precious.

• The boys are observing the bees in their beloved sunflower garden:

They really don't like bees and wasps. They were talking with mom about the ones on the flowers and were talking about killing them before they could sting them. Mom: "No, we don't need to kill them, we need to leave them alone. They are doing the job that God gave them to do, we need to leave them alone and they won't hurt us." James: "Yea, just like the Bible says..." We need to love our enemies." " The bees, being our enemies in this case. :)

These kids are precious and hysterical and I love them more than water and chocolate and cucumbers and hammocks and the beach and all of my favorite things here on earth. They are my favorites.

For the record, this picture was not staged. They love to walk like this. This is them walking through the zoo...oh what a fun adventure it was. We were quite at home with the monkeys. :)

Boot Camp '09

I just got back from Boot Camp. I am joining the Army. HA. Big joke. Several people fell for it but yea, umm I'm a little girly for the military. I just got back from BIBLE Boot Camp in Chattanooga, TN with Precept Upon Precept Ministries. If you have never heard of Precepts, I HIGHLY recommend you check them out. They use the "Inductive method" of studying the Bible, where you basically take a passage and dissect it to get the full meaning of what the text means. It is AMAZING. My family and I joined a Precepts Bible Study group in our area about 2 or 3 years ago and love it. They really teach you how to study the Bible on your own.

Anyway, I just spent an amazing, life changing week in Tennessee at their boot camp. It is a week long camp where you study God's word in-depth, see God in new ways and meet incredible people. We were studying the sermon on the mount in Matthew, Chapters 5-7 and it was incredible. God showed me so many things through His word that I never saw just by reading over the passages we studied for a week and I still feel like there is so much more we could have studied in those chapters than we actually covered. Boot Camp is soooo much fun and altogether awesome. If you are in high-school, I want to strongly, strongly urge you to come to boot camp next year. It will change your life. They are having a conference in December that looks amazing and it is basically a mini boot camp. I don't know if I am going to that yet but I am reallllly hoping to be back at boot camp next summer.

Seriously. It is so important that we know what we believe and not just what people tell us is true about God. The statistics of how many young people walk away from what they believe in college is staggering and all together heart breaking. It is SO important that we know truth for ourselves and are ready to make a defense for our faith and the only way to do that is to know God's word and what He says about Himself. Precepts is incredible and they have a passion to train young people to know God's word and I really hope that you will get involved with Precepts in your area! Please email me if you have any questions about them or how to get involved! elliemestas@gmail.com or just add me on facebook! :)

Jesus loves me this I know.

Alex is amazing. He called me "Ellie!!! Mi Amiga!!!" and would run and hug me every time we saw each other. He came up to me one day and whispered in my ear "Camorones sin colas" with a lisp...so it came out..."Camaroneth theen colah-thh." It means...shrimp with out tails. I have no idea what he meant by it but was pretty darn cute.

On our last day I hugged him and told him in Spanish that Jesus loves him and he squeezed me and then looked up at me so very serious and in his cute little lispy Spanish told me that Jesus loved me too. I've never seen a little child so sure of Jesus' love and Jesus's love for someone else at that. I was blown away and overcome with emotion. I never ever expected him to come out and say that. I was holding him and he had his arms around my neck and when I told him, he lifted up his little head, stared into my eyes and just said it. "Yes, I know he does...and Jesus loves you too." and he laid his head back down and squeezed me tighter.

Jesus is there and He is real. He is the Father to the Fatherless and His love is ever present with them. His love is alive and is working in the children of Agua Viva. I will never forget that special moment with Alex. God has taught me so much through this little boy and his life and I can not imagine having never met this child. It was so humbling to be reminded of my Savior's love for me by a little child in such tragic circumstances. I have thought back to that moment so many times since I have been home and am having a rough day or am struggling with something. Jesus loves me. Not because of anything I did for Him or could ever do for Him, but just because He wanted to. I love Him because He loved me first. I went to Guatemala expecting to do some yard work, paint some buildings and play with a few kids and it was so much more than that. I saw God in the waterfalls, in the sunsets, in the mountains, in the villages, in the faces of laughing children...everywhere. I was reminded of Christ's love in extraordinary ways. Jesus loves Alex and He loves me and I am forever grateful.