more photos . . .

okay - I've been really bad about posting on our blog! I guess I'm realizing how busy life is with two little ones in the house! there's lots to update you all on, but for now, we have some recent photos posted in an album in Facebook - if you'd like to take a look, please click here!

And I promise that sometime soon I will post a better update! We appreciate your prayers for us and your encouragement to us.

Pray for the upcoming Extreme Response Christmas Parties, December 1- 8. Over 70 people from the US and Canada are coming to share the love of Jesus in seven very poor communities in this week-long event. Pray for changed lives because of Jesus!!!

new photos

it's been a busy few weeks, getting used to having a new little one in the house. soon I will post about our adventures in parenthood. in the meantime, if you'd like to see new photos, please click here.

Isabella Sophia has arrived!

Dear Friends and Family -

Isabella Sophia arrived on Tuesday, September 22 at 2:25 p.m. via c-section. Both mom and baby are healthy and are now home recuperating and trying to rest.

She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. and was 49 cm long (probably around 19 inches). She has dark hair like her daddy and light skin like her mommy. She's sleeping and eating well and doing all the other things new born babies should do (which really isn't much!).

Nathan likes to touch her feet and then giggle. At first, he cried when he saw mommy and Isabella, but now he's enjoying the novelty of having a baby in the house (for the most part!). He's going to be a good big brother. Santi has some time off from the office and is a great help in taking care of all of us!

We are very grateful to have a healthy baby girl and feel very blessed. We thank you for your prayers, words of encouragement and notes during this time. . . . we still need to take the time to read through all of them, but we do appreciate them. We apologize for not posting the news earlier but we weren't able to connect to the wireless at the hospital!

Feeling very blessed -
The Arteaga Family

Moving along . . .

Where did the past month go? Kids are back in school (all schools started on Sept 7 here in the mountains of Ecuador), from what I hear, some trees are even starting to turn colors up in the US and fall is just around the corner.

We have a few things going on here too:
1) C-section for Isabella's birth is still scheduled for Tuesday! We can hardly wait. We need to be at the hospital at 11 a.m. and surgery is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. We appreciate your prayers. All has been going well at our appointments and Ruth is trying to take it as easy as possible.

2) with school starting, we have a new group of high school students who will be coordinating the Kids Club at the dump. We accepted a great group of 18 students - representing a number of different nationalities/countries. We are excited what God has in store for them this year. Ruth will be taking a break during the first semester, but hopes to get back into the swing of things soon.

3) As part of taking that break, Ruth's goal was to have all the crafts lined up for the first semester (all 18 weeks of them!). She is very grateful for a group of ladies who came from Nebraska on a short-term team this summer who organized most of those crafts for her. What a HUGE blessing!

4) Santi has various projects lined up in the computer department at HCJB. They will be upgrading all the HCJB computers for the radio and hospital (400 or so) to a new system, newer version of Microsoft Office, among other things (Santi tried to explain it all to me, but I either don't remember it well, or just didn't understand but you get the idea - lots of work!)

5) We are helping to host a short-term team from Calvary Church in PA the last week of October. Santi will be helping every day at the construction site. The team is coming through Extreme Response and will be adding on to a small church building in a very poor community called La Paz. This church was started by the church we attend regularly (El Inca). They need more space and have a small plot of land to expand on. We hope that this church building will help. This is about the sixth daughter church that our church has started in the past 10 years or so. What a blessing to be a part of a church that is reaching out.

6) We are also gearing up for the Annual Christmas Outreach with Extreme Response . . . .this year it will be December 1 - 8. There's still room on the team if you want to come and help. We are expecting around 70 volunteers from various places in the US and Canada to come and help with this week-long outreach to poor communities. It's a wonderful way to start the holiday season! And we look forward to a number supporting churches and individuals coming on this team!

We appreciate everyone's emails, prayers, words of encouragement and excitement about Isabella's arrival. We will post info and photos as soon as possible! We are so grateful for modern technology that allows us to do that.

In the meantime, we continue to move along . . . waiting anxiously for Tuesday!

Good report at the doctor's today . . .

. . . all is going well with the expected arrival of Baby #2 - Isabella Sophia. The doctor said this pregnancy has gone really well and things are . . . well, just perfect! We were so blessed to hear those words! It looks like we have around 4 more weeks to go . . . with a c-section planned for around Sept 22. We appreciate everyone's encouragement and prayers. We're getting Isabella's room ready and trying to prepare Nathan as best as we can. And we are excited, of course!

Family from the dump gets a new home!

I have not been very good at keeping up on our blog this summer. Let's just say that trying to survive pregnancy and keeping up with Nathan our 19 month old has been enough activity for me these days! Never-the-less, there has been much activity - keeping up with our two summer missionaries (who returned to the states a week ago) and participating with the Kids Club at the dump (last one for the summer is tomorrow with a team from the states) and helping in various ways with Extreme Response teams who have come down this summer to help with various projects! And we even were able to have a VBS for the kids club at the dump through a team that came at the very last minute (see my previous post). We have had a fun and rewarding summer.

One special team just left this morning - a group of people from Omaha, Nebraska. They did so many incredible things during their week here in Quito. They visited the elderly at the Hogar Betania (Bethany Home for the Elderly) and had a fun-filled afternoon with them. They worked on the construction of a new home (and outfitted it) for a family at the dump. And a group of ladies who stayed back to prepare meals also prepared over 12 crafts for me for the upcoming school year of Kids Club at the dump! They have no idea what a HUGE help that was for me, knowing that soon I will have another little one at home and my participation at the Kids Club will be limited for a while. So having a stack of crafts, all ready to go for this next semester is a wonderful encouragement to me! Thanks ladies!

Anyways - back to the title of this post . . . . the family from the dump gets a new home . . . .here are a couple of photos from that project and also a link to the article at Extreme Response's website! Hopefully this will be as much of a blessing to you as it is to us . . . we never cease to be amazed at how God works in lives through short-term teams and all that can be accomplished as each of us choose to follow Him! TO READ THE ARTICLE AND SEE MORE PHOTOS PLEASE CLICK HERE

Last minute answer to prayer! (VBS at the dump)

Seriously, where does the time go!?! I just looked at our blog and realized that it's been over a month since we have posted an update! Sorry about that (it feels like I just updated it yesterday!).

This has been an exciting week as God has answered a big prayer! Each year, we pray for a team to come and help do a Vacation Bible School (or week-long Kids Club) out at the dump. The regular children at our weekly Kids Club come so faithfully during the summer months and they bring so many friends and relatives (our attendance jumps from around 40 - 50 to over 80 during the summer). Because of this, each year we like to do a special week of clubs for them if at all possible.

Extreme Response had several teams lined up for this summer who possibly could do the VBS. And one team was even scheduled to do it this week. But they had to cancel and the other teams just never worked out for various reasons. So that was disappointing, but we just kept waiting, hoping that God would work out a plan for us.

And just last week, on Tuesday, we received a call from a missionary with another organization who had a team arriving this past Saturday, ready to do a full-blown VBS for approx 80 kids and would it be possible for them to do the VBS at the dump!?!?! Needless to say, we said YES!!! It turns out that the original site for their VBS had to be closed down due to an incidence of the swine flu (not that we're happy that that happened).

So this week, the kids are learning Bible stories, verses, new songs and having a great time doing crafts and games. They are even having some yummy snacks (frozen yogurt today! never thought of having that one!). All the kids told me that they were having a great time.

We are so grateful to this wonderful group of ladies from Texas who have come and shared with our kids at the dump. And I guess God does have a sense of humor - He waited until the last minute to answer my prayer (for those of you who really know me, you know that I tend to wait until the last minute on things I need to get done!).