Cowboy Christmas Party

If you read this post, you've heard of the Purdue Ranch. We returned to the ranch on Saturday with a much larger group for a "Cowboy Christmas Party." When you see the photos below, realize that we are big city dwellers, and out here a ranch can be defined as a small acreage with some animals, whether that ranch happens to have grass or the brown dirt that characterizes our desert.

Special thanks goes to the Purdues for their gracious hospitality and desiring to use their lives and horses to impact inner-city youth. Now I'll let the photos tell the story of the day.

Joining the Squad

The next best thing to owning another full-size van? A mini-van! We were able to purchase this van this week.

Christmas Field Trips

For Kids Klub this week, we took a Christmas field trip and went to see this play at Phoenix 1st Assembly. We invited some children to go on Wednesday evening, and others on Thursday evening, for a total of 46 children who went. Thank the Lord for safety in rush-hour traffic and that "no child was left behind," since the auditorium is quite large!

Bike Party 2013

On Saturday, we took a group of children to a special Christmas party. For a little background on the party and its founder, go here. At the end of the party, each child received a new bicycle, as well as a frozen turkey and a bag of food for their families. I think the only almost-tearful moments were waiting to get into the party after we had registered (some children hadn't eaten breakfast and were very hungry), and convincing the new bike owners that while the bikes needed to be hauled in a different vehicle, we would surely deliver them to their homes! Other than that....it seemed to be all smiles.

Food

As I attempt to catch up on some blogging, I realized that "food" seems to be the common denominator between two recent Tutoring and Teen Night gatherings. Tutoring students were challenged to read a certain number of pages, with a pizza party in the future if they met the challenge. With students on varying levels this year (some just learning the alphabet or how to speak English), not every student met the challenge, but they earned pizza for their efforts anyway.

Smore's and hot dogs were on the menu at Teen Night; Madison, whose daddy speaks at Teen Night, quite enjoyed her hot dog, and the teen who graciously roasted so many dogs apparently isn't so fond of the camera.