Amanda’s Musings

One of the ministries of SIM that I have always thought was interesting is Camp La Joya in Arequipa, Peru. This campsite is set up to run camps for the kids in Arequipa (who are quite poor) and they also have programs for young adults. Being a Christian mission, the camps are set up to tend to the kids spiritual needs as well as physical needs. I would imagine that the things they get to do during that week are above and beyond anything they could ever do in their normal lives. The kids are sponsored so they can attend the camps so I am trying to think of a few ways that I can promote and raise some funding for Camp La Joya so if you have any ideas let me know.

So far I’ve just thought of offering the money I make from my shops to their programs. The main problem with this is that I haven’t been selling much lately! I might start with this, all money from sales in February goes towards Camp La Joya.

What does it cost to support the campsite? One week of camp costs $US40 - around $45 Aussie dollars. (Project number PE89270 earmarked Camp Scholarships when giving via the SIM sites). There are other needs for the campsite and you can find those listed here.

Take a minute to find out about this amazing campsite and the work that is done there, you may learn something new!

My posts have become very irregular lately, sorry about that. This is mostly due to three things.

1. Pregnancy tiredness.
2. Inability to post photos as my software needs updating.
3. Lack of creative photos or photos of my creative ventures due to lack thereof!!

I’ll keep on posting though as I think of things to write and hopefully get the photo situation sorted soon!

Waiting for Michael to pick us up yesterday from the shops I was saying to Kezi, Where’s Daddy? In her cute two year old way of speaking she sat there watching out for him and said over and over ‘Daddy, Where are you?’ (which actually comes out more like Duddy, Whereahou). All of sudden she got very excited and spotted a red car driving towards us at the front of a long line of cars, she yelled ‘There he is!!’ (which comes out more like ‘Dare e is’). I saw that it wasn’t our red car and said ‘no, Kez, thats not Daddy, not yet’ but she continued to clap her hands in excitement and say ‘There he is!’. Well, sure enough, as the red car in front turned away I could see that three cars behind it was in fact Micahel in OUR red car. That was the car she was excited to see! She has better eyes than I do!

We have some exciting news! We are expecting our next baby in July! I have just passed the 12 week mark and so I’m looking forward to trimester 2 as the first has been pretty typical with every normal ’symptom’. The worst of all has been my lack of energy, I’m very very tired, even after 10 hours sleep (or more) a night! I think having a 2 year old makes a big difference this time. My creative energy has almost all been sucked away. I haven’t done anything really creative in quite a while! I’m sure it will come back so stay tuned, you never know. Anyway, I’ll keep the blog updated as I go!

Hi again, I think thats the longest I’ve ever gone without posting on my blog, hopefully I’ll be back to normal now. Not sure how creative I’ll be over the next few weeks as we have a lot to do. Michael goes off to Peru in three weeks time so we are busy with a lot of things before he goes.

The three of us arrived back from Melbourne on Friday night after a late flight. Kez did sleep on the flight eventually which was good. Its taken her a few days to get over the 2 hr time difference but she’s getting there.

The first week and a half I was on my own with Keziah in Geelong and Michael joined us on December 24. That was the same day that my sister in law came home from hospital with our little nephew Ty. Christmas day was a bit of a blurr but we all did our best and enjoyed a cooked lunch (thank you Michael) and opening presents. New Years Eve was a non occasion for all of us considering how tired we all were by then! We didn’t mind a bit though. (oh, happy new year by the way!).

Towards the end of our trip we all headed off to Sovereign Hill for the day which is a Pioneer Town in Ballarat Victoria setup to represent Australia in the gold rush of 1850. It was a lot of fun and we all had a great time watching the street performers and acts as well as demonstrations of things such as candlemaking and gold panning. Keziah loved it because there were so many ‘neighs’ (horses). In fact it was the same two groups of horses going round and round the town giving people rides on an old coach and wagon.

Anyway, I thought I’d do a big update and put a heap of photos here so be prepared for lots of photos below. There are none of Sovereign Hill as yet as they are all on Michael’s phone and we’re yet to download them. I’ll do a post about that later I think.

Johnathan and Candy, Malachi and little Ty are off to Papua New Guinea very soon and its likely that we won’t see them for at least two years so this time was special with them. We will miss them a lot but thanks to Skype we can chat to them every day.

The main reason for us going over (if you hadn’t already guessed) was to help them out while they were waiting on the birth of Ty and also afterwards. Of course it was also to spend Christmas and New Years with them before they leave.

Ok, so firstly, here are some great pics of Keziah and her cousin Malachi playing together. They are six months apart in age and had a great time. Every night they gave each other a hug and kiss goodnight and when we went out they held hands, some people asked if they were twins!!

Playing with Lego

Playing with Uncle Johnathan

Hide and Seek

Painting

Basket Cases

Ta Da!

Christmas Day

New Baby Ty Elijah Burns

Me with little Ty

Michael and Keziah at the Geelong Pier

Inside the National Wool Museum, I guess you’d call that a rocking ram

For our last 24 hours the three of us spent a night in Melbourne and got to do a few things. We went on the city circle free tram and did a tour, walked up to the Queen Victoria Markets, saw the Art Gallery of Victoria (I loved that!!) and spent and afternoon in the Melbourne Museum. We also got to see what Federation Square was as I’d only seen it on TV. Here are some photos from that time:

Federation Square

Outside the Racing Museum (Keziah with more neighs)

Michael and Kez with Phar Lap

Michael and Australia’s first computer. Apparently his phone has more power than it did (with which he took a photo).

So thats blog post one for 2008 and the first one with photos from our trip. There are quite a few more lovely shots on my brother’s camera and on Michael’s phone so I’ll post some different ones later on. Happy New Year everyone and thanks for reading!!