Christmas 2013!

Yes, I'm almost a month late in posting it, but I'm going to anyways because it's a good status update of us :)

here is our Christmas letter: 

For Christmas Eve we went to a great service at church

Merry Christmas!

Time sure fly’s when you’re having fun (or raising 3 kids and living in Central America). As we look back on 2013, we feel very blessed and yet overwhelmed at all that has happened in just one year.

Our kids:

Sigel (16 years old) just completed 8^th grade with outstanding grades and as an honor student. He was doing so well in his classes that he was able to add French class as well  - imagine that – tri-lingual! He is very dedicate to Taekwondo and is now a blue belt – just 2 more levels until he reaches black. This summer Sigel did a bunch of translating for mission teams. Sigel flew for the first time this year on the way to Roatan, which was a special experience for him!

Maddy (3 years old) is so full of life! She is caring and relational – loving her family, friends, and neighbors. She loves to help and cheers and shouts when her Daddy comes home.  Maddy’s Spanish has improved a lot this year – going from just understanding, to now switching between the two, and responding in Spanish.

Ali (1 year old) is a sweetheart. Her and Maddy play well together, but Ali is also content to play on her own. Ali loves to eat, play in the mud, and play babies. She says about 8 words and communicates otherwise with lots of grunts and shouts.

Tristan and I celebrate 8 years of marriage this month and we are still very much in love! We work hard together towards the goals that God has given us - loving and showing Jesus to our community. We had a year of growth – both in staff as well as in developing the programs that we have going, which has challenged us in our personal lives as well as leadership.

Aside from working with El Ayudante, last year we purchased investment land with the hopes of building and selling a few houses for income – specifically college funds and retirement. Due to the legalities and process, it has taken a long time to get started – but Tristan now has his first house under way and it’s a beauty! He’s hoping for the house to be ready for sale by March. Now we need a buyer!

We’ve been blessed with 4 visits from the grandparents this year – they all came down once with a work team, and once for vacation. Lucky for us we tagged along on their vacation and spent some wonderful family time in both the island of Roatan, and the beaches of Tela. It’s a blessing for us to get away from work, as we live where we work so we’re always ‘on’, with people coming to our porch all day/evening long.  

Thank you all for being a part of our lives. We love you and pray you have a wonderful start to this new year!

Love, Tristan, Beth, Sigel, Maddy, and Ali Mohagen

CHRISTMAS ACTIVITIES: 

 making sugar cookies!

Sigel's fav cookie

maddy loved it!

We took our staff out to a Christmas dinner at a nice steak house - amazing to see how our staff has grown from 3 (2012) to 12 for 2013! It was a great evening of celebrating the year and each other's friendships.

    

We had a really fun (and crazy) Christmas party for our community - around 250 people came - we did family pictures for every family, had a cookie decorating area, games, crafts, food, and the kids did a program. It was a success!

Me and my sweetie on Christmas Eve!