Just today

Prepare yourself for a crazy amount of blog posts.  I can't promise you that they're coming... but they are in the works.  And they will be in no particular order.  Just to make things even more crazy. :)  But for today- I am just going to tell you about today.

Today is Friday.  That means that it is the Sabbath here in our part of the world.  On a typical Friday morning, we wake up about an hour later than usual and head to church.  Our congregation meets at 9:00 in a villa that is surrounded by embassies from all over the world and very near downtown.  We hold services from 9-12.  I then usually stay for choir practice, and Steve stays to help with the finances, and we head home around 1.  Then we relax and spend the afternoon and evening at home.  

Today was not a typical Friday.  And it was kind of neat!  Right before we went to bed last night, (which may have been at 8:30...) I decided to check my email.  There was an email there from the leaders of our congregation, telling us that services in our building were cancelled the following morning due to construction.  Now... we were not entirely surprised.  We were at the church on Tuesday night, and this is what it looked like.

Upstairs meeting area  (Sacrament meeting overflow)

Front of the chapel

Back of the chapel

The construction crew was hard at work, but there was still a lot to be done... and 2.5 days to do it.  So, we made alternate plans for church.  Members were given permission to administer the sacrament in their homes in small groups if they wanted.  We were invited over to a nearby neighbor's house to have our own mini sacrament meeting with their family and another couple from the ward.  It was a great experience.  We used flat bread that was more similar to what Christ would have used in his time, and it was kind of neat to have a service that was so entirely focused on the sacrament.  

Hopefully the interior work on our building will be complete by next week and we can see the primary program that the kiddos have been working so hard on!  By Christmas the construction crew is also hoping to have our new building finished.  They are adding on a building behind our existing villa.  The new building will become the new chapel- and we should all be able to fit in one room!  It will be awesome.  We currently overflow into 2 spaces within the building for our sacrament meeting service.

We had a wonderful morning celebrating the Sabbath with friends, and a wonderful evening celebrating birthdays with friends.  Although, it's kind of hard to feel like the holidays are coming up when you go to an outdoor luau themed barbecue in mid-November... :)

I will leave you with this picture that was taken at our last ultrasound-almost 3 weeks ago.  I was 21 weeks at the time.  I think our little guy has got a pretty cute little smile. :)