CHRISTMAS 2016

  I had no intention of spending Christmas with my parents again. Nate decided last minute to plan a trip to Guatemala to do Dentistry for the less fortunate. We left for Guatemala on Christmas Day so we had to be in Utah on Christmas. We opened presents went to Sacrament meeting and climbed on a plane to Guatemala. It was the busiest Christmas I have ever had. The whole month was busy. Sierra's passport caused me so much drama it was ridiculous. Nate's name was misspelled on her birth certificate. I never caught it. I went to Utah at Thanksgiving hoping to fix it. I lost my wallet. I had to reorder everything, including my driver's licence. Try going to the DMV with a toddler during the Christmas season, it was nightmare. I filled out the back of her birth certificate and so did Nate, we notarized, I filled it out wrong. The corrections have to made on the back and you can't mess it up. I messed it up. We had to reorder a birth certificate. Then we had to get in notarized again. We were running out of time. We moved forward. We got the birth certificate fixed and then we got a new one ordered. Then my dad meet me half way between my house and his. He was an angel. I sent off for her passport. It arrived a few days before we were suppose to fly out. All this time I am booking hotel rooms, and booking flights and praying everything will work out. It did. It was a miracle. I am so grateful. All of the stress of preparing for a trip and Christmas at the same time. It was a bit much, but we made it.

Then getting to Guatemala was a little bit exciting. We had to run through the Houston airport and barely made the connection. When we got to Guatemala it was Christmas, so everything was shut down. We were hungry but couldn't eat till the morning. I don't mean to focus on the crazy parts of this adventure but I always see people going to exotic places and I feel life is passing me by and I get jealous but I never realized how much work went into going on a trip like that. Thankful, my sister Karalee and my brother-in-law Benji took my three kids for the week. Just getting a babysitter you trust could put the breaks on a trip.

I do want to say going to Guatemala felt like we had finally come full circle. We have wanted so desperately to do a service trip. Nate's full intention of becoming a dentist was to do service trips. We have been out of dental school for seven years and been on this journey for eleven years and this is the first trip we have taken. We feel blessed we finally got to go. It was a miracle. A miracle that Nate's practice has gone so well we have the means to do something like this. A miracle that Nate owns his own practice and we need tax ride offs, which makes a trip like this more doable. We just feel really blessed. We have done nothing to deserve it. I always say, "Everything is a gift, no one deserves anything." No matter how hard it was to get to Guatemala it was worth it. We felt blessed to serve the people there.