(from our Christmas letter)
Hello from the da Silvas! We pray that this year has been good to you and yours. Our year has included several milestones, and some changes, but many things have remained the same.
Gabriela made it to the big birthday of FIVE years old! We celebrated with close friends by taking a (cold) train ride to a large Easter egg hunt. She also got a big girl’s bike with training wheels! This then led into her graduation from Pre-school and even bigger, her first day of kindergarten! She rides the big yellow bus every day. She is doing really well and has a lot of new friends and a very good teacher. She is doing great at learning to read – in English AND in Portuguese! Right as school started, we discovered she needed glasses, but she likes wearing them and she does look awful cute with them. Just this month, another first – her first visit from the tooth fairy! She is certainly growing up (fast) into an amazingly loving little girl.
Fares spent a week in Honduras serving as a medical translator for a mission trip in March. He was able to visit with a good friend’s family, which was an added joy. In May he also celebrated two years of constant hard work and earned his second MA – this time in Linguistics, English as a Second Language and Spanish. He even got a departmental award for being such a good student! He continues to work very hard at multiple jobs and even taking more Spanish classes.
We have stayed in Terre Haute for yet another year for him to gain additional college teaching experience. He teaches four classes at ISU, taught one class at Ivy Tech this fall and will be teaching two classes there next semester in addition to his full course load at ISU. He will also take one more Spanish class this spring (he hopes it will be his last for a long time J) He continues to do on-line tutoring as well. All of his students find him extremely helpful and they say they learn a lot from him.
Maria has continued to teach Happiest Baby classes in the area and loves the success that parents have with the technique! She also recently started another half-time job doing home education with new mothers with the Early Head Start program. So far it is going well and offers flexibility to be at home as much as possible when Gabriela is home. She also tries to participate in Gabriela’s class field trips and school activities as much as possible.
We’ve had some good fun this year too. Maria’s cousin visited in late May with her twins, which play really well with Gabriela. In late June we spent a day at Holiday World, riding roller coasters and water slides. We had a blast! We actually managed to go camping two different times this year, both times with Maria’s parents. We went mid-July to Brown County and then to a local park near us in October. We have also enjoyed numerous visits with two great families in Indianapolis. Fares’ brother and wife have also moved to Terre Haute this year. His brother lived with us for 2.5 months before his wife was able to join him. He is in the same course that Fares just finished. She is also expecting a nephew for us in mid-April. They live just upstairs from us. It’s nice to have family nearby, and a regular babysitter when needed for Gabriela.
We are still hoping and praying to find a better paying full-time position for Fares in a different city, ideally Indianapolis, by the fall of 2009. In the meantime, we are here and think of all of you often with much love.
We wish you a very merry Christmas this year and a fabulous 2009!
In God’s everlasting love, Fares, Maria, Gabriela (and Neguinho, still in Ohio with his “grandparents” and “uncle”)
“For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
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