From the Pekruls with Amor

Dear all,

A friend suggested that, even though the people who’ve been encouraging and supporting

us in our work in Nicaragua do have an interest in what we’ve been doing, they may also be

interested in how we’ve been doing. So based on his gentle suggestion, we’ve decided to try

and take on the discipline of writing a regular family update every couple of months. It doesn’t

feel very natural, I must admit, so we may need a bit of encouragement. I would suggest that

periodic updates from you in return may be just the encouragement we would need, as tacky as it probably is to ask for personal replies to a mass email.

We’ve just gotten back to León after seeing some of you in the States over the holidays, although

not as many of you as we would have liked. It was good to be back to celebrate Jesus with our

families. During Christmas in particular, it is a special gift not only remember God coming, but

to also experience His coming in the love of those around us. It was deeply satisfying that our

boys got to see so much of God this Christmas.

Arriving back in León has felt like coming home from home. Something about returning to

Nicaragua from vacation, rather than Nicaragua being the vacation, was quite settling. And

what’s more, now that the vacation is over, we plan to start looking for homes to buy. Given

what homes cost here and what we pay in rent it seems to make financial sense, but it also

feels good to make another sort of commitment to this place. We’ve never owned a home, so

I suppose that we’re finding out what most home owners know: that buying a home makes one

look a place differently, and ask new questions about one’s relationship to the community. That

process has been fun for us.

We’ve been able to talk through some of the home ownership conversations with a missionary

couple and their two girls who have been sharing our home for a couple weeks while they look

for a place to rent. Although one might expect that we would not be looking forward to sharing

a house with another family again after doing it for the last two months, we’ve found we quite

like “community” living. It’s nice to see August play with other kids (especially since most

of his interaction with Salo recently has been learning to “give to the hand, not to the face”),

have others to chat with over breakfast, have another pair of eyes on the kids, etc. So we would

encourage any who are thinking they might like a tropical vacation to feel free to impose; we like

it. It makes life feel a bit more balanced.

Anyway, we’ll leave it there for now. We hope these updates help make our life here easier

to relate to, and so make our other conversations with you richer, and keep our relationships

healthy, even over the distance.

Mucho Amor,

Luke, Steph, Aug dog, and Salo