Ern and Ang

Ernesto and Angie Alaniz arrived late Thursday night, July 9th. They are our friends that recently became missionaries to the Dalit people in India.
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They were in India for six months and have just returned for a short break. They arrived in Chicago like two days before and drove straight here. We definitely were honored to receive them. We had missed them and had a great time.
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Friday night Terry and some youth group kids planned a party at The Building for Ern and Ang. It was great fun. I made a huge video that is at the end, but here are some pictures if you don't want to watch 10 minutes of funness.

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The Party

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Ern and Ang have had to eat rice and vegetables with only their right hand for the last six months... We thought we'd treat them. Ernesto ate that whole steak it was so tasty!

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We also played many games in reference to their work in India. Here Ernesto is deep in thought b/c he has to guess the title of a blog he or Angie wrote based just on a couple sentences students read to him. He started out w/six Cokes. If he guessed wrong, he lost a Coke. If he guessed right, he got one back that he had lost. It was harder than you'd think.

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They brought back Indian breath freshers that resembled dried herbs. It looked like fennel seeds to me. You had to chew them up and swallow them. Here is Terry's reaction:

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This is just a shot of The Building and the kids and adults that were there. Most were outside at this point, I think.

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They are reading a card we signed for them.

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These boys are playing a obstacle course that was supposed to be like Gladiators in India. But really, the only part that was like India was the ice cream they had to scoop and eat w/only their right hands. Except there's no ice cream in India...

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All the kids wrote down questions for them to answer.

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Noah is eating an ice cream cone, obviously.

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I didn't get any pictures from the best game of the night b/c I had to go home to put our kids to bed. The students all had to impersonate Ernesto's "Your mom is an astronaut" song that he sings at the end of all his India movies. Thankfully, Terry got all the footage, which you can see in our video, along w/much more. But that definitely was the best part =). Such a good idea.

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Saturday we all went for an eight hour double date. We got coffee, ran errands at Walmart (which was a little overwhelming for the Alaniz's!), ate at Applebees and watched Public Enemies b/c we all enjoy movies quite a bit. We opted for that over Transformers II and I'm glad we did. Anyway, we had such a nice day w/them. It was definitely hard to say good bye. We have a great time w/them and miss them already.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLJeFbSJKVQ