Our Feliz Navidad

This Christmas our family decided to do something a little different. The Rick and Alicia Finlayson Family invited our family to go to Puerto Penasco, Mexico to do humanitarian service over Christmas and New Year's. This is something Mike & I have wanted to do as a family for a long time, but we never had the 'connections'. So we were excited about the possibility of taking our family on this adventure. When we asked our kids what they thought about the idea, it was an almost unanimous 'Yes!' (Caleb was a little confused, he's 5 after all). So we decided to GO FOR IT!
Here are some of the pictures of our adventure! It was a wonderful Christmas for sure!

We drove, about a 16 hour drive, stayed in Phoenix the first night and arrived in Puerto Penasco, Mexico at about 3p.m. on Christmas Eve. Our first stop was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Primary aged children were anxiously awaiting a visit from Santa Claus. Before we left on our adventure, we met at the Finlayson's house and assembled Christmas stockings and bags for about 150 Primary-aged children in the 1st and 2nd Branches of the Puerto Penasco church. Here are some of the images of the beautiful Mexican children in Puerto Penasco. I loved seeing the delight in the eyes of these beautiful children of God!




Here are Liesel and Ammon in front of the church in Puerto Penasco.
This little boy wasn't too happy about sitting on Santa's lap.

Most of the children though, had a look of wonder in their eyes and were a delight to watch!

As you can see, Caleb wasn't afraid of Santa Claus. Bytheway, in Mexico, Santa Claus speaks Spanish! "Ho!Ho!Ho!Hola!Como estas?"

Here's a picture of 'Santa's Helpers' right after we arrived.




We invited a good family friend, she's also our kids' piano teacher to join us on our trip. Here is Toshiko Mori helping with the stockings.

There was a little baby girl named Brittani. Brittani Finlayson put her stocking together in Utah before the trip, anxious to meet her namesake, Brittani and Brittani posed for a picture with Santa.

We met another great family from Highland, Ut, the Nyman's.
It was so awesome to see the missionaries serving there!


Alicia and Rick Finlayson had put hundreds of hours in preparing for this special gift for the Primary children. We are so thankful to be in invited to take a very small, but very meaningful part of it!
I can't resist putting a few more pictures of the beautiful children! They are truly children of God and shine with a beautiful, pure light of Christ.I loved watching a little girl relish every juicy section of an orange that was in her stocking.It was a great way to spend Christmas Eve! We were already looking forward to being back on Sunday for Sacrament Meeting.