We’re in California because yesterday, October 15th, 2006, (which just so happens to be the day that GYC early-bird registration closed), my brother and Aileen got married!  It was a very beautiful wedding held outside on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  The place is called La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, CA.  Very, very beautiful location and great food.  It was so nice to see old friends.  I also got to see family members from Korea and California so it was really nice spending time with them.  Israel forgot to bring the camera, so it may take a while to post pictures of it, but I’ll try to do that after I get a hold of some.   And, I’m very envious that my bro and Aileen are in Maui this week, especially after hearing that there was a big blizzard up where we live – over 10 inches of snow!

The baby is growing and it’s really cool to see how his motor skills are developing.  He slithers around everywhere-(it’s kinda like he crawls with his tummy still on the ground), and he’s an expert roller.  He’s pretty good at getting up on all fours and “rocking”, but he eventually ends up back on his tummy slithering again.  One thing that is especially annoying now is that the baby is obsessed with putting things in his mouth.  It’s one thing that he shoves his fingers down his throat and gags himself, (and you can’t take his fingers away!), but it’s another thing that he enjoys sucking on our puppy, Bentley.   The other day I caught him sucking on Bentley’s back foot.  The difficult part is that Bentley loves chillin’ next to the baby.  When IA is on the floor playing, Bentley is right there with his toy or bone laying next to him.  I think they will really be best friends…or for Imanuel’s case, his only friend (around his age that is)!  

We’ll be heading back to Detroit area tonight or tomorrow morning (depending on if we want to miss our flight or not) and then back to our winter wonderland on Thursday.  We really hope the snow melts by then…

The baby amazinging managed to push himself up onto all fours today!  He really worked at it and for about an hour he tried manuveuring himself around the floor of his room.   This bottom picture was a re-enactment.  Not the real thing.  🙁

This bottom picture kinda shows his two bottom teeth.  None of the others have sprouted yet.

And for a quick, but final update…NO INTERNET YET!!  I’m yet again in the parking lot, this time of the Best Western.  I need to get home, bc I’ve been here for a few hours.  🙁  The cable dude said that they can’t connect us either…so our only option is, like Daniel said, dial-up or satellite.  Any suggestions?

The weather is getting more and more chilly up here.  The weather has been in the 40s which is causing the leaves to change colors quickly.  The peak time for leaf-watching (that’s the best thing to do up here!) will be in the next couple of weeks- that is if it doesn’t snow and kill the leaves prematurely. 

The baby has gotten used to wearing a hat every time he goes out.  This is his thickest one that he got from Justine Klein.  He thinks of her whenever he wears it.

This is the same pic of the deer except it’s enlarged.  We see deer at least every other day because they stuff themselves with our apples…most likely to help hold them over the winter.  Bentley loves to scare them away by his emphatic barking, but he’ll never run much further than our deck area.  It’s pretty funny.  :]

Here is a picture in front of “the bridge” that is by our house.  It
takes you to the neighboring city, Hancock.  In Hancock, we find many
of our church members, the regional airport, the two hospitals, and the
Keweenaw Co-op.  We like to liken the co-op to a mini Whole Foods. 
(VERY MINI version)  However, something interesting about the bridge is
that at any given moment, the bridge can be closed due to the boats
that come through.  So, if there is a medical emergency or we are
needing to catch a flight out…we hope that God is there to work out
the timing.  Other than that, the surrounding area is very beautiful
and there is a lake-side park and walkway.  If you look very closely at
the picture of the Houghton church from a previous post, you can see
the bridge in the background.  It is within walking distance. 

This past Sabbath, we ran our first church marathon.  We went to all three churches and Israel preached at each one.  We ended up driving over 100 miles.  Though it was tiring, it was nice to get a feel for what the other churches were like.  I’m going to try to remember to take pictures inside the churches.  The Greenland church is a log cabin, but it is beautiful. 

Well, I’d better bring this post to a close.  We are currently sitting in our car in a parking lot, using someone’s wireless in town.  We’ve tried to get DSL at our house for 2 weeks, but they finally realized that there aren’t any towers that reach our house.  Israel and I both have a lot of work to do online so we’ve been having to go into town almost every day.  And you can imagine how much the baby enjoys these Internet ventures.  (It’s my turn to watch the baby so Israel can get some work done.)  Until next time…

It had been 11 days since we moved into our new home on the prairie. 

(view from back deck)

We missed all of our friends back in the other settlement…like Aunt Stephanie…


…and Uncle Daniel (& Kerri and Juan!!!)

And many, many others (but we don’t have any pics of them right now…)

The good news is that Imanuel has learned to hold his bottle all by himself!  That comes in handy when Ma is busy doing things around the house.

(front)

(back)

It was beautiful- especially the backyard which gave us a lot of room to play.

Based on the diaries of Bentley Ramos-Wilder.  🙂

It’s been while since we’ve posted due to our sudden move…but we’ve arrived!  We’re still settling in but we’re enjoying it very much.  We love the church, the people, our new home, and the most beautiful part has been God’s glorious creation that seems to be more untouched in these parts.  Here is a look back at the baby’s growth from the past couple months and also a few shots of what the upper penninsula looks like…

Baby’s still sucking his thumb and the rest of his fingers.  His first tooth was spotted by Auntie Kerri at the park on August 30th and his second tooth closely followed on September 12th. 

The baby still loves to eat!  He’s growing and is 29 inches long and
mostly likely weighs over 20 lbs.  I haven’t had a chance to weigh him
yet (but we carry him every day!!)

His least favorite food is green beans…but he’ll still eat it like an obedient child.  He’s getting used to it (since I try to feed it to him at least every other day).  I’m testing whether it is true that you can “train” your baby to like any food.  🙂

The baby loves carrots!!

Uncle Steve Conway came to visit with us for a week.  The baby especially enjoyed it when he got to babysit him at 5:30am when we had to go to the airport.  Of course he had to wake up soon after they left.

And Israel had the nerve to wonder where the baby got his grumpiness from!!

The baby picked up sucking his toes…

He’s going to miss his buddy, Hunter.  We lived next door but now we’re over 9 hours away…boohoo!

This is our new backyard!  On Sabbath morning, a doe came to eat some apples from one of our 2 apple trees.  We felt like we were in Heaven or something!

You can’t see it very well…but there’s an apple in his mouth.

Here is the Houghton Seventh-day Adventist Church.  It is walking distance to the beautiful Lake Superior.  We had a wonderful first Sabbath there and made many new friends!

And these last pictures were taken for his 6th month birthday by Uncle Daniel at his house.  (He can sit up by himself now!)

Our little conductor

…and pianist  🙂

We hope you’ll come visit us in the UP!

Thank you for all of your prayers and love.  We hope to keep in touch!

Love,
the Ramoses

In early September, Judy and I (along with our son and all of our pets) will be moving 10 hours north to Houghton, MI.  We have accepted a pastoral call in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Our assignment will include pastorship of a small church in Houghton, two companies near the area, and the establishment of a campus ministry at Michigan Technical University.
Although we are very honored by the call and will enjoy this new line of ministry, we are also hesitant to leave our friends and colleagues at CAMPUS.  This year promises to be one of the best years for CAMPUS with a great Missionary Training Program, a revived student group, and a more dedicated staff.  We’ll miss being a part of it all.
On Thursday we will meet with the conference office to discuss our transition which will start in a couple of weeks and will go through November.  CAMPUS is also working out the final details to get Pastor Steven Conway and his wife from NJ/NY to replace our current position.
For those living in Ontario, we’ll be your neighbors separated only by Lake Superior.  Same thing for those in MN.  We’ll probably be closer to your conference office than to ours.  We are in the process of getting rid of our cars to buy one with 4WD along with a snowmobile.  They get close to 300 inches of snow in a year sometimes.
Make plans to visit us!  Especially in the winter.  Our new place will have it’s own sauna for Andy and Dave 🙂
There are snowmobile trails with campsites along the way.  So we’ll be our own vacation land…call us Little Maine.  And in the summer…Scuba Diving.  You can even preach at our (little) church…es 🙂
CMX is the airport code.  I know some of you are already looking into getting tickets to come and visit!
Keep us in your prayers, as it may be a difficult experience finding out who our friends REALLY are (the ones that visit us way up there). 

We may be going there very soon…

(His face expresses our sentiments exactly…)

We’ll update by the end of this week.  Pray for us!

Last Sabbath, July 30th, 2006, our Alanna got rebaptized in the Jordan River (in Petoskey, MI).  It was preceded by a beautiful testimony time where Alanna shared her story, and family and friends shared tributes/exhortations.  What a story of conversion and recommitment!  I’m sure all who were there were touched and inspired…

We love you and are praying for you, Alanna!

Grandpa Pipim and the baby…can you see the resemblance?

A snapshot of what happens during feedings…

“I’m still hungry…”

“…I’m waiting…and nothing’s coming out of my thumb.”

“I may have to resort to eatting the scraps from my bib…Momma, will you hurry up and feed me, please?”

~After eating, nothing beats a bottle of refreshing milk.~

“That was great…I think I wanna knock out…right…here….”

Since Imanuel turned 4 months (July 4th, 2006), we began mixing rice
cereal into his bottle for one meal a day.  We did that for about
3 weeks and then decided it was time to add another meal.  We did
that for a couple days and quickly found out that the baby was getting
seriously constipated.  So, a couple days ago, on July 29th, we
started the baby on 1 meal vegetable and 1 meal rice cereal.  It’s
worked out great. 
The baby loves eating food from a spoon!  The only times he gets upset is when I don’t feed him quickly enough!  I’ll try to post more pictures later, but here’s one to enjoy:

As for the rest of our lives, God is blessing also.  I’ve picked up part-time work with CAMPUS and GYC as their “administrative assistant”.  Believe it or not, that’s been fun.  I bring the baby along with me wherever I go and he’s been adjusting well.  I enjoy multi-tasking (being a teacher and all…) and so it works out great.  We’ve rearranged the entire CAMPUS office and we’ve also set up a GYC office in one of the rooms.  You guys will have to come see it sometime.  Very exciting.  🙂
On another note, today, for the first time in my life, colporteurs came to my door!!!!  Actually, it was kinda set up, but it was still exciting!  I was taking my jog/walk around my neighborhood with the baby & puppy when I see Teddy pull up next to me.  He’s the magabook leader for the group that’s in Ann Arbor this summer.  They were doing our territory so I told him to have some students stop by and I’d buy some books.  Sure enough, 2 of them came later that evening.  It was Alexandra and another boy.  They apparently were the highest sellers so they got to come canvass our house.  🙂  I got the 3 magabooks that I didn’t have (“Angels Among Us”, “Plants that Heal”, and “Foods that Heal”) and gave them both a donation.  It was so super-hot and humid that their shirts were like soaked through with sweat!  Poor kids.  They are working so hard that I didn’t even ask them to canvass me.    I’m so glad we got a magabook program in Ann Arbor.  Last year, Israel and I had prayed that God would give us an opportunity to minister to our neighborhood.  We’re so thankful that they came!
Well, I’d better hit the sack.  Israel left for ASi today (in Dallas, TX) so for the next few days, I’ll be taking on the baby, the zoo, and the house…oh yeah, and work!    But, God will get me through it…He always does.  (I think I’ll ask my mom to come over…)