Southern Pork Roast

This pork roast is honestly the first one I've ever used that I really love, and it will be a "keeper" in our family for many years, I think.  I've now made this several times, before we moved to Peru and three times since we have been here.  Everyone seems to love it, and it's great to serve a crowd or for a weeknight family meal.

• 1 5-6 lb pork loin
• 1 tsp. onion salt
• 1 tsp. garlic salt
• ½ tsp. pepper
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1 10 ounce jar plum jam or jelly
• ⅓ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup water
• 2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• ⅓ cup soy sauce
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-For roast, preheat oven to 325.
-Rub pork loin with salts and pepper and place in roasting pan.
-Bake for 2 1/2 hours. Remove from oven, baste with half of sauce, and continue cooking until internal temperature reaches 160, 30-60 min.
-Serve the remaining sauce with pork.

-For sauce, in a heavy medium skillet over med-high heat, saute the onion in butter until translucent.
-Add jelly, brown sugar, water, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce.
-Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 2-3 min.

I think you could do this in a crockpot easily for 8 hours on low heat, but here I use a pressure cooker and cook for about 1 1/2 hours but add extra water to the sauce.   I usually serve this with mashed potatoes and green beans, but this past Easter Sunday I served it with roasted tomatoes and roasted asparagus and red bell pepper.  Also, I used blackberry jam instead of plum because I can't buy plum jam in Peru.

Daily Sightings

My sweet little dishwasher

Apple Muffins

These apple muffins are the yummiest ever - a great gift for a new neighbor or stick one or two in a little bag to send to your child's teacher for a snack.  This is a easy and great recipe - but this is what happens if you are talking to your friends when you make them and forget to add all the flour.

This is what the pan looked like after we scooped out the little bit of muffin part and ate it in bowls.  Not pretty, but tasty.

 As long as you follow the directions, they are great!  Doesn't my photo want you to start making these muffins now?? Ha!

Apple Muffins:

• 1 ¼ cups veg oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 cups apples, chopped (Macintosh)
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 1 cup coconut
• Mix the oil and sugar well, then add the flour with the baking soda and salt.  Then add the eggs and vanilla.  Stir in the apples, pecans and coconut until mixed well.  Pour into greased muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for 30 min.  
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Sleepy Sam, Good Friends, and Random Photo

This is how I found Sam about 3:30 one afternoon this week.  Why in this world did he think a suitcase was a cozy place to take a nap?  

He is so afraid he is going to miss out on some fun, so unless everyone else is headed to bed, he stays up too.  Sort of!  

But,  this is about how I felt Sunday night.  And Monday.  Tuesday was a bit better.  The reason?  I had three great friends come to Peru for a "weekend visit".  Crazy, crazy that they were only here for three days.  They slept in our house only two nights, and one night in Lima (well, sort of one night in Lima - it was actually only one hour of sleep that night!).  But it was SO worth it, and we made the most of our short time together!  Which is why I was so exhausted, I guess?  

I met them in Lima, and after a 26 hour delay we had a few hours together before heading to Trujillo.  We arrived in Trujillo about 6:30 am and hit the ground running.  Allen had some business and papers to take care of, but Carolyn and Candace helped me with the "walk"-pool (I walk Luke and Sam to school)  and got a tour of our neighborhood and home.  And we unpacked lots of this....

chocolate chips, instant oatmeal, protein bars, shout stain remover, dryer sheets, clorox pens and peanut butter

and this....

lots of donated medicines for the clinic

Then we had fun lunch with all the ladies of Peru Mission. 

Then we headed to the Arevalo church women's group, where Allen taught a Bible study and Candace and Carolyn led a craft.  The ladies LOVED seeing Allen (she and her mother-in-law started this women's group when Allen lived here)  and they also loved the craft.  After that we were treated to dinner with the ladies from the church and had a great time, although we were getting pretty sleepy by this point!

Saturday we gave them a tour of the medical clinic, met with Danny Hernandez of Peru Paper at her home, and had lunch at the beach.  They also got to have a tour of the Parish Woodshop.  

Sunday we had a day of worship at Cristo Rey then lunch and worship with our team at the Smith home, before it was time to say goodbye.  I was so thankful for all of the encouragement and laughing we had with their visit!

Now, on to random Peruvian things.... sometimes weird things happen here, things take forever to get done, and we just have to say, "It's Peru."  Last week was one of those things...  I took Luke and Sam to have little passport size pictures made for their school, and after having them made the "photographer" says, (in spanish) - "would you like the photo with all of your kids to be with our without stuffed animals?"  Well, I just reminded him that all we needed were the school pictures, but he insisted that the family photo was a free offer.  So we continued with the pictures.  Which ended up taking FOREVER.  He took them with the stuffed animals and without.  And it might be good to say that this was not a clean little room -  and with photos of girls in questionable attire which I was not in the mood to explain to my children about.  Oh, and also Luke had just spent two hours at the dentist office with half of his face numb, so he can't even smile straight.  And my kids were not dressed at all in anything that I would EVER have a family photo made.  But, anyway, after waiting an hour to have the photos touched up, having to buy food because the kids were starving (although let me remind you the photos were FREE), here it is:

(Sorry for the reflection - this is a picture of the picture)

Look Who's Been to Peru This Year!!

We started off our new year with a visit from Mimi and DoDad (my parents).  We loved every minute of having them here, and were sad to see them go!  While they were here, they did a little of this:

a little of band playing (now THAT is a good DoDad!)

a little bit of relaxing...

a lot of snuggling...

and a little sight-seeing...

My mom also brought curtains and my dad built screens for our windows, among many other projects.  It was unbelievably sad to see my parents leave - we had such a fun time having them here, and the reality of how long it may be before we see them again was heartbreaking to me when they left.

Thankfully, though, we've had more visitors to keep us occupied!

In February we had such a great visit with our good friend Rusty Waterer.  He came alone for a couple of days then was joined by Mont Berry and Bill Bradford (who helped start Peru Mission, lived in Peru for about ten years, and now is the pastor of our home church, Lawndale Presbyterian).  What a great time we had having them here!  Marcus kept Dr. Mont super busy at the clinic seeing over 60 patients in two days and Bill was in Trujillo only for a quick two days, before heading to a conference in Lima.  Rusty did what he does best - encouraging us all!  Oh, yeah, and he brought us this.....

We were pretty shocked and surprised at such a fun and useful gift as an iPad!  Many, many, many thanks to all the families who went in and gave such an incredible gift to our family!!!!  We are loving using this for books, a study bible, and educational games.  We can't buy books in English here, and could only bring a certain number with us in our suitcases, so this is a treat to be able to download books through Nook and Kindle apps.  

Then, on Mont and Rusty's last night with us, we had more company arrive on a motorcycle!

Mr. Dan Matthews had been touring part of South America on his motorcycle, and joined us for one night.  It worked out that Trujillo is on the PanAmerican highway, and I had been keeping up with Mrs. Kay Matthews to find out his itinerary.  We were so glad to have him stay with us, and he had plenty of good stories to share with us!

Also, on the same night, we had Arthur and Heather Wood arrive.  So, yes, we had 5 guests in our house from Mississippi in one night!  And it was fun and we actually all slept (I think!). 

Arthur is in his residency in Tupelo for family medicine, and he worked with Marcus in the clinic for a little over a week.  Heather is a photographer (http://heatherwoodphotography.com/) and recent graduate in elementary education.  We feel like they are part of our family now, although we had never met them before they arrived in Trujillo.  They were so easy-going and helpful to us, and just went along with the craziness of living in our household with four kids.  They saw it all - the good, the bad, the ugly!  It's kind of hard to hide your sin with house-guests for that long, and thankfully, they were forgiving for all our faults and were still speaking to us when they left!

In March we had the Perkins family come to Peru, and we are so thankful for this new friendship!!  Todd is also a family medicine physician and worked with Marcus in the clinic, and Beth and their four precious children worked in the orphanage for the week.  Now, we do love all the children here in our mission group, but let's just say that there are no boys.  Well, there is a baby boy and a teenage boy, and all the other kids aged 3 to 12 are girls ( out of 11 other children total, not including our kids).  So when our boys saw these three Perkins boys they were thrilled!!  We just had not realized how much they missed playing with boys (that speak English!).  

We had the family over for dinner one night, all four kids spent the night one night, and we let the boys have an "all boy play day" and they ran and played water balloons (along with hide and seek) in the park.  

The construction workers down the street had some good entertainment on their lunch break - they were cracking up at these white boys chasing each other with water balloons and screaming.  

Beth and Todd

We are thankful for this new friendship, and praying for this sweet family as they travel to Russia this spring to adopt a baby girl.  

Last week we had Marcus' mom and brother visit from Forest, MS, and while they were here celebrated his mom's 79th birthday!  What a treat to spend her birthday with her. She did lots of reading and playing with the kids, a bit of sight-seeing, and some touring around the parts of Peru Mission.  We had a good time sharing a bit of our lives here with them, and were thankful they made it back home safely.

We are so thankful for all of the visitors we've had so far this year!!  It is such a blessing to see friends and family, and meet new friends too!  Now tonight I'm really excited - I'm headed to Lima to pick up more friends from Mississippi - Allen Bradford, Candace Waterer and Carolyn Pillow!  Looking forward to having some girl time and can't wait to show them around Trujillo! 

Rain!

Now this may not mean much to many of you, but to us this is a BIG deal!  We haven't seen the ground this wet in MONTHS!!  The only time we have seen rain like this since we have lived in Peru was when we visited Machu Picchu in October.  Other than that, we have felt or seen very few raindrops.  Certainly not enough to make the ground wet!  So I guess it doesn't take much to get us excited here....

Daily Sightings

Mototaxi

Graced Again and Lent

Here is a quote we received from GracedAgain - it is a weekly email we receive each Monday.  This one was actually from last week, but I'm still pondering over it.

“God promises us redemption, but His sacred path leads us away from safety, predictability, and comfort.  Any attempt to fly over the dangerous terrain or make a detour to safer ground is doomed because it will not take us to God.  Instead, it leads to a host of other idols that can’t provide us with the confidence of faith, the dynamic of hope or the passion of love we so deeply crave.   Each day we either live for God or for other gods.  In each moment of hardship we fear either God or man.  When we choose to worship gods and fear men our lives will suffer an emptiness and turmoil that is not much different than trying to fill our bellies with dirt.  At first we may feel full, but in short order our violation of God’s plan will lead to torment.”       -Dan Allender


This hits home with me, especially on the days that are hard here.  Not all days are difficult, but certainly some things are.  But usually the things that get us down are the things that really aren't important at all - not being able to buy some convenient items, having things broken because the quaility of things is poor (like every single item Luke bought with his birthday money), last week especially when we had a couple of ipods "lost" or possibly stolen, and when all of the "processes" of getting things done here seem to take an eternity.  But why would I expect to have comfort and safety and predictability?  I can't expect to follow God, whether here in Peru or in the US, and keep worshiping my idols of comfort and routine.  I must continue to go to the cross (which is more than sufficient) for my contentment and comfort! 


On another note, it is the time of Lent.  I was talking to some friends Sunday about whether or not we were giving something up for Lent or not, and wondering how it would affect our hearts.   My temptation is to say I should give up dessert or something bad for me, only for my own personal benefit (sure, why not lose a few pounds while worshiping??) but then does that change my heart?  When I got home I found some blogs Marcus had pulled up that I thought provided some good insight to examing my heart during this time of preparation.  Look here to see what I read:


http://mckaycaston.com/im-giving-up-lent-for-lent


http://www.aholyexperience.com/2011/03/why-do-lent-why-a-failing-lent-actually-succeeds-a-booklist/?utm_source=feedburner


Any thoughts anyone wants to share?  When you give up something for Lent does it help you to focus on Christ?

Blessings for our Friends!

We are rejoicing for our sweet friends, Patrick and Amy O'Mara in Tupelo, who finally have their baby girl Evelyn home from Korea!!  After a long road of trials, prayer, and waiting, they are officially the parents of this precious child!!  To read more and see the beautiful photos click here for their blog http://ourgodisincontrol.blogspot.com.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction...   James 1:27

Daily Sightings

Jose Louis, the guard for our block of the neighborhood