Catch Up 2: January

In January after we returned from Tijuana we headed up to Bear Lake to work for the week before school started and also to celebrate Christgiving Thanksmas with Joey's family. We had lots of food, played the XBOX Kinect, played Christmas Style "Minute to Win It", exchanged presents, Grandma's general store, and just lots of fun. Joey was really good at the Minute to Win It challenges while I sat on the sidelines watching feeling kind of sick. (That night a couple of the children and a few of the adults got sick :( No Bueno). Then school started up again for Joey he started out being really busy with some hard classes but then after realizing that one of his classes wasn't needed for his Major and only for a minor that he was tacking on because he had the classes and it was keeping him way too busy and stressed he decided to drop the class and ease his burden. He is now enjoying his classes and learning a lot. Emily has been trying to keep herself busy and trying to find a job. The job hunt isn't going as well as we had hoped but Emily has stayed busy. We are involved with two charity organizations, Charity Anywhere (the organization that we go to Tijuana with) and World Joy Foundation. We learned about the World Joy foundation while we were in Ghana and fell in love with their goal and what they do. When we returned from Ghana we joined the Cache Valley World Joy committee.On February 3rd we held a Dinner/Auction Fundraiser for World Joy. Our goal was to raise $35,000 to build a Medical Clinic in Asunafo a small village just next to Abomosu (where we stayed). It was a lot of work. We had a silent auction, a live auction, raffle, and a big dinner. We spent a lot of time looking for donations, advertising, finding entertainment, and inviting people to come. It ended up being a wonderful night and we made a new friend, Foster. Joey and I were dressed in our Ghanaian outfits and a man walked up to us and started asking if we had been to Ghana. Turns out that he is from Ghana so we refreshed a little bit of our Twi with him and just reminisced about our time their. He had only been in Logan for 2 weeks but he had heard about the fundraiser and had to come. He is a new professor at USU. It was great to talk to him but now we really miss Ghana. The funds raised totaled was over $19,000 we were proud of what we were able to accomplish. If you want to see pictures of the event go to http://lauravanderbeek.blogspot.com/2011/02/world-joy-benefit-dinner-and-auction.html

On Martin Luther King Day we went snow shoeing with our friend Tanner and Amber Jones and Bryce Jensen. It ended up being a great day it was nice and warm but there was still lots of snow. We had competitions rolling snow down the hills and had a great time jumping down the hills. It is fun to have friends around to spend time with.

We have been staying busy going to Aggie Basketball games which are always fun.

(Once again pictures to come once I get my hands on Joey's Laptop)