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For those of you who read spanish I hope you enjoyed the preview. For the rest of you I’ll do some translating. “Erika va a dar a luz” literally translated means “Erika is going to give to light.” What it really means is “Erika is going to give birth.”

Yup, we’re pregnant! Erika is about 9 weeks pregnant so we’re looking forward to a Thanksgiving baby. We’re so incredibly excited to be able to share the news with all of you. Michael is excited too and already talking about being a big brother and saying hello to baby.

I hope the news has had a minute to sink in so now on to a bit of the details that I’m sure many of you are wondering about. First of all we found out we were pregnant on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter) and luckily it happened to be while my mom and Erika’s mom were both visiting so we got to tell them in person. They made it home before we were able to call or email our dads so we let them tell them but swore them to secrecy. We wanted to have a little more of a plan figured out as to what we were going to do before we told people.

After having lots of good time to think talk and pray these past few weeks we’ve decided that we really would like to have the baby in Chicago and then return to Honduras to finish out our 2 year commitment. Our current plan is to move our vacation to September when the three of us will fly home to the states. Erika will be 7 months pregnant so we’re trying to stick to the guidelines of not flying after that. We’ll spend the month as a family visiting friends and family, finding a midwife and all that good stuff. In October I’ll fly back to Honduras by myself to finish out the school year. Our school year is over November 4th so I’ll stick around for end of the year stuff and high tail it out of here as soon as I can to be home for the birth. It might be cutting it close if the baby comes early and a long time for me to be separated from Erika and Michael (6 weeks!) but we really feel it’s the best solution to honor our commitment here and our commitments to each other at the same time.

Once the baby is born we’ll stay in Chicago through Christmas and the 6 week checkup for Erika and baby #2 to make sure everyone is healthy and ready for travel, then we’ll fly back home to Honduras the beginning of January. We are really excited to return to the community we love and a lifestyle that has really allowed us to grow as a couple and as a family.

The biggest challenge for us will be having Erika 7 months pregnant in the July heat of Honduras. Other than that Erika is getting great pre-natal care from our clinic right next door to our house and we’re extremely lucky that part of our new volunteer group that arrives in October is a pediatric nurse-practitioner. We’re also excited because friends of our Matt and Kim and their two children Bella(2) and Jeremiah(3) have accepted a 2-year commitment to come and live and work here as well so we will be living in community with another young family.

We are a little sad that we won’t be coming home in July because we will miss our friend Sarah’s wedding and all the friends that we would have seen, and also because September is 4 ½ months from now and seems like a very long time. We’re hoping to take a week off this summer just to get a break and if any of you are looking for vacation spots this summer we have tons of room and love visitors.

I wish we could have told each one of you individually, in person, but such is the life of an overseas volunteer. We hope all of you are doing well, and we hope to see you all in Chicago this fall!!!

Michael-John, Erika, Michael and Baby number 2