Pictures Into Prayers

Do you ever feel torn about what to do with old Christmas cards or lack the space to display them?  Genius idea here, thanks Aunt Jill!

Use a hole punch and buy these rings at Walmart and waa-laa, a nice photo book.

We have been looking for a methodical way to pray for our supporters as well, so each morning, The Littles and I pray through three pictures. We do not have a picture for everyone so we will have to do some supplementing.

In meeting many new friends, we made another prayer book for missionary prayer cards. Same idea for less pictures, just smaller rings.

This is as DIY as I get. Be impressed. Very impressed. ;)

Outgrowing…

While in Colorado, The Littles had a growth spurt and were too tall for everything I had packed in their size.

They have little waists and it is hard to find pants (that aren’t leggings) that fit them at the waist (even with the cinched waist).  What brands have worked for your tall and lean kiddos?

However, they had not outgrown this…

Don’t know how much longer the “spider swing” can last!

Whew. We Are Back!

The last four nights, we were in four different states. We witnessed a beautiful wedding on the way back and rejoice with Jeff and Heidi! Today, today we are home.

I worked through some suitcases today, started some laundry and sat down with some cookbooks. I feel like I forget how to cook.  That is what 5 weeks of someone else cooking will do to me.

Thanks so much for your love, prayers and encouragement.  The Littles did amazing on the way home.  They were begging for macaroni and cheese while we drove.  After some thinking, Jon realized that KFC serves mac n’ cheese.  We located one and joined many senior citizens in the buffet line. Released from their carseats after hours of travel, they were a bit giddy. The Littles sat eating their noodles, loudly and repeatedly proclaiming, “This is a dream come true!”

This Odd World in Which We Live

In less than 24 hours, we hit the road, with a direct route back to the Midwest!  As I began to pack up today, I had to stop and just try to isolate the emotions I am feeling.

We are so excited to go home and we get to see family and friends starting on Saturday night!  This is exactly how I anticipated my feelings. If only they stopped there. Underneath those, I feel sad. Overall, I am thankful to feel sad because as we have learned here, sadness at leaving only comes if you have loved and been loved. In five weeks, this weird place where we don’t have wifi in our rooms and have to eat all of food through a cafeteria lunch line, actually started to feel like…home.

And for that, praise God. It gives me hope, hope that God can make any place begin to feel like home. Granted, there was not a lot of culture shock here and we all thrive in community, still, I rejoice.

We press on, taking the “yucks” with the “yays”, dragging our girls through another goodbye. More friends came in the last two weeks and they probably won’t ever see again, going to Mali, India and Italy.

We are so glad to be going home to be with our people, but we will ache and miss our new people. A fact of life for every change I guess. Today, when Little A heard we were leaving she said, “Mama, my body doesn’t want to change”.

Some things we will miss.

Always someone to play with…

Little A finally learned to jump off things. A chunk of every day was spent jumping off this mantle.

Talking to Jess while swinging kiddos

 

Playmates to have indoor “sledding” parties on lunch trays.

Walking into our room to grab something and entering to see 6 kids (The Littles not included) happily playing in our room.

 

(Okay, couldn’t handle that every day!)

Colorado’s beauty, a serendipitous mix of snow and sunshine.

Late night conversation with friends that feel like family.

I did not know how much it would cost to let myself feel the sadness. When I know this is a fraction of what we will feel as we fly across the ocean to Ethiopia, I want to curl into the fetal position and rock back and forth.

In all of this, I have joy. I am excited about our future.

Another chapter complete. We are so much richer through this. Thank you for all your love, encouragement and support.

Can’t wait to see you!

Passport

To apply for Jon’s work permit, we need 4 new passport pictures of The Littles. Having endured a Walgreen’s session before, we decided to try for our own pictures from our room. Bad choice. It was right before bedtime, the lighting was horrible and we couldn’t get the Littles to face the camera squarely (so you can see both ears, eyes straight at the camera, showing no teeth).

Here’s a few of our attempts.

No Little J, no teeth!

Okay, better, but make your lips normal…  

Look at the camera sweetie…

Pointless.

Aah! Let’s try Little A…

Look straight, no hands!

No!  Straight is the other way!  Put your hands down!

Don’t look so sad.

Grr. Why is their still ketchup on her face?! Let’s change the lighting.

Little A, it’s okay, let go of your hair and look at the camera.

Are you kidding me? Let’s just go to Walgreens.

Exiting and Entering

The way we grew up, our family culture and culture all around us has given us a set of “norms”, things that are normal, natural, right and good. However, before we can enter a new culture, we need to take on a posture of learning, a mindset that just because it is different, doesn’t not mean that it is abnormal, unnatural, wrong and bad.

The Littles have been learning this in toddler terms in their class and they have become more willing to try new things. We went out for Vietnamese with a friend and the kids menu had on it, only smaller portions of the adult menu. No mac n’ cheese threw Little A off, but after talking about it for a bit, the Littles tried “pho”.

Little A was unconvinced but did her best to stay positive.

Little J on the other hand ate it up!

After Little A’s great attempt to eat the pho, she moved to something more familiar, rice.  Which she promptly nicknamed frosting and ate most of it. :)

The Littles wave goodbye to the Vietnamese kitty.

We have learned an “elastic” word while we are here. Y-E-T. When we are faced with a new situation, we cannot forget this little word. “I cannot do this…yet…” I don’t give enough credit to how flexible kids are!

Garden of God

We’ve moved from SPLICE to PILAT and are working on techniques and theory of how to learn a language. I am actually in a group learning Hindi and Jon is learning Vietnamese.  The point of learning these languages is just to show us techniques on how to learn a new tongue.  We spend part of the day in drills, moving our mouths into uncomfortable and awkward positions. :)

The Littles have transitioned well to a new teacher and new classmates. Thanks for praying.

Last Saturday we went to a magnificent place, “Garden of the Gods” and it is majestic.  We renamed it to Garden of God.  

We took some of the other MTI kids with us and had practice being a family of five. 

 

We have four weeks down, one week to go before we go back to the Midwest.

SPLICE

SPLICE was amazing. Our growth was by leaps and bounds.  A few more highlights…

Little A’s dream of braids was realized!

Goodbyes

 

Waving everyone off, African style.

Brett and Liv leave for Thailand on February 22nd. Let’s pray for them and their families as they say goodbye.

And yes, for those of you who thought you spotted Jess in a blurry background of a previous post, we have been able to hang out with the family while we have been here.  Yes, it may have been one of the main reasons I was excited about MTI.

Jess is one of my dear friends from college and after graduation, we have been separated by miles, not for these five weeks!  I finally met her sweet blue-eyed boy.

We have had two playdates at Focus on the Family. kind of seems a little surreal. Cannot get enough time with the B family!

Good Grief

There really is such a thing. This week we have been led through grief, even corporately, something I never expected to experience.

Will you pray for our family this weekend? 

Most of our new friends now feel like family and they are leaving on Friday. We have a weekend open and then start our next two week program. The Littles are going to have a new teacher and three new classmates. They are going to miss Obie, big time. Over the weekend they were annoyed when they couldn’t be with him.

Naptime on “the cute little cots”…

“Each stage of life brings a new set of changes.  and each change brings with it unavoidable losses.  The reality of these losses needs to be acknowledged and incorporated into ourselves and the world.  This is essential if we are to recover from loss; it’s the process we go through in a particular recovery hourney called grief. Grief is not itself something we recover from.

Grief helps us recover from the many losses we experience. Grief makes it possible for us to face the painful reality of our losses, incorporate those losses into our understanding of ourselves, our world and God Himself, and somehow move on.

The purpose of grief is not to help us to forget what we have lost, but to help us grow in understanding, compassion and courage in the midst of our losses.

We all know that grief is emotionally painful work. Grief allows us to heal and grow, but the cost in emotional energy is often very high. Because of this, we often seek ways to postpone the disciplines of grief. We may tell ourselves to “Look on the bright side,” or to “keep a smile on our face.” But attempts to avoid the emotionally painful process of grief do not lead to growth.”

-Adapted from “Recovery from Loss” by Dale and Juanita Ryan

Our group altar of what God has taught us the past three weeks.

When The Daddies Are Away

…the moms and  kiddos play. :)  Jon has done a lion share of the parenting here and it has been such a blessing. Something in The Littles spending time with him grow their security and calm them. 

Colorado is full of adventure and Jon’s been able to get some great experiences.

Mountain biking? Go ahead and do that with as a guys’ trip. He said it was amazing and terrifying, one wreck that left him scraped and bruised.

And the next weekend, taking advantage of the snow…

…described by the men as amazing, fresh powder.

So Liv and I have had a chance to do fun things with the kiddos.

Saturday morning donuts with Obie in Pajamas and The Littles in princess garb.

My childhood dream was realized by exploring Focus on the Family’s Whit’s End. Too bad The Littles have no nostalgia about Whit’s End. Liv and I had enough memories for us all.

Puppet shows (another family from MTI was there too and rescued The Littles from a slide). Whew!

Sweet little Zion

Because we were at Whit’s End, I wanted The Littles to experience sundaes. They were delighted by their sundaes and Obie…

…was devastated. He felt his milkshake was not comparable.