Cool Beans!

Lost in Translation

2012-02-01T07:29:00.003+01:00

No trip to the orphanage this week. My "driver" is out of town. I'm still spending my week with kids, though. I have a missionary friend who is going to the U.S. next week for a month. Her husband and kids are staying here so this week Daniel and I are taking school to their house to get acquainted with the way she does school with her daughter. The plan is for me to be her teacher while her mom is gone. Yesterday went well. It helps that Daniel is a good reader, has a cooperative spirit, and doesn't mind doing some of his work independently.

The MAF blog is now featuring a weekly posting about raising kids on the mission field, called Moms on a Mission. This week spotlights one of my recent posts Daniel's Bottle Bucket Battle. You can check out the MAF blog HERE.

Sometimes we see things here that strike us funny either because their intended meaning was "lost in translation" or because they mean different things in different cultures. Living in a third world culture can affect one's sense of humor. Our family's sense of humor was already weird to being with, but I hope you enjoy these. Some of these photos were taken from a moving vehicle and/or with a cheap phone camera because taking photos here can invite trouble, so please excuse the poor quality.

Sometimes the folks who stock the shelves in the stores don't know what an item is so they make a guess about where it ought to be placed. Here the Odor Eaters foot spray is shelved between the bug spray and the rat poison. Our guess is that it was because the can says it "kills odors" and someone recognized the word "kills."

Everyone likes to drink "mildew,"right? This is actually coffee and it wasn't too bad, but the name just doesn't sound very appealing to those of us who speak English.

This is not where all the expats go to exchange their money. It's actually a new grocery store that the owner named after his wife Monique.

Another good food with a not-so-appealing name. This is not a cough inducer or a cough suppressant. It's applesauce.

We love the name of this store that we pass on our way to and from the orphanage. If I said to someone in the states, "I'm going to Fanny Wax," this is probably not what they would imagine. "Wax" in Congo refers to the way local fabrics are made. This is actually a store that sells fabric and clothing.

Praying the Bible

2012-01-28T11:58:00.001+01:00

I am crazy about books. One of the most difficult aspects of packing to serve in Africa was condensing our whole life, all our possessions for a family of five, to nine plastic SmartBins from Walmart. That meant parting ways with my books. My adoring husband bought a NOOK so I could have plenty of reading material. I like our NOOK, but it isn’t quiet the same for me. I’m one of those weird people for whom books are an experience, not just words on pages. I love the smell of a new book and the way a book feels in my hands. Book stores rank right up there with fabric stores as my favorite places to visit – maybe higher since they usually also sell coffee. I imagine I get the same dreamy look on my face in a book store that I have seen on my husband’s face when he shops for tools. Book stores = bliss!

I did bring some of my books with me. One that I treasure and use almost daily is “Praying the Bible for Your Children” by David and Heather Kopp. I found it several years ago in a stack of “remainders” on the $3.00 shelf at an outlet store and picked it up out of curiosity. Actually I picked up nearly all of the books because I just had to look at and touch all of them, but I put most of them back. This little $3 treasure changed the way I pray for my kids and for others. Each page is a prayer based on a promise from God’s Word and the book covers everything from pacifiers to sexual purity. I learned that praying from Scripture helps me pray in God’s will, focus on His character and see beyond just the immediate and physical needs, and pray with purpose instead of praying for the “same old things.” And I’ve learned to “pray outside the book” and use other scriptures as I find them on my own. I like to mark them in my Bible with the kids’ names and dates so when I come across them again, I can reflect on how God has answered those prayers. Sometimes I tell my kids I’ve prayed a certain scripture for them if I think it will encourage them, but more often it is between me and God. Today the prayer focus in the book was “speaking well of others” and one of the passages used is Titus 3:1-2. When I looked up the passage in my Bible I saw that in addition to “slander no one,” there are lots of other character traits mentioned which I prayed and asked God to develop in my children.

You might be tired of reading about the orphanage, but I have to mention my last trip out there because it was so different. I really considered staying home last week since I was having such an emotional week but I'm glad I didn't. They had toys! Someone had brought them dolls, trucks and dinosaurs. I got to play cars and dolls with them. In one sense it was sad because they didn't seem to know how to pretend or make car noises or make the dolls "talk". So, I showed them. They thought it was hilarious to see the "mundele" (white person) making car noises and horn beeps and lined up to make me "run" each of their cars in turn. Eventually they started imitating me and then it was my turn to laugh. We had a lot of fun and it was very good for me - a gift from God - to hear all those giggles. One sweet girl crawled into my lap and fell asleep but not before she gave me multiple hugs and beamed at me with her beautiful smile. Pray for those kids. They are so precious. Pray that they will one day understand the incredible depth of God's love for them and come to know Him (Ephesians chapter 3).

A Sad Goodbye and a Lesson in Congolese Culture

2012-01-25T11:46:00.001+01:00

My grandmother with my grandfather, Josh and Emily (top rt) and Daniel

Here is sort of a wrap up of the last several days.

Daniel got his stitches out! We are grateful he had no infection or complications. Being a ten year old boy, he's not the least bit upset about having a new scar - he thinks it's cool. He is however, disappointed that he gets to take baths again.

Emily made 1st semester honor roll! This was for her first semester outside of a home school environment, so we are very proud of her for doing well in her studies while she was also dealing with the adjustment to a new school, friends being gone on furlough, her brother leaving home, and starting the school year with her mom out of country having surgery. She's a real trooper!

Josh is playing his guitar now in worship time at the Baptist Student Union on campus, sharing his faith with others, playing rugby, and hopefully studying.

David has been trying to accomplish the impossible task of having no toilets or faucets leaking anywhere in the house for a whole day. The plumbing supplies here are of very inferior quality and break almost as quickly as they are installed.

I am working on our next newsletter. Well, ok, I'm thinking about working on our next newsletter.

MAF featured one of my articles on their BLOG.

Recently, I wrote about having friends whose father was near death and my grandmother being in hospice. Both of them passed away just days ago. I am heartbroken over the loss of my grandmother and the fact that I cannot be there with my relatives right now. She was a very special lady, strong, faithful, and compassionate. We'll all miss her terribly. I do find it comforting to know she is now in heaven with her Savior and we will have a reunion one day.

We attended our first funeral here in Congo on Sunday. I can well imagine what my grandmother's funeral might be like, at least in general. Most funerals in America have certain similarities because of our common culture, plus I know my family. It is the same here, except that the culture is vastly different. Here are just some of the differences that I noticed:

* The funeral was outdoors in a concrete gymnasium in 90 degree weather.
* Instead of padded church pews we sat under awnings on plastic lawn chairs.
* There was another funeral in progress on one side of us, and a church service on another side, both of which had live bands and PA systems competing with our service.
* Men in rolled up jeans, flip flops, and ragged t-shirts were walking around selling soft drinks and water, which they carried on their heads in bags of ice.
* There was a rooster crowing every few minutes.
* There were at least four languages spoken: English, French, Kikongo and Lingala.
* The family was expected to feed everyone. In Congo no one brings food to the family or offers assistance. They do bring money.
* The services lasted several hours. We were there for four and missed the burial service.
* There was a man wearing a sandwich board walking around selling Polaroid-style photos of the service, during, not after, the service.
* None of the flowers were real and all of them were wrapped in plastic. Instead of being displayed in advance of people's arrivals, they were presented to the deceased in a processional by the donors near the end of the service. It is the family's responsibility to ensure that there will be some flowers at the funeral, but anyone can give flowers. They are gifts to the deceased, not the family, and they are buried with the deceased, but first they are torn off their frames to prevent them from being dug up and sold by thieves. (A note: Grave robbing is so common here that often the casket is smashed to make it unsellable and less likely to be stolen. Grave markers are also intentionally damaged to ensure that they aren't stolen, painted over and resold.)

I'm sure there are other differences I didn't notice because there was a lot to take in. It was indeed very different from my own culture.

Hands in the Air!

2012-01-21T09:45:00.002+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

We say so much with our hands without even thinking about doing it. Remember the popular exression several years ago "talk to the hand?" We use our hands to give and receive, to say "come" or "go", to show our intents and feelings. At our church here in Congo, people extend open hands during the benediction as if to be accepting God's blessing. When a child raises his hands up to his parents, he is saying "I want you. I trust you. Pick me up!" We raise our hands to show excitement when cheering for our favorite team. At amusement parks some people on the rides have their hands in the air and smiles on their faces. Others, not so much.
It isn't hard to compare real life with a roller coaster ride. Both can be terrifying, taking sudden unexpected changes in direction and going way too quickly for us to take it all in. You can't always see what's ahead and sometimes it turns everything upside down. On the other hand (no pun intended), both can also be a thrilling wind-in-the-face experience that leaves us laughing and saying "That was an awesome ride!" Some of us ride roller coasters with our hands in the lap bar, white-knuckled and tense, dreading the ride. Some though, anticipate a great ride and say to everyone else on the roller coaster: "It's more fun if you ride with your hands in the air!" They trust the safety straps to keep them in the right place and protect them. If my walk with God were a roller coaster ride, I'd want to be a person that anticipates a great ride, knowing no matter which way it turns or how many loops it takes me through, He is there. I want to ride reaching to Him in trust and ready to receive his blessings, and to let my companions know that it is more fun if you ride with your hands in the air.

"Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands." Psalm 63:3-4

Gifts From God for Right Now

2012-01-19T15:31:00.001+01:00

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This is a crazy week. It's a good week for realizing how valuable relationships are. I have dear friends here whose 92 year old father is probably not going to live much longer. His loss will be felt deeply by the Congolese community as well as the missions community. Yet in the midst of all this they are continuing to focus on and serve others. This week my own grandmother, also 92, was admitted to hospice. Every day I deal with the conflicting emotions of being anxious to check my email and hear from my family in the U.S. and dreading what I may find when I do. My daughter learned yesterday that two of her dearest friends are leaving very soon, and she is heartbroken over it. All of us experience losses and grief. Sometimes I instinctively want to hide in my bed and refuse to deal with anyone or anything, even my friends and family. When we lose someone who is a vital part of our life, nothing is ever the same again, but the ones we still have with us are gifts from God for right now. Right now He is with me. Right now my family needs me. Right now I am preparing to have NEW friends come for dinner and fellowship before their long journey home. Right now there are people who are important to me whom I can serve, pray for, and love. And equally important is the fact that they want to do the same for me. It's OK to take some time alone, I think. But if I withdraw from those who care about me, including my Savior, when I am hurt, I am shunning the very thing I need most.

Daniel's Bottle Bucket Battle

2012-01-16T13:57:00.001+01:00

Raising children in a developing nation is risky, albeit adventurous. I knew that before we came, but it isn't something one tends to think about until something happens that gives you a startling reminder. Saturday evening Daniel dropped a bottle of Coke and it shattered. A piece of glass bounced off the floor and cut his leg pretty deeply. We could see his bone. Our first thought was to call a missionary we know who is a nurse, only to discover she was gone to the interior and couldn't be reached. We had no choice but to take him to a clinic here and hope for the best. Traffic was terrible. Sometimes when we are driving here I am reminded of a Discovery Toys Rush Hour game my kids used to have with a bunch of cars and trucks, all facing different directions and practically touching one another and unable to move. Add loud honking, dozens of pedestrians weaving in and out the best they can, shouting, and exhaust fumes and that's what it looked like Saturday evening. Daniel had been bleeding a lot and I had him in the back seat with his leg propped up while I held the wound shut and while we were stuck, his leg just spontaneously stopped bleeding and didn't bleed again until he was safe in the clinic being examined. Finally a hole just big enough to turn our jeep around opened up and we retraced our steps and went "the back way" to the clinic. There was a nurse outside the clinic who took one look at David carrying Daniel with his bloody feet and took charge, opening doors and escorting us past triage and reception, straight to the exam room. By the time I walked up to the reception desk to let them know Daniel was there and give them our names and address, he had been seen by the doctor, had his wound cleaned, and was waiting for stitches. While they were very careful to use sterile instruments and keep the wound clean, there were definite points of observation that reminded us we weren't in the U.S.
* the language barrier - they kept asking us questions in Lingala, then switching to French, and in our stress we had some difficulty thinking in French
* the insects on the walls
* the stack of grotesquely filthy leg and arm braces in the corner, presumably waiting to be reused
* no bright red bio-hazard box - the needles they used to give Lidocaine to Daniel were new and sterile, but once used they just went into the garbage bag with all the other bloody gauze and trash
* the mercurochrome - they used lots of it on all of Daniel's smaller cuts, even on his old bug bites. He has big pink spots all over his legs, front and back. They were so generous with it I started to wonder if we were getting charged by the ounce. Though I remember mercurachrome from my childhood, I'm pretty sure it is not used in the U.S. any more because it actually contains mercury. Nice.
* I had 8 stitches in each incision when I had my foot surgery. Daniels wound was about the same width, possibly wider, and he got four. We got some steri-strips from a friend to "close the gaps."
* no follow up instructions regarding things like when he can bathe, how long to leave the stitches in, etc. We know we have to keep it clean and dry. We have plenty of missionary friends here who are in the medical field so we'll have to rely on them for help and guidance.

While God was showing Himself to us; getting us through traffic, getting rapid treatment for Daniel, and keeping him from losing too much blood, keeping him amazingly calm, He also showed Himself to Emily that night. As we were leaving the house for the clinic, I asked Emily to get on the internet and tell our friends to pray because Daniel was bleeding a lot and I knew traffic would be bad and I didn't know what type of care we would get at the clinic. As soon as they heard, a couple on our team, the Freys, dropped everything and came to be with Emily. Instead of finding an anxious daughter when we arrived home, we found Emily, Jocelyn, and Nick watching a movie together. The glass, soda and blood were all cleaned up. They had brought their supper with them and fed Emily and even had a cupcake waiting for Daniel. I am so grateful that in this challenging place God has given us friends whose value can't be measured. We had other friends who were praying for us, helping us with medical advice, giving us antibiotics from their own supplies because the pharmacies were closed, even offering to come get us and take us to the clinic.

As we were preparing to leave the clinic, Daniel said "well now I can mark that off my bucket list." We asked him if he seriously had getting hurt and receiving medical treatment in a third world clinic on his bucket list and he said "yes, I did." What kind of ten year old has a bucket list? And what kind of ten year old has THAT on his list? When I asked Daniel's big brother those questions his reply was "a cool one!" I tend to agree with both Josh and with another friend who said we need to talk to Daniel about working on a safer bucket list.

It Matters To Them

2012-01-14T07:43:00.001+01:00

Friday, Myndii went with us to the orphanage in Kimbondo. It was our first trip back since the elections and I really missed the kids. They must have missed us too because we received a very enthusiastic welcome. There is a definite language barrier sometimes because the little ones that haven't been to school yet only speak Lingala and I only speak Frenglish, but they don't care. Some things are universal: smiles, hugs, silly faces, singing.
In the building where the babies are kept we found this little one.

She was extremely thin and about the size of a six month old baby, but is apparently much older because she has almost all of her teeth, including molars. Her skin just hung on her. I was afraid to even try to pick her up at first, but I got to hold her for a good long while and pray for her. There were several other little ones in the room, all tiny for their ages and all much more frail than the other kids in the orphanage. When the doctor came in, I asked him if those children were sick. He explained that they have over 200 children with AIDS. I'm not sure if he meant that all those babies have AIDS or not. It was while we were in this room that another worker told us that one of the other children had died just that morning. He had severe hydrocephaly that had worsened since I met him last summer to the point where he was bed-ridden. They had made arrangements for him to be flown out of country for surgery but he didn't make it. Had he been able to stand on his own, I think he would not have been as tall as my ten year old. He had to be suffering, but every time I saw him, he had a smile for me. It is heartbreaking that he died, but I know he is with Jesus and will not have any more reasons to cry, ever. I am grateful that of all the orphanages here, he was placed in this one, because I have heard so many horror stories about the others.
Someone recently asked me what I do when I go to the orphanage. I lamely offered that sometimes I help with dressing the kids after a bath or feeding babies but I mostly just hold babies and play with kids. It didn't sound all that important to me. I thought about all the needs there and my contribution seemed small indeed. But somehow God keeps prompting me to return and give more hugs and kiss more little heads and so I keep going. When I see their little faces light up and hear their giggles, I know it matters to them that I came.

So I've learned that if you can smile...

if you have a lap...or just really strange hair...

if you can play...

you can make a difference.

Sewing in the Congo: making stuff out of stuff

2012-01-12T09:50:00.001+01:00

During our Christmas break from home schooling, I managed to do a little sewing. I took some curtains and sheets and made, well, curtains and sheets. I bought some curtains from a departing friend a few months ago and had not managed to get them hung anywhere. They are the kind that has large eyelets at the top. In the states I would just run to Wal-mart or Home Depot and get the hardware for hanging that type of curtain. Not an option here. My mom sent me some lime green ribbon and thread for Christmas by way of Josh, so I turned the curtains upside-down and sewed the goofy European-style whatever-you-call-it (seriously, I have no idea what it is called) onto the new top to make it compatible with the tracks/hooks system thingy (sorry, don't know the name of that either) already installed in the house. Then I ran the ribbon through the eyelets, wrapped the ends around to the back, and tacked it down. We really like it. The curtains weren't wide enough for the window so I made a center panel out of a white sheet.

I also fixed a fitted sheet for my bed. We foolishly packed queen size sheets for our bed when we came here. I don't think anyone here has a queen sized bed unless they shipped it over from the U.S. MAF loaned us a "Congo-king" size bed when we first arrived. The mattress was made locally out of foam, so I was able to roll it and stuff it into my too-small sheets. The flexibility of the foam combined with the really snug sheets in such a way that when we got into bed each night the mattress enveloped us like a hotdog bun and cooked us in our own body heat. (no comments about pigs in a blanket, please) It also made getting out of bed an interesting challenge in the mornings, sort of like the commercials where the little old lady says "help, I've fallen and I can't get up!" We eventually bought a bed from some other departing friends. (Do you see the trend here? If no one ever left this place we wouldn't have anything in our house!) It's a California King from the states and my sheets were not going to stretch that far. So, when I had the chance to buy some king-sized sheets from my friend who sold me the curtains, I grabbed it. I took a strip off the top sheet and rehemmed it. Then I added the strip into the fitted sheet, near the bottom so it wouldn't show when the bed was made. I didn't have any instructions and had to "wing it" so the project took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but we have a fitted sheet now that doesn't have to be tucked back under the mattress every morning. Yaaay!
AND...I finally finished scrapping my Christmas photos. FROM 1993! I made one layout and reused it for the sake of expediency. I had a ton of photos because that was Josh's first Christmas and everyone has a bajillion photos of the first baby. (I'm really, really sorry, middle and youngest children.)

This past Christmas while Josh was here I took unusually good photos. I do that about once every five years. Then I took my memory card out of my camera so we could put one of the photos on Facebook for Josh. Now we can't find the memory card and that one photo is all I have from Christmas day. So, since the photos I took a couple days after Christmas can't tell the whole story, we had a great day.

Josh even blogged a little about it. He is a contributing writer on a blog for TCK's - third culture kids. You can see the wonderful sweet things he said about his family HERE. I think I might go read it a few more times.

How Many Christians Are In The Congo?

2012-01-09T09:56:00.000+01:00

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     Demographics reports are not exactly my favorite reading material, but a recent project published last month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life caught my eye due to it's mention of the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the Pew Forum:

     97.5% of the population in Democratic Republic of Congo is Christian - Oh, really?

     Only one of the ten countries in North and South America included in the report has a lower percentage of Christians in its population than the U.S. - Canada.

     79.5% of the U.S. population is Christian. - Wait, that's lower than the DRC!

     If these figures are true, my first thought was "What am I doing in Africa?" However, it is not up to me to decide where I serve God. That is His decision and I trust His sovereignty. We do have to keep in mind that this report is about "people calling themselves Christians," and includes a plethora of denominations. Did everyone in the study who called themselves Christians actually think about or understand what it means to be a Christian before they answered? In many cultures, if you ask someone a direct question, they will give the answer they believe you want, whether or not it is the truth. Is everyone who is on a church roll a Christian?  I've been in the Congo for 15 months now, and I can't count the Christians but I can say my personal observations don't come anywhere near to meshing with the figures in this report.   While many people here attend church, some of these "churches" teach witchcraft, magic and superstition with some gospel thrown into the mix. What saddens me is the thought that missions organizations might use a report like this to determine where their missionaries are or are not needed.

    You can find an article by The Weekend Telegram that gives a brief overview of the report HERE. The entire report is available on the Pew Forum website HERE. Let me know what you think. Are the numbers inflated or do you believe they are accurate?

If My Life Is A Prayer, What Am I Saying With It?

2012-01-06T20:19:00.002+01:00

We said goodbye to Josh with aching hearts today and sent him on his way back to the states. This being his freshman year, we are all new at this still. It is healthy and normal for children to grow up and leave the nest. So if it's a good thing, why does it hurt so much? I hate goodbyes. Instead of focusing on how much we miss him, I'm trying to be positive and look forward to the next hello.
That's easier said than done because I’ve always been a “glass half empty” kind of gal. If I were a Pooh character, I would occasionally be Tigger but more often I would be Eeyore. If I were a Narnian, my friends would know me as Puddleglum (so I've been told). I’ve always thought First Thessalonians 5:18 was a mega challenge. I often made excuses that the world needs us “glass half empty” people to keep the “glass half full” people in touch with reality. Perhaps in one sense it is true that God has given us all different personalities and ways of seeing things in order for us all to balance each other and work together. It is also true though, that giving thanks in all circumstances is God’s will. Giving excuses is not. Circumstances are external and we experience them with all 5 senses, so it is easy to focus on them. It takes more effort to look beyond. Crumbs on the table and floor are so much more than a mess to clean. They are tangible signs of God’s blessing and provision. Goodbyes are painful, but only because of the precious relationship God has given us with the other person. I might not be able to do laundry for a day or two while I wait for water, but God has never let us go thirsty. God has willed for us to rejoice, to pray continually, and to be thankful. In addition to bringing Him glory, it is for our own good. I've noticed that if I try to leave one out, all of them become more difficult. God has given me salvation and the promise of his constant presence. Even if those are the only reasons some days that I can think of to rejoice and be thankful, they are always there. Keith Green sang a song that went like this: “Make my life a prayer to you.…” If my actions and speech are reflections of what is in my heart, then my life is like a prayer. Every parent knows that sometimes a child says one thing with his mouth and something entirely different with his actions or body language. I wish I could say that with my “life-prayers” I am always saying the same things to God and showing Him the same attitude that I am with my “lip-prayers.” Dear Father, I don't want my spoken prayers to be just lip service. I want my actions as well as my speech to say "I love You, I need You, I surrender to You, and Thank You!"

I'd Rather Have a Super Power!

2012-01-03T10:07:00.000+01:00

I woke at 3am last Tuesday with a migraine. That’s not unusual, but thankfully, I’ve learned some of my triggers and don’t get them as frequently as I used to. Migraines are yucky. Recently, mine have developed a nasty new habit of commencing during the night while I sleep and waking me up. Ever notice that any type of pain seems magnified, and time passes more slowly, at night when anyone who might take pity on you is asleep and unaware of your plight? Anyway, when I felt better I researched migraines on the internet. I wanted to know whether this newest symptom was something common to many migraine sufferers or if it was just another of my own unique quirks. I learned it is fairly common. Most of the articles I found also claimed that “migraine disease” (they really do call it that, go figure) is a genetic neurological disorder. Since no one else in my immediate family suffers migraines, I guess this means I am the genetic mutant in the clan. Sort of like the X-men, only instead of a cool superpower I get migraines. I’d much rather have a superpower. Who wouldn’t? At least I am blessed with a super family that is very sympathetic and helpful when I get a migraine. They know I need to be in a dark, cool, quiet place. They know motion makes it worse so they bring me ice packs and drinks. The kids manage the home for me until I feel better, usually by graciously saving the dirty laundry and dishes for me. Somehow that doesn’t have the same effect as when someone saves me a seat next to them, or a piece of pie.
Just as physical migraines incapacitate us, so do spiritual migraines. Some of my migraines occur because I have not been taking care of myself and paying attention to things that trigger them. If I skip meals, allow myself to become dehydrated, eat something I know from past experience will cause me pain, or get too hot (so I moved to Africa), I will get a migraine. It is best to avoid any known triggers altogether. We have spiritual "triggers" as well. We have to feed and meditate on God’s Word and pray. We have to learn from our experiences and not repeat our mistakes. We have to make time for spiritual rest and renewal. If we allow ourselves to constantly run on empty, we could be setting ourselves up for a spiritual migraine.

How Missionaries Really Want to Travel

2011-12-31T06:40:00.003+01:00

I hope you had a very merry Christmas! We did! The power went out for several hours, but we didn't let it ruin our fun. We read the Bible together, gave our gifts to eachother, called family, and watched movies. David loved the rug I made for him and Josh loved the sock monkey. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can see photos HERE. It was so nice just to be together! I am going to be a mess when Josh goes back to college, I can see it now.

There are very few advantages that I've found thus far to having my first-born attending college 6,000 (not a typo, it's really that far) miles away. With no dishwasher and a washing machine roughly the size of a blender, it is a plus that we have fewer dirty dishes and less laundry. Possibly the biggest advantage, and still not big enough to outweigh how much we miss him, is that when he came to visit for Christmas he was able to bring us stuff we can't get here - like Christmas presents! We were able to shop online and have items sent to Josh. Josh then became the Burton version of Santa, flying Brussels Airlines instead of a sleigh, and carrying suitcases instead of a magical weightless and bottomless red bag. But wait! What if I could find a magical weightless and bottomless bag? I would be willing to pay a fortune for one! Imagine the possibilities! Missionaries and other world travelers would line up to buy them like people waiting for the stores to open on Black Friday. Anyway, David bought "The Pioneer Woman Cooks!", by Ree Drummond. Then Santa - I mean Josh - brought it to me. I love this book! Nevermind that I can't get all the ingredients here for all the recipes - I can definitely get some of them. I really enjoy her writing style and she wrote her cookbook in much the same style that she uses on her blog. Just a few days ago I read her post "All I Wanted Was A Doughnut". Oh! How I miss doughnuts! If I just had a weightless, bottomless bag I could bring a whole term's worth of doughnuts back with me every furlough. I could bring enough doughnuts back to give one to every cop in Kinshasa. Gasp! I read Ree's story aloud to my family because I thought they would enjoy it. They did enjoy it, but after I finished reading it my youngest asked "What is a doughnut case?" I never, ever, ever, thought in a million years that one of MY children would not know what a convenience store doughnut case is. I shall remedy this when we go on furlough in 2013, and I shall do it well. Read Ree's doughnut post to end your year with a smile!
Happy New Year!

A Pastor Explains Poverty Theology

2011-12-29T10:04:00.002+01:00

My friend Marcia from Little Pink Rose (see link in sidebar in blogs I enjoy) shared an article with me that really hit home. The author, Pastor Mark Driscoll, wrote a parable of "poverty theology." He explains it much better than I could so I hope you'll read his post. I have been guilty of this type of theology and I believe missionaries in general are especially susceptible to this temptation. Most of us have to raise ministry support in order to stay on the field. We feel a deep responsibility to our supporters to be good stewards. The trap is in worrying about what others will think of us and what we have or don't have instead of thanking God for all we have. James 1:16-18 says "Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. While He uses people to support our ministry, the support is from Him. We are not the only missionaries who have lost supporters. We know that we are not here in our own strength and each member of our team is crucial. Losing even one is significant. Pray for your missionaries, that they will not fall into a trap of living in fear of the opinions and actions of others. Pray that they will not be prideful or prejudge others, but that they will enjoy all that God gives them and trust Him to meet their needs. Pray for those who are the backbone of missions: the prayer partners and the financial supporters. Thank God for their sacrifices and ask Him to bless them and meet their needs, known and unknown! I do. You can read Pastor Driscoll's post HERE.

Cookies Worth Blogging About - Seriously!

2011-12-24T13:22:00.006+01:00

Some time ago, long enough ago for me to forget who my wonderful benefactor was, someone gave me a bag of Heath toffee bits. I went googling for recipes that use toffee chips and found a recipe called "Nancy's Decadent Heath Bar Cookies." Well, if you were browsing recipes and found one that had both your name and the word "decadent" in the title, wouldn't YOU feel compelled to try it? I sure did. These babies are amazing! And - when people try them and ask what they are called, I get to truthfully call them "Nancy's Decadent Heath Bar Cookies" - hee hee. She doesn't say when to add the butter so I added it with the shortening. Her recipe calls for 12oz of chocolate chips, but after measuring I had about 1/3 cup left over so I just dumped them in. She also calls for 6oz of toffee chips. I had an 8oz bag. Knowing that 2oz is not enough for another batch of cookies, I dumped it all in. I had pecans so that is what I used for the nuts. I did have a lot of trouble with the cookies sticking to the pan (possibly too many chocolate and toffee chips? nah!). I tried letting them cool for different lengths of time, spraying the pan, etc but they stuck every time. I didn't want to try her foil trick because I was afraid I would end up with little pieces of foil stuck to the cookies. The foil here in Congo is tissue thin and doesn't really have a "shiny" side. Finally in exasperation, and after making myself sick from eating all the broken cookies that stuck to the pans, I tried the foil. It is imperative that you use the foil! It makes a world of difference. To view the recipe click THIS.

Something Old, Something New, Something Baked, Something Blue

2011-12-23T23:10:00.001+01:00

Something Old:
Over a year ago I was shopping and found fabric with a snowflake pattern, in Africa, so I bought some with the intention of making a wrap skirt. Finally, I have gotten around to actually doing it. Red and yellow are kinda strange colors for a snowflake theme, but then again, this is Congo.

Something New:
When I asked my oldest if there was anything special he wanted for Christmas, I told him to keep in mind that I can't just run to Walmart or the mall to buy things. He asked for "a sock monkey with a rasta hat." Ok. Sure. I happened to have the socks leftover from one of Emily's school projects. I begged yarn off my friends and went to work to make a monkey with dreadlocks. The rasta hat is made from a black sock and I stitched it with yarn to make the stripes. I hope I never have to make a sock doll with hair ever again, but I don't think this one turned out too bad. Hopefully Josh will like it. Don't tell him I posted this on my blog. He's been instructed not to look until after Christmas.

Something Baked:
I baked cookies this past week to contribute to gift bags for our national staff and decided to take the rest to the commercial center in my neighborhood, along with some tracts, and give them out. I invited my friend Myndii to come along and she made up a plate of cookies for the police station. (The police station is really a metal shipping container about the size of a short train boxcar, used as headquarters and office for a small group of police officers.) We took our wares down on Thursday and were greeted warmly by the police officer and his friends, who gave up their chairs and invited us to join them in conversation for a few minutes. We made sure to give treats to Papa Joseph, Mama Lily, Papa Kabuya, Titi and TonTon - people we conduct business with regularly, then passed out goodies to everyone we could until it was gone. Sadly, there were more people who wanted one of my gifts than I could have prepared for. Pray that the gospel tracts and the gestures of Christian love are well-received and that the seeds grow.

Something Blue:
I purchased some curtains from friends of ours who were leaving Kinshasa. David really liked the blue in the fabric, so after adding a strip to the bottom of one set to make them long enough, they were hung in our bedroom. I had a bunch of the matching fabric left over so for a Christmas gift I made a "toothbrush rug" for David. Don't tell him you saw this until after Christmas either. Now my kids want me to make rugs for them. It's so easy I think I might let them make their own. If you are interested in making your own, I learned how to do it using instructions from this website: toothbrush rugs.

Why I'm Glad I'm in Congo for Christmas

2011-12-22T03:47:00.000+01:00

Even when it isn’t in the throes of post-election mayhem, Congo is ranked near the top of the list of the world’s worst places to live. The cost of living is outrageous. Corruption abounds. It is a violent and unstable place. The infant mortality rate is high and the average life span is low compared to other nations. During the Christmas season, there is no snow. No parades. No Salvation Army bell ringers. No Christmas songs playing on the radio or over PA systems in the malls (no malls either), no decorated lawns or lights on the houses. No Charlie Brown Christmas special(I should have bought the dvd). Shopping for gifts is an exercise in futility and frustration. Toys and games are outrageously priced, mostly in other languages, and if electronic, zoned for European-made devices, not the American devices we brought here with us. A bag of m&m’s for a stocking stuffer costs $15 or more. Maybe the stores will have turkeys, but maybe not.
So what’s a family to do in Congo at Christmas? Without all the trappings and hoo-ha, we find ourselves having a lot more time and a lot more space in our thought lives to actually focus on what really matters: the incredible love that moved the God of creation to send his Son for the likes of us. We’ve learned not to take even going to church or having fellowship with friends for granted. We’ve simplified our expectations and our desires. We’ve become more grateful and less greedy. We are more keenly aware of how deeply the Savior loves us and how blessed we are. It’s a change I am not sure would have happened if our family had never come to Congo, but one that as a Christian wife and mom I am extremely happy to have observed and been part of. I struggled our first Christmas here as I learned to let go of the way I thought Christmas should be observed and open my hands to receive the Christmas God wanted to give me. My kids displayed just as much excitement and gratitude over the simple things we gave them and our little second-hand crooked tree as they used to show over more lavish gifts and fancier decor. We wished our Congolese friends a "joyeux Noël." We went to church and sang about the Son who came for all mankind with people from many different nations, including Congo – a little taste of heaven.
A Little Bit of News:
Last Sunday our oldest son arrived safely from the U.S. all in one piece and his luggage arrived Wednesday. We are extremely grateful to be reunited for two weeks and are enjoying every minute! Thanks for all your prayers for his travels!

Jesus Under the Stove (and other unusual places)

2011-12-18T08:56:00.000+01:00

I don’t understand why, because it is often the messiest room in the house, but our kitchen is a people magnet. Often when I am cooking, other members of the family will come in and talk to me. So we were all in the kitchen together last night when we noticed David on his hands and knees looking beneath the stove. Conversations and activities ceased as we all stared until he noticed and responded.
“I’m looking for Jesus.”
“I’m pretty sure you won’t find Him under the stove.” This was followed by much laughter.
Minutes later:
“I found Jesus under the printer.”
“Didn’t I tell you He wasn’t under the stove?”
“He was just as likely to be under the stove as under the printer.”
“I guess you have a point there.”
My husband was searching for Jesus in bizarre places because our cats had gone berserk while we slept during the night and scattered the pieces of Emily’s nativity scene all over the house. The other pieces were found quickly but we couldn’t find Jesus, the most important figure. Once He was found, everyone was happy. Like our cats, we humans tend to make a real mess of things. We sometimes lose sight of what should be the most important things in our lives. Our nativity Jesus was never truly gone, we just couldn’t see Him because He had been moved from the place of prominence to a dark and dusty corner. I don’t want to relegate Jesus to a dark and dusty corner of my life. I want Him to be the absolute center, the focal point no matter what angle anyone sees me from so that they are shown the way to Him.

Food for the Stomach and for the Spirit, Times Two

2011-12-17T17:37:00.002+01:00

One interesting difference between the cultures here and in the U.S. is the way people react when you offer them a gospel tract. I found some French and Lingala versions of the Four Spiritual Laws tracts at a Bible store downtown and while I was grocery shopping yesterday with friends, we passed one of them out the car window to a police officer who was directing traffic. He accepted it, looked into our vehicle at all the bags of food and candidly remarked that he wished he could have one of the loaves of bread. We gave him some money to buy bread for himself and his partner and told him thank you for working hard to keep the city safe. The other officer then asked us if he could have a tract of his own. We gladly gave him one. I've been told that this is a very common response. Never in the U.S. has anyone asked me for a tract. Often people didn't want them and told me so either politely or otherwise.
Today our entire team, both U.S. staff and national staff, held an outreach event at the airport. Planes were moved out of the hangar to make room for chairs and a sound system. We shared a little bit about MAF, sang in English, French and Lingala, and had a Christmas worship service. The key speaker was Fideline, who is a local pastor and the wife of Maurice, one of our national staff members. God has blessed one of our MAF wives, Sandy Francis, with amazing musical talent. She sang Jesu Bambino/O Holy Night in English and French and nearly brought the house down. It is a real treat both to hear her sing and to hear Congolese singing praises in Lingala. Several people responded to the invitation to pray and receive Christ. Everyone was given tracts, Bibles, and refreshments. Hopefully they all went home both spiritually and physically fed.
Please pray for the two officers, and those who came today. Many of them requested extra tracts. Who can say how many others might receive one? Pray the seeds will grow! Also, even though the supreme court confirmed Kabila yesterday as the winner of the election amid some controversy, things are calm here so far and we are grateful. Pray for Josh - in just a couple of hours he boards a plane to come visit us!

10 Reasons to Dislike Secret Santas

2011-12-13T10:22:00.004+01:00

I don't care for secret santa games. In fact I don't care for any games other than the kind where everyone sits around a table and uses a board with "little men" or a deck of cards. "Ice breaker" is a phrase that instills horror and dread for me. But I always participate because I feel like a Scrooge if I don't. With the exception of my spouse, I always thought I was odd for feeling that way, until my friend TJ wrote about it on her blog and listed all the same reasons I have had in the past, at one time or another, for not liking secret santas. Now, to be fair, I must share that last year our ladies Bible study group did a "secret sister" activity that lasted several weeks. We filled out detailed surveys first, which went to everyone in the group. No matter whose name you drew, you got to read everyone's survey and we all got to know each other better. The surveys covered favorite colors, songs, Scriptures, snacks, etc; names of family members, and prayer requests. The goal was not just giving but praying, and we all were blessed by it, including me. I still groan on the inside when people start talking about secret santas, but I recognize that it can be done in a way that truly blesses someone. To see TJ's list click the link below.

TJ's Musing: 10 Reasons Why I Hate Secret Santas

The Right Place at the Right Time

2011-12-10T11:21:00.000+01:00

Election results that were due last Tuesday were finally announced yesterday afternoon (Friday). President Kabila has been re-elected. I heard there were some violent confrontations in Kinshasa, mostly downtown and near the airport, but our neighborhood has been calm. Everyone is staying close to home for a while. We aren’t a target or anything, but we don’t want to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I imagine a lot of people think being in Congo at all right now is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there are a number of God’s people here, including us, who believe we are in the right place at the right time simply because we are where He put us. I’m not presuming to say we are “God’s gift to Congo,” but perhaps Congo is God’s gift to us. I pray He will use me here to make an impact in someone’s life and bring glory to Him, but I know He is using Congo to make an impact in my life. Several weeks ago I was reading in the Psalms and when I came to Psalm 146 I felt a heavy burden for the people here in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and also for the people of my own country. Verses 7-10 say: “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.”
In addition to the oppression you can see here, there is spiritual oppression that you can’t see, but can sometimes feel. Nearly everyday I see hungry people and malnourished children. I am certain that there is oppression and hunger in the United States also, though on a different scale or manifest in different ways. But praise God! He sets prisoners free! He heals! He lifts up those who are bowed down! Widows here are treated abominably, especially by their own families. But our Father is watching over the widows and the orphans. And how desperately we need Him to frustrate the ways of the wicked as we end an election here and prepare for one in the U.S! Being a mechanic’s wife, I’ve heard many times how important it is to have the right tool for the right job and to have tools that are of a good quality. One of the best tools we have as believers is prayer. I’m praying these Scriptures for both the Congo and the U.S.

God Knows The Unknowns

2011-12-06T19:27:00.000+01:00

For our family and friends who are concerned about us this election season, we are fine! We appreciate and still need your prayers for us and for this country. We are stocked up in case we have to "hunker down" and stay home for a few days, but so far things have been fairly calm in our neighborhood. The election results are supposed to be announnced today, but as of 6:00pm tonight we've heard no news. We finished putting up our Christmas tree today and I came home from my ladies' Bible study group to the sound of Christmas music. It's nice to have a feeling of normalcy and a praise song in my mind and heart to keep the tension and anxiety that is in the air here from constantly preoccupying me and affecting my perspective, even my ability to make decisions. It's even nicer when our whole family is doing it together. We sure do miss Joshua though.
My friend TJ recently shared her own struggles with decision making based on God's plan versus people and circumstances around her. She wrote that she had decided to say "yes" to God in spite of the unknowns, trusting that God has a plan and is going to take care of all of those unknowns. You can read her entire article HERE.

Treasuring Trash and Trashing Treasure?

2011-12-03T14:39:00.001+01:00

Praise God! We have a transformer! And we’ve been having power at least part of each day! Ironically, even though we had zero power for 11 days in November, when I received my bill on Thursday I noticed it is double the usual amount. This is Congo, after all. The elections results are not officially being announced until next week but already rumors are flying. Continue praying for God’s peace to reign here.

Because of the rumors and tension, I didn't get to go to the orphanage this week. Last week during our visit I went over to the Patrick House to say hello to the kids there. This is the building that houses the children with severe disabilities or with AIDS. When I arrived the foyer was empty and a staff member led us to a playroom. We were taken by surprise because this room was brightly painted. There were padded mats on the floors and colorful toys lining all the walls(This REALLY surprised us because we almost never see toys anywhere when we visit). The room was full of kids, some in wheel chairs but most of them were sitting or lying on the mats. We made a point to talk to as many as possible, though only one girl was able to reply to our questions. We just basically sat with them, held their hands or patted their shoulders, and even sang a few songs for them. It struck me that there were all these nice toys all around them, but none of the kids seemed to be interested in or even notice them. Most of them weren’t capable of actually getting to the toys, but even when I handed some blocks to one child, she rejected them because what she really wanted was my plastic grocery sack. Unbeknownst to her, all it contained was a couple of bottles of bubbles that had leaked their contents into the bag. On the same day, in the courtyard where the toddlers and preschoolers play, I saw a little guy playing with the lid part of a tomato paste can. Not wanting him to cut himself, I took it from him and threw it away. His response was to throw himself on the ground, screaming and crying in anger. I wonder how often God has incredibly good gifts for us but we instead spurn them in hopes of keeping our garbage or even grasping more garbage. How often we respond in anger when He acts to protect us or correct us. Or how often He has surrounded us with signs of his love, creativity and power but we just don’t have our eyes open to see them. Praying we all go through this week with our spiritual eyes wide open and our hearts eager to receive all He wants to give us!

Stinky Pie

2011-11-26T06:18:00.001+01:00

We are eagerly looking forward to Christmas break when Josh comes to visit! In the meantime, kids at Emily’s school are getting a two-day break next week due to the elections. We are hoping and praying that all will go well and kids all over Kinshasa will be attending school with safety and confidence on Wednesday. The newest rumor is that we will get a transformer no later than Monday. I’m not sure how the power company will pull that off on election day but I’m trying to be optimistic. I know two things for certain regarding the elections, electricity, and everything thing else here in Kinshasa. First, there are always rumors. Second, there are lots of people praying here and around the world! Yesterday some of us met to pray and my friend Deborah shared Psalm 4:6-8. "Many are asking, "Who can show us any good? Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD. You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety."
Thanksgiving Day we joined several other missionary families for a feast and a time of praising God. Hearing others tell stories of things God has done for them is always encouraging and exciting. Since we still have no electricity, I searched the internet and found a recipe for “no-bake pumpkin pie” that I could make on the gas stove and decided to try it. Pumpkin is not available here so I used a local squash that looks and tastes a lot like pumpkin. I made some whipped topping and added it in order to make my pie prettier. Here, whipped topping is called KlopKlop, which I think is funny – makes me think of horses walking on pavement. I used mini-chocolate chips to make a “P”, then decided someone might mistake the pumpkin pie for pecan pie, and added a “u.” The result: my pie was labeled “Pu”, as in “peeyew”. Oh well. There was none left, so I guess it wasn’t too bad, and I’ve included the recipe below. If you click on the photo it will enlarge so you can more easily read it.

I'm the only turkey here!

2011-11-23T15:13:00.001+01:00

Thanksgiving is the beginning of the most homesick time of year for me. I miss my family and friends year-round, but this time of year I also miss traditions: turkey (I'm the only turkey here.); watching the Macy’s parade in our pajamas; alternating between cooking, eating, and football. When I was a kid, we went to Mississippi nearly every year and spent Thanksgiving with my grandparents. All the aunts, uncles and cousins would come. I still remember my grandmother’s kitchen, the smells of pine trees and food cooking, sounds of kids playing and adults talking, Aunt Mamie’s pound cake, and the little table where all the kids ate in the kitchen while the adults ate in the dining room. We looked forward to “going to Nannan’s” all year long and had wonderful times. This Thanksgiving, this side of my family is grieving. Last week my grandmother’s last living sibling passed away. She is in the hospital, and I received news on Monday that my uncle had died. I desperately wish I could be with my family in the U.S. right now. Tuesday one of my dearest friends here left Kinshasa permanently. Three weeks ago another dear friend left when her assignment here was completed. Lately, it seems like almost every day there is a new loss. Add to this the stress of having no electricity since November 16, a child in college 6,000 miles away, and the elections here. I have a heavy heart right now, but I also have many things to be thankful to my Savior for. My husband is my best friend and loves me so much it astounds me that God gave him to me. I have amazing friends here who love me and show it. There are many people all over the world who love us and pray for us. My family draws closer in times like this instead of withdrawing from one another. There may not be turkey on the table, but there is food in the pantry. I can’t watch the parade or the football game, but I can wear my pajamas if I want to and play games with the kids. My college student has a ticket to come home for Christmas. God’s Word is full of verses that assure me He loves me, that He heals and comforts broken hearts, and his grace is sufficient. I know this is a holiday time, so as we celebrate and give thanks together in heart if not in person, I’m being real in hope for two things. I hope that you’ll pray for my family (on both continents). I hope the knowledge that even when hurting, God has enabled me to see his grace in my life and celebrate his goodness and mercy might encourage someone. And I promise a cheerier post soon!

***I just learned that one of our MAF team members DID find turkey and she is bringing it to our team potluck on Thanksgiving Day! Yaay! One more blessing to be grateful for. If we had found them, we'd have bought one, we wouldn't have been able to cook it. So! I am not the only turkey in Kinshasa, at least not til after Thanksgiving.

A Tale of Two Transformers

2011-11-19T06:23:00.002+01:00

It’s one thing to know I should be content, trusting that God is in control and has me in the palm of his hand. It’s quite another thing to live as though I believe it. Our electricity went off Wednesday evening and by Friday morning the rumors were flying that a candidate in the upcoming election had ordered that the transformer, probably because it is a new one, be moved from our neighborhood to one that contains more of his supporters. Whether that is true or not, a truck did come today and haul away our brand new transformer and there was nothing any of us could do about it. When the old transformer burnt out last spring, we were without electricity for six weeks until a new one was finally obtained. So, for the foreseeable future everyone in our neighborhood has to run generators for several hours a day in order to do the simplest things: take showers, wash dishes and clothing (forget running the dryer or the hot water heaters!), preserve food, cook meals, charge batteries. Fuel is very expensive here, and it's hot outside. With holidays coming it is tempting for me to feel sorry for myself until I remind myself that God has not withdrawn his presence from me, I just forgot for a moment to keep my gaze on Him instead of on myself and all the stuff around me. For a moment as I stood in the road watching the truck drive away, it felt as if my hope was on board alongside the transformer, "riding off into the sunset." Thankfully, in reality my hope and the real transformer in my life is Jesus and NOBODY can take Him from me. He is the Prince of Peace, and His Word is truth and a healing balm for our wounds.
My friend Marcia has an amazing testimony of God’s grace, transformation, and healing in her life. She has shared it on her blog because she is absolutely convinced that when we give God the credit due Him and share with others what He has done for us, He blesses them through it. Marcia has encouraged my family and me many, many times along our journey. I encourage you to read her brief testimony HERE and even share it with anyone whom you know would be blessed by it. While you are there, take a look around. God has given her a gift for transforming pieces of fabric into beautiful quilts and clothing. Marcia has also shared her story in more detail HERE if you are interested.

More Than The Sum...

2011-11-12T14:13:00.000+01:00

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country of extremes, both good and bad. A few examples:
• The most thunderstorms and the most lightning in the world
• The world’s second largest rainforest, after Amazon
• One of the world’s richest nations in natural resources, including copper, diamonds, coltan, and the world’s largest producer of cobalt.
• The world’s second poorest nation according to the United Nations Human Development Report
• A river with potential to supply electricity for all of Africa, yet only 9% of the country’s citizens have access to electricity
• The only place in the world where the bonobo apes and the okapi live in the wild, yet the bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas are endangered here, partly because of bushmeat trade
• The world’s second highest infant mortality rate
• Ranked 164 out of 178 coutries by Transparency International for level of corruption
• The highest rape incidence in the world; approximately 48 every hour
The election scheduled to take place on November 28 is no exception to the Congo’s propensity for uniqueness. The 57 page ballot is perhaps the longest in world history. There are eleven presidential candidates. Depending on your source, some 18,000 to 19,000 candidates are vying for just 500 parliamentary positions. There are 32,500,000 registered voters, and, interestingly, 64,000,000 ballots have been printed. The election results are scheduled to be announced on December 6. Please pray for this wealthy-but-impoverished, beautiful-but-chaotic country during this election season. The Congo is more than just the sum of its statistics, it is a people who longs for peace, living in poverty amid untapped wealth. Pray for a peaceful election season. Pray that as they go to the polls to select their leaders, their hearts will be drawn to the King of Kings, who can give them peace that passes understanding and make them heirs with Christ.

Beans or No Beans?

2011-11-05T09:32:00.000+01:00

I’ve been asking myself this for some time. I originally named this blog “Cool Beans!” It was/is a favorite expression of mine. While we were attending language school in Québec, I changed the name. I was excited about learning French and wanted to make my blog reflect that. Somehow “Cool Beans!” didn’t sound so appealing after translation, so I went with “C’est vrai.” I still enjoy practicing and learning French, but I’m going back to Cool Beans partly because it’s just more “me” and partly because I am venturing out of my comfort zone a bit (ok, a lot). It has bothered me for a long time to know I have friends who have difficulty reading our newsletters and our blog, so I am going to start a blog for my francophone friends. Being the world’s biggest chicken, from the moment the idea came to me I had my doubts about whether I was really supposed to do it and whether I actually even could. What if I make a fool of myself? Nothing new there. What if someone comments in French and I don’t understand what they say or know how to respond? Again, nothing new. What if it’s so time consuming I can’t keep it up the way I’d like to. Oh, like that’s never happened with this blog or with any of my other projects? Well, since all I have to lose is face, I mean time, and at the least I will improve my French, I decided to try it. Translation is difficult and time consuming, so I probably won’t translate every article I write here and post it there, though I will translate some. It will be different. My goal is simply to make it easy for people to keep up with our family and all that we do here. I have a friend who has graciously consented to read my articles and help me correct them until I get the hang of it. You know who you are, dear friend. Thank you!
If you are interested, here is the address. I welcome comments and corrections, but please email corrections to me instead of posting them in the comments section.

Be Careful What You Wish For!

2011-11-01T10:53:00.004+01:00

My mom used to tell me "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it!" We often wish for things impulsively based on the circumstances and emotions of the moment at hand without thinking of the possible consequences of actually getting our wish. Ideally, as we grow out of our childhood, we also learn to be careful what we wish for and become less and less egocentric. However, I firmly believe that God loves us with an intensity we can't even imagine, enjoys giving us the desires of our hearts and blessing us, AND has a sense of humor. A few weeks ago, in my musings about our one year "Congoversary" here, I jokingly wished for medals, or at least hot fudge sundaes. Last week our team welcomed Doug and Ruth Harrison from MAF Member Care for a visit. Everyone got a chance to meet them and spend some time getting to know them, sharing about the challenges and blessings of living and ministering here, and just having fun. We had them over for supper on Thursday evening. Before they came, I received a message that they wanted to bring dessert. No problem there. Anyone can bring dessert to my house anytime they want to and I will never try to stop them. After our meal, Doug and Ruth pulled out medals AND ice cream with toppings, including a jar of hot fudge sauce they carried over from the U.S! To put that in perspective for our friends who have never been here, a half gallon of the cheapest ice cream is about $25, and I've never seen hot fudge sauce here. Add to that nuts, m&m's ($15 a bag) and whipped topping at about quadruple the normal U.S. prices, plus the hassle of locating everything since it's almost never all in the same store. Wow! We were so touched by their thoughtfulness and sacrifice! Doug and Ruth both spent their entire time here focused on all of our team, encouraging us and trying to really see things through our eyes. What a blessing! Next time you pray for us, thank God for sending the Harrisons our way for a little while. I just wish we could see them again....

Filling Holes

2011-10-27T11:14:00.000+01:00

Our kids were given a 3-D puzzle of a world globe a few months ago, and they decided last week to put it together. The pieces all look vey similar, so it is important to follow the instructions in order to be able to assemble it correctly. Daniel and Emily made a mistake or two, and eventually reached a point where they were “stuck”. David took a look, moved some pieces around, and after a while he announced with a grin: “There, I’ve fixed Africa. I guess we can go home now.” We noticed a few pieces are missing and I commented on the fact that our world still has some holes in it. There’s even a hole right at the western edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo, ironically. We know that all of us are born with a “hole” that only God can fill to make us complete, but this was a visual reminder of how many, even some who are Christians, still live each day trying to fill holes in their lives. All week long I noticed holes everywhere. The electric company dug numerous holes up and down our road in search of the damaged spot in the cable, and didn’t bother to fill them. There is a hole in my road that a neighbor dug which makes the road completely impassable, so everyone has to drive out of their way to get to their destinations. Don’t we sometimes go to great efforts to avoid dealing with our holes? Or struggle needlessly because of them? People here like to fill potholes with trash, rocks, whatever is at hand, thinking they've "fixed it" when the reality is that it is likely to do more harm to vehicles than the original problem. We do that too, substituting inferior, temporal things for the satisfaction that we can have in Christ. The kids at the orphanage had holes in their clothes. I got desperate and cut my own hair and now it has holes of its own. I spent several minutes yesterday plugging holes in our bathroom walls with aluminum foil in an effort to bar the giant roaches from coming in. As I look around and see physical holes, I am reminded of the spiritual and emotional holes that surround me in this city of 11 million people who spend their lives trying to fill them. Isaiah 55:2 says “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy: Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” A holey heart can only be satisfied by a Holy God. Pray that the people of Kinshasa will hear God calling their hearts to Him and find satisfaction and the Bread of Life!

Shady Business Dealings

2011-10-20T19:53:00.000+01:00

Did you know MAF has a blog? They feature stories from missionaries on the field, news, interviews, and information about MAF. I have been privileged to have two of my stories printed. Learn about all the "shady business dealings" that go on in my neighborhood HERE .

Kimbondo Kids

2011-10-14T11:40:00.005+01:00

Today we went back to the orphanage! We took two bags of clothing, one for the older girls and one for the babies. Some of the items were new and some were gently used but they were grateful for all of it. EmilyFaith, one of the MAF missionary kids here, had made dozens of friendship bracelets and we tied them on the wrists of the kids. They loved it! Went bonkers over them and kept showing them off. Unfortunately a few of them also decided to steal bracelets from the other kids. We helped the staff keep the toddlers corralled in one room so they could clean their playroom. Mostly we picked up the crying ones and comforted them, held babies, talked to them, etc. They love to be loved, and whenever I sat down they would swarm me, fitting as many as possible on my lap, standing behind me playing with my hair, and sitting beside me holding my hands. They kept shouting "mondele!", which is what the Congolese call white people in Lingala. While I was in the states for my surgery, some MAF friends gave me things to take to the orphanage (THANK YOU!!!), including diaper covers for the babies. As you can see from the photo, there is a lot of laundry! They have clotheslines everywhere and still have to hang clothes on the fence.

Chaos and a Congoversary

2011-10-10T13:09:00.005+01:00

Last Friday some other MAF wives and I went shopping in a busy part of town. Busy is a nice word for chaotic, confusing, crowded, and slightly dangerous. One girl in our party is new here. She received a nice welcome when she was pickpocketed. Then as we were walking, I was bringing up the rear and a van hit me with its side view mirror. I wasn't injured, but I was a little shocked. People drive as though there are no laws here, and it isn't uncommon for pedestrians to get "bumped" by vehicles. I've seen it happen a number of times but it always happened to someone else. One of our friends heard what happened and even though I wasn't hurt she brought me a cake just to express solidarity and empathy. So my kids are thinking maybe I should go walking more often in order to keep the desserts coming to our house. Yeah, right.
Today is our "Congoversary!" We've been here one year, sometimes thriving and sometimes surviving. I think we deserve medals, or at least hot fudge sundaes. We have discovered some dear friends here and learned a lot about God and about ourselves. I find the Congo to be equal parts frustration and enchantment. The people are beautiful, friendly, hard working and resourceful. The flowers, birds and animals are amazing. The music is catchy and the fabrics are bright and colorful. Yet there is a lot of corruption here, both in government and the business community. I've already touched on the water and electricity issues. Even among the evangelized there is still witchcraft and superstition. People who should be free in Christ are still in bondage, and there are many who still haven't heard the gospel at all yet. Getting angry doesn't do much good here. People don't really care if you are angry. It's a great lesson. Sometimes we are angry because we ought to be. Sometimes we are angry because we want vindication, maybe even retribution if we are honest. As a Christian, God is my judge now. It's not about me. I gave my rights to justice and vindication to Him when I gave Him my sin and asked Him to take it away. I need to trust Him. He sees all and knows all and He is just. When I don't see the results I think I should, it's because his plan is so much bigger than just me and my little sphere. Am I willing let my anger go and suffer a little injustice if it brings glory to God and leads to someone's salvation somewhere down the road?

Being Real in Whoville

2011-10-05T11:27:00.008+01:00

In "Horton Hears A Who," the citizens of Whoville cried "We are here! We are here! We are here! We are here!" Many people have a prayer card on their refrigerator with a photo of a missionary family, their faces perpetually smiling. When I was a child, I looked up to missionaries. I put them on a pedestal. I even argued with God when He first called me to missions because I knew the bar was too high for someone like me. Having been a missionary for a little while, and after meeting dozens of others, I am absolutely certain that every missionary is a real human being. We deal with the same stuff everyone else deals with. We aren’t super. We make mistakes. We are fragile. Just like everyone else. Sometimes, when facing overwhelming circumstances, we begin to ask questions, though not out loud. Why am I here? What good am I doing? Am I really needed here? The questions sneak up on you. They wait until you have a moment of weakness and they evolve into accusations. When you find out your college-age child is injured or your parent is ill and you are stuck thousands of miles away. When you miss yet another milestone in a loved one’s life or they miss one in yours. When the culture defies your efforts to minister in Christ’s name. When you are sick or exhausted. When someone asks you “so, what’s your ministry?” after you’ve spent four hours just to prepare a meal that would have taken 45 minutes back home. When the questions come, they bring discouragement, doubt, and anxiety – none of which are friends of mine, though we are acquainted. Once while I was praying about this, the Holy Spirit reminded me of 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” and Philippians 4: 6-8 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” So I strive to fill my mind with God’s Word and to continuously thank and praise Him. It works, because God’s Word is true, but it’s not just a one-time deal since our enemy never sleeps. He prowls. We have to guard our minds constantly. Please pray for missionaries. We need it.

Back in Kinshasa

2011-10-01T09:47:00.002+01:00

I'm back! The boys and I had a bit of an adventure getting from Kinshasa to the U.S., with delayed flights, missed connections, getting put on standby flights and booted off several times, lost luggage and stolen/damaged items. We finally arrived in St. Louis twelve hours late and totally exhausted after 41 hours of travel. My sister picked us up and took us home to hot showers and clean beds. My surgery went well. He removed bone spurs from both feet and bursas from the left foot. I still have the bunionette "deformity" but that is purely cosmetic and not painful now that the spurs are gone. I would however, not recommend surgery on both feet at once for anyone who has time to space it out and do one at a time. We got Josh settled in his dorm and he is enjoying college life. Knowing that Josh has lots of nearby relatives who are there for him is a great comfort to David and me. My mom and my friends took amazing care of me after my surgery! I am very grateful for all the prayers that were spoken for our travels, my surgery, Josh's adjustment, and for David and Emily while they were left behind here. Emily has started eleventh grade at The American School of Kinshasa this year. This is the first year she has not been home schooled! She and I both were ready for her to branch out and become more independent and have someone else for a teacher. She loves it and is doing well. Daniel is still home schooling and enjoying the fact that I have more time for him. It's been twelve years or more since I have home schooled only one child! It feels strange. It is good to be home again!

Projects

2011-07-26T04:38:00.004+01:00

I finished it! And he likes it! This quilt took WAY too long and it's my fault. But it has a history that Josh appreciates. It began as a block of the month project at Hancock's in Tulsa in 2005. I started it for Josh because the theme is Lewis & Clark and in our home school, that was one of his favorite topics of study. I didn't even get to finish all twelve months in the club because we moved halfway through the year, so a friend had to mail each month's block kit and instructions to me. Since I began it, we have moved to Florida, Missouri, Canada, back to Missouri, Idaho, and Africa; went back to school, became missionaries with MAF, raised ministry support, driven all over the U.S., "learned French", and adjusted to new cultures. Emily owns the very first quilt I made. Daniel gets the next one. I told him he could choose the pattern and colors but I'm tired of appliqué!
Josh also finished a project this week. He built a fort for Daniel. He cut the bamboo himself with a machete. Our guard Jacques showed Josh how to split the bamboo with the machete and helped with the digging. He (Jacques) told me that in his village people place sticks in the ground like Josh's bamboo, then pack the walls with mud to build their homes, or they make their own bricks out of mud. The roofs are thatched, whereas Josh recycled a piece of plywood from the crate David built for our shipment over here.

Birthdays, Babies and Bubbles

2011-07-22T16:35:00.012+01:00

This week has been busy. A few days ago a friend invited us to spend the day with her. We went to the "thieves market", to the old downtown cemetery, and to a place called "tin tin" by the riverfront. I hope to get some photos later of our outing. Yesterday was Joshua's 18th birthday. I will be taking Josh back to the U.S. for college soon. We are leaving early so that I can also take care of my feet. I've had bunionettes, or tailors bunions, on the pinky sides of my feet for over 15 years. In fact I can't really remember NOT having them. They never bothered me until we moved to the Congo. Here I am on my feet a lot. The floors are all cement or ceramic tile. There are few sidewalks so we walk on rocky, uneven dirt roads. My feet started hurting a few months after we got here, and have gotten steadily worse. I'm not sure why someone decided to name them "bunionettes". That name sounds way too cute, and having painful swollen feet is not cute. Daniel will have his birthday while we are gone, so he and Josh decided they wanted to have a joint birthday party while the whole family was still together. Yesterday was also our three year anniversary with Mission Aviation Fellowship. MAF has their own blog and they just honored me by posting something that I wrote. If you haven't checked out the MAF blog, you really should. You can see my post here. We also went to the orphanage again today. I bought some bubbles from a departing missionary and we took them with us today. The little kids loved it. We will have to make some more for the next trip. I finally remembered how to link to other sites, so here are links to our photos from the orphanage and a short video, about a minute, of the kids with the bubbles.

Kimbondo Orphanage

2011-07-18T10:55:00.018+01:00

A few weeks ago a missionary friend here invited us to visit Kimbondo Hospital/Orphanage with her. We went on a Friday and by Monday I was pretty sick, so we didn't get to go back again until last week. There are hundreds of children there, many with serious health issues or disabilities. As soon as we approached the building that houses the babies and preschoolers, they came running with their arms up, begging to be held. It's impossible to hold them all, but we sure tried. The kids were almost all barefoot, most of the babies were laying in wet bedding, flies were everywhere. The older girls wanted to talk, to braid my hair, to hold my hand. They imitated us. If we held babies, so would they. The little ones all wanted to be on our laps at once, and they would fight about it. This place has more need than I could ever hope to meet, but for a little while we played with kids and watched them smile, heard them laugh, sang to babies, tickled toddlers, and maybe brightened their day a little. I have a couple of photos here, but there are lots more on my facebook page. I've tried multiple times to insert a link here to my photos but I can't figure out how to make it work. I do have a link on the left to my facebook though.

Emily's birthday

2011-07-16T17:06:00.004+01:00

Tuesday was Emily's 16th birthday! She and her friend Lydia realized some time ago that since they both have summer birthdays,nearly all of their friends would be on furlough or vacation, so they had a joint birthday party two months ago! It is pretty quiet here with nearly all of the MAF families with teenagers on furlough. We had a calm, but special evening with just the family and Sam, a friend of both Josh and Emily. Emily requested "lasagna with no tomato chunks or onions" for her birthday dinner, which to me is not lasagna at all, but it was her dinner so she got what she wanted. I can hardly wait to enjoy one of her gifts with her - Fiddler on the Roof in dvd. The guys don't like it, so we'll have to plan a girl's night.

Graduation

2011-07-09T11:32:00.004+01:00

Josh graduated from high school a few weeks ago and I thought I had already posted photos of it. Oops. Here are a few of my favorites. The ceremony was very nice, including a special by the high school choir. There were bittersweet moments. TASOK is a school of students from many countries and cultures, and the seniors are spreading out all across the world instead of across the country. Josh has had to say a lot of goodbyes. The next few posts will be short ones because now that we have electricity part of each day again, I am working feverishly on a quilt for Josh that I began back in the dark ages - 2005. It has spent more time in storage than it has on my sewing table, but I hope to be able to send it back to the U.S. with him when he goes.

Prom night

2011-05-23T11:18:00.008+01:00

Saturday was prom night for the American School of Kinshasa here. Last year Josh experienced his first prom (two proms actually). This year Emily was asked to prom, so even though she is still home schooling until next fall, she got to attend. Emily told her dad that she wanted her very first dance to be with her daddy, so she got ready early and they shared a dance before she left for the evening. I was glad to be on the other side of the camera because I started crying, watching my daughter dance with David. Josh is a senior this year, so this prom was special for him also. I don't have any photos of them with their dates because my camera batteries died and I had to stop taking photos. But here are some I managed to capture. I had very mixed feelings that night. They were so grown-up and good-looking, inside and out, so I was proud. But I was also sad. This came all too quickly for me.
As for the rest of our week: we've now gone two weeks without electricity, long enough to make it a real drag and not just a nuisance. The electric company still has not even begun repairs. The burnt transformer is still in place. Up the hill from us, they ALWAYS have power, and we've been told that it's because the president's mother or some-such person lives there. The electric company claims there are no new transformers to be found, but if you drive by their headquarters, you can see a bunch of them through the gates, just sitting there. That's the aggravating part - knowing that something could have been done, but wasn't because of politics and money. If we were willing to pay bribes, we could have power. On the upside, I've really enjoyed getting acquainted with our newest MAF family - the Abbotts. Jennifer is a lot of fun and I admire the way she and Luke jumped in "with both feet". They have teens, so Emily is very happy to have a few friends who aren't going on furlough this summer, since almost all of our other friends are. One of my friends is leaving today. The real exodus begins after the last day of school.

Fish Tales

2011-05-17T14:44:00.008+01:00

Two months ago, a friend and I went shopping and out to lunch to celebrate my birthday and I found this fabric at a really good price. I needed a new shower curtain and thought this would be a fun design, so I bought several yards. With our power issues being what they are (we've had zero electricity now for eight days, it took me all this time to finish when it would have been a one-day project in the U.S. But! I did finally finish it! I would have finished a little bit sooner, but I made a mistake and had to correct it. I was staying up late to sew because for a while we were only getting power from midnight to 6 or 7am. I thought I was nearly finished with my shower curtain when I took a closer look at it and realized something was not right. My fabric was 42 inches wide, so I had sewn a second panel to the bottom of the first panel in order to make the curtain long enough. I must have been a little too tired when I sewed them together, because I had sewn the bottom panel on upside down. All the fish were "belly-up." So, today while the generator was on, I stole some time for sewing and finished my curtain.

Last week Joshua travelled to Morocco with his school swim team for a meet. He came back with a medal, some new friends, souvenirs and photos, and nearly $60 in Moroccan currency. Not sure if we'll ever find a place to exchange that. He had a marvelous time and we are very grateful that he was able to go. It was a real answer to prayer because the cost was way out of our budget. The team had several fundraisers and worked very hard together. I have to brag on them because Josh was the new kid and from the very beginning the entire team has been behind him, helping him improve his swimming skills and encouraging him. They truly function as a team and I am proud of all of them. Here's a photo of them. Josh is "front row, center." Check out the TASOK pants! They were a real hit at the meet.

Run - or Walk - for Congo Women

2011-04-16T21:55:00.002+01:00

This morning I participated in the Run for Congo Women on the TASOK campus. Run for Congo Women is a fundraiser, the proceeds going to Women for Women International, specifically to help women who are war victims here in the DRC. A group of us from the neighborhood all went together. In the photo are Bethany (an MK from our neighborhood), Suzanne and Sandy Francis (MAF missionary family), Valerie Hochstetler (MAF missionary), Josh and me. Just to clarify and ensure that no one is unduly impressed, I did not run. My hip can’t handle that, so I walked it. Josh ran, though, so if you want to you can be impressed with him. I was explaining the whole fundraiser idea to our guard, Jacques, and told him that Josh was running but I was walking. He asked me why and I told him that we were paying the same amount of money to participate, regardless of whether we ran or walked, therefore I was walking. I thought that was just being sensible, not wasting energy, but he thought it was funny.

I arrived home to discover my husband had repaired our toilet. Hooray! No more bucket flushing. Except for when there’s no power or no city water. Oh. Never mind. The power problems here actually had improved for about a week, but now it seems we are back to only having electricity between midnight and 8am.

Tonight our whole family went out for supper to celebrate our first six months in Kinshasa. The custom here is to eat late, around 8pm, so we like to go at around 6pm and enjoy having the whole restaurant to ourselves. We had a very nice time, talking and laughing in the air-conditioned restaurant. We ordered dessert just because we didn’t want to leave the A/C yet. At one point, it struck all of us as very odd that we were sitting in a Chinese restaurant, in Africa, eating ice cream to background music that sounded an awful lot like the theme to Starsky & Hutch.

"No Electricity Cookies"

2011-04-15T12:38:00.005+01:00

Our ladies' Bible study group has been working through a Beth Moore study, Beloved Disciple. At the beginning of our ten week study we drew names for "secret sisters" and enjoyed several weeks of praying for our sisters, giving them small gifts, and writing encouraging notes to them. I drew Christine's name, my same friend who helped me with the burned electric cable and invited me to her Bible study with the ladies from her church. Last Tuesday, we had a potluck dinner to celebrate finishing the study and we all planned to reveal our identities to our secret sisters. It turns out Christine had drawn my name also, and neither of us ever suspected the other. She gave me a really cool sewing basket made of rafia here in Congo, and she sewed a skirt for me out of local material. Talk about being spoiled! I will get lots of use out of both. During our ten weeks, most of the ladies in our group were without electricity about 18 out of every 24 hours. One week I was searching the internet for a dessert that I could make without electricity and without dirtying a ton of dishes. I found the one below and shared some with Christine, telling her that I was delivering it in behalf of her secret sister. It was the truth, I WAS delivering it in behalf of myself - I mean her secret sister.

"NO ELECTRICITY COOKIES"

1/2 cup softened butter
2/3 cup white sugar
3 TBS unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 TBS brewed coffee (or water)
1 3/4 cups oats
powdered sugar

Cream butter, sugar, cocoa, coffee, and vanilla. If your butter is soft, you won't need a mixer. Stir in oats. Roll into one inch balls. Roll in powdered sugar. If you do have electricity, the dough is easier to work with if you chill it for a little while, but it isn't necessary. On days when you are really desperate for a chocolate fix you can just eat the dough out of the bowl and save the expense of the powdered sugar. Don't ask me how I know this. Just trust me.

Adventures in Cableland

2011-04-04T07:41:00.003+01:00

The photo was taken just yesterday, in the lot behind our church. Friday night Josh's choir had a performance, which we all enjoyed very much. Their performance was part of a fundraiser for a local orphanage, so the admission fee was a donation of food or cash. From the looks of things, they had a very good response. Josh got news from one of the colleges he applied to that he has been accepted. Please pray for a really good financial aid offer!

On Tuesday, Christine was hosting a Bible study for the ladies in her church and invited me. There were several ladies, maybe 15 or 20. Some of them spoke French with me, but the study was in Lingala, and so were the songs. I got to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy" in Lingala. I had no idea what I was actually singing, but because I know the hymn, I knew the heart meaning of the song and was still able to worship with them. I enjoyed meeting the ladies and they invited us to visit their church. Since Josh plays guitar for our church, I'm not sure when I'll get the chance, but I would like to visit one Sunday. Since I don't know Lingala, I'm sure it would be a bit out of my comfort zone, but I'm the world's biggest chicken, so everything is.

One day last week I woke up to a strange noise. Our voltage regulator was going crazy. The electricity comes to our house in three phases. When I checked them, the first two phases were dead and the third phase was getting 343 volts and climbing. I shut the breaker switches off to the house, but not in time. Our a/c got fried. Thanks to some help from a friend here, we discovered that the cable down the road had burned up and about three meters of it needed replacing. I use French every single day here, and get along fairly well most of the time, but these guys from the electric company were using a lot of vocabulary that I didn't know yet and speaking plenty fast, so I was very grateful for my friend, Christine. She speaks Lingala and spoke with them in my behalf. We learned that here in Congo, when a cable burns, the electric company does not pay for it. Nor do they pay their workers to repair it. The affected neighborhood has to pool together and share the expense, and the labor costs. We were told up front that on our street, there is only one person who is ever willing to pitch in toward these types of repairs, and he is out of the country right now. Our other neighbors had bigger generators and more money for fuel, so they were willing to wait until we caved in a paid the whole thing. Which we did, because we wanted electricity. The good news is that our power is better now than it was before all this happened. We actually have all three phases when the power is on, and the voltage is better. The power situation over all is improving also. For a long time, we only had power for a few hours in the middle of the night. Now we are having power almost every night and every other day. When I lived in the U.S., having electricity only every second day would not thrill me, but here it makes me very happy! I wish I could take a photo of the "new" cable for you. You wouldn't believe it! It doesn't look anything like what the utility companies do in the states.

Vanity and Value

2011-03-17T11:40:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, life in the Congo has a way of revealing and striking at one’s vanities. Shaving my legs in semi-darkness with a bucket of water has produced less than ideal results. Applying make up in poor lighting, and then having half of it drip off with my perspiration makes me want to disregard make up altogether, except that I’m so vain. Showering and getting dressed; only to be drenched in sweat and stinking in two hours’ time does not make a person feel attractive. Because of power and water issues, I sometimes have to wear dirty clothing. And forget fingernails. It is impossible to keep them clean, no matter how short I trim them or how frequently I clean them. If I paint them to hide the dirt, the bug spray melts the polish. The humidity is not good for my hair either. So, I have learned that I esteemed too much of my value and self-worth from my appearance.
God showed me I had other places of hidden pride/vanity. I did not realize how deeply attached my sense of self-worth and value were to my role as a wife and mother. Here, preparing a meal can take hours longer than it used to, because everything is done from scratch. Often there is no power or water or both, making it more challenging to do cooking, laundry, cleaning, sewing, etc. When the power is off, and it is 95 degrees and we can’t even run a fan or open the refrigerator, it is very challenging to get school done because the kids are so uncomfortable. There is no postal service and internet connections are often too slow for Skype, so keeping in touch with family and supporters is difficult. Some days I am forced to do nothing. I have succumbed to tears more than once, telling my husband I am ill equipped to be a missionary. I am doing what I used to do in the states, wife, mother, home educator; only I’m worse at it, so how can God possibly use me? His response has always been that he could not be here and do what he does without me, and that called ill-equipped people is then way God works. If I had it all together, I would be too proud and unteachable for God to use me. But if God uses me to minister to my family, my friends, and the people here in Congo, then He will get the glory! God used my husband to gently remind me of a couple of things. My usefulness to God has nothing to do with me and everything to do with Him. My role as a helpmeet for my husband has very little to do with how well I cook and clean and a whole lot to do with respecting and encouraging David. My role as a mother is not diminished by how much I get done for my kids as much as it is enhanced by how much I do with my kids. Admitting my vanities and learning to let them go (still working on it, by the way) has been unsettling. I always knew in my head that my value to God and to David do not come from the things I accomplish, but perhaps my heart still harbored some doubts. Nor does my value diminish in their eyes when I don’t get all the things checked off my “to-do list” each day. I am so thankful for the Godly man I married!

The Vet

2011-03-08T11:48:00.006+01:00

Today I had an experience that I am positive would never have happened to me in the United States. I had an appointment for the cats to be sterilized, and the vet came to my home. He asked me for some soap, water, and a towel to wash his hands. Then he put Elliot to sleep and neutered him on a 3 by 3 foot plastic table on my front porch. He examined Fiddle and said she is still too little, so in three weeks my porch will once again become a surgical suite.
Our power is still off more than 12 hours per day, on the average. Today it was on until noon, but the voltage was so low and fluctuated so much that we couldn't really use anything. The a/c didn't work. Fans made strange noises and bounced between barely moving and going into orbit. The refrigerator and dryer weren't working well. For a long time now, the power has been coming on during the night some time and going off between 5am and 6am. David and I feel like the victors when we get the coffee brewed before the power quits. Wouldn't you know that since I got up at 4:30am today to try to get a load of laundry done: 1. The power would stay on, and 2. the water would be off.
Last Friday we went to the talent show at Josh's school. He was one of the MC's, and several of our church youth were also in the show. We enjoyed seeing kids share their talents, and every grade was represented. The school pottery class had a table set up to sell their ceramics, and I was excited to find candle holders. We use a lot of candles (see above paragraph), and we've been setting them in empty tuna cans and jelly jar lids. That's fine on a flat surface, but they are not easy to carry from room to room that way because they get hot. The candle holders have handles for carrying them. There were only two left, so I grabbed 'em.
Next week is spring break and the church youth have a three day retreat March 14-16. Please pray for their safety and for spiritual renewal/growth. In years past, not all of the kids who went were Christians, and this is an opportunity for our youth to be witnesses in addition to growing themselves.

No OSHA in Congo

2011-02-26T13:12:00.004+01:00

Here in the Congo, there is no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). When we arrived here, we noticed a building was in the process of construction across the street from us. It's three stories high plus a roof with a steep pitch. The workers never wear harnesses or hard hats or even shoes. We have very windy storms sometimes, and they stay up there, clinging to the roof with one hand and working with the other, until the rain drives them down. Yesterday, they were nailing pieces of roofing on and there weren't enough hammers to go around, so one guy was hammering with a piece of 2x4. Some times they sing in Lingala while they work and if we are doing school outside on the porch or have the windows open we can hear it. This is one of the many things here that are hard for me to see. I pray often for their safety, and for their families and salvation. It's not hard to find things to pray for here. When we go places, all I have to do is look out the car window and I see plenty to pray about and plenty of people to pray for. Sort of like prayer-walking only we move faster, though not much.

Surprise!

2011-02-16T11:55:00.006+01:00

When we arrived in Congo, two MAF families here had recently been blessed with litters of kittens. As soon as they were old enough, we acquired one female from each litter, hoping they would become good mousers and buggers. (Is "buggers" even a word? How about "roachers?") We named them Lydia and Fiddlesticks, Liddie and Fiddle for-short. Well, Liddie rapidly learned to catch roaches, earning her lots of brownie points in my book, since I detest them so much. We'll just say Fiddle has other endearing qualities. I happened to glance up as Liddie was walking away from me the other day and I noticed she did not look quite right. Liddie, we discovered, is a boy cat. So, now I have a boy and a girl, both rapidly approaching sexual maturity, and I am thinking I need to find a vet AND FAST. Emily and I decided this morning that calling him Lydia just won't do, and unless the rest of the family votes it down, we want to rename him "Elliot". We thought about naming him Merlin, since he tricked all of us, but he really does look more like an Elliot. This will take some getting used to. We all keep calling him a her out of habit. Poor guy. Here are some photos. The little calico on the bottom is Fiddle. The one on top with stripes is Liddie, I mean Elliot.

A Triple Really Long Time and a Triple Really Good Recipe

2011-02-07T10:36:00.007+01:00

Ok, yes, it's been a really, really, really long time. I could make a bunch of excuses, such as we have power outages nearly every day, we have internet problems frequently, I'm busy home schooling two kids and cooking from scratch, I got caught up in Thanksgiving and Christmas and potlucks and all that - all of which are true, but whatever the excuse, it has still been a really, really, really long time. I'm sorry. Ok, quick "catch-up", in as few words as I am capable of. All of the windows have been repaired. And the roof. Last month Emily told us her wall, the one between her bedroom and the bathroom (yes, the same bathroom that flooded with sewage and has a broken toilet) was wet. It had been wet for a while and she just thought the spot was a stain from when the roof leaked until she actually left something touching the wall and it got wet. The stain was wider than my arm span and about 3 feet high, and a nice mold was growing. So, the plumber came out and made holes in the walls to fix the pipes. At least he filled in the holes though, and Emily's wall is drying. We celebrated the holidays with our MAF team and other missionaries here. It was hard to be away from family, especially since our skype wouldn't work. Josh played in the orchestra for the school musical in December. We searched for things to buy for the kids for Christmas and could not find anything here, so I bought some local fabric and sewed gigantic bean bag chairs for each of them. We filled them with bags of chopped foam that we bought at the local mattress factory. They were a big hit! We still have power and water issues, almost daily. Once we had no power for 72 hours. A couple of times we ran completely out of water, even in our reservoir, and had to haul water from the Francis house. We had the annual MAF family conference in January. It was our first conference and we really enjoyed it. We have hired a tutor to help us improve our French. There are two things which make French more difficult here than I had anticipated. One is that our vocabulary is too small, we just don't know enough words. We're working on that. The other is the accent here. The Congolese don't pronounce their vowels the same way we were taught, and it has caused some misunderstandings. For instance, when they say "two", it sounds just like "ten". That makes shopping fun. A couple of weeks ago, I asked our guard how his family was doing and his response sounded like "sah vah impay". I knew what the first part meant, "ça va" means "it goes", a way of saying things are fine. I couldn't figure out what "impay" was, but I knew "paix" means peace, so I thought "he must mean all is well and peaceful", so I said that was good news. He looked at me strangely but said no more. Then David asked me a couple days later "what does impay mean?" Our guard had just said the same thing to him, again in response to an inquiry about his wellbeing. I told him I didn't know, that I couldn't find anything like it in the French dictionary, and what I had guessed it meant. He said he had guessed something similar and said "that's good" and got the same strange look. So the next time our tutor came, we asked him about it. He said it the same way our guard did, but when he wrote it out for us, he wrote "un peu", which sounds more like "uhn puh" (short nasal sounds, not long vowel sounds)in International French. Ding! The light was now on! It means "It goes a little", which here means the same as saying it is not going well at all. So our guard was telling us things were not going well for his family and we were telling him what great news we thought that was! I felt even worse when we learned that he had two children with malaria that week. So, that's one lesson we shan't forget and a mistake we won't make again. One more small chink out of the language barrier.
Ever since Christmas, my friend Sandy has been waiting patiently for me to remember to share my recipe for crescent rolls. To atone for neglecting my blog for so long, I'll share it here also. I got this recipe from my sweet mother in law and it makes nice flaky rolls. And the smell! Amazing! Here you go, Sandy!

Crescent Rolls

4 1/2 cups flour
3 eggs, beaten
1 package plus 1 TBS yeast (so you don't have to look it up like I did, one packet contains 2 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup Crisco (I try to avoid shortening. You know, the whole hydrogenation thing. So I use real butter and it works fine.)
1 cup scalded milk

Mix milk, butter, sugar and salt. Allow to cool to lukewarm. Add yeast and eggs. Add flour a little at a time until dough is too stiff to stir. Let rise, or chill until later. Three hours before baking, divide into three sections. Roll out into circles and baste with melted butter (not too much). Cut like a pizza into 8ths and roll into crescents. Let rise. Bake 6 minutes at 375 degrees.

Kinshasa Journal: Wednesday - day 10

2010-10-20T14:00:00.002+01:00

Today the plumber was supposed to come at 9am, followed by the landlady at 10am. The plumber arrived at 10:15, followed by the electrician at 10:30. The plumber was supposed to fix the leak around the washing machine. He looked it all over, said he had to buy parts and would return tomorrow, and left. The electrician was supposed to repair all of the exterior lighting and the wiring that comes into the fuse box. He looked it all over, said he had to go make a report for the landlady, and left. I turned on the dryer a few minutes later and heard a strange noise. I turned to look at our electricity box and it looked like firecrackers were going off. Ok, turn off dryer and hang clothes up to dry. If you hang wet laundry outside, the mango flies can lay eggs in them. Then, unless you've ironed all of your clothes, when you wear them the eggs will hatch and the larvae burrow into your skin. You get a painful boil and have to remove a worm from your body. Really gross and painful but relatively harmless. I don't have an iron, nor do I like to use one, so I hung the clothes indoors. I should mention that our front door is difficult to latch and unlatch. I took two or three days to figure it out and the kids still struggle with that door. A little while after I had hung the laundry in the house, one of the kids had a fight with the door and body slammed it, breaking the six foot by two foot glass panel. David came home and worked on the fuse box so I could dry clothes. The fuses are 63 amps. Even though the dryer pulls 23 amps and the boys'air conditioner pulls 10, every time both are running simultaneously the fuse blows and then sparks start flying again. Now that we have figured that out, we will not be running both at the same time. The power went out for about an hour this evening, but if there is such a thing as perfect timing for a power outtage, we got it. I had just finished cooking supper. We ate by candlelight, and when the power came back on, we cleaned up the mess. All of my cookbooks are in our shipment, so Esther gave me some recipes that she has adapted to what is available here. I think tomorrow I'll try her cheeseburger soup recipe. Somebody on our team made snickerdoodles and left them in our freezer for us to find. Yummy!

Kinshasa Journal

2010-10-20T09:47:00.003+01:00

Well, we made it to Kinshasa! It's been a whirlwind. I tried to keep a record of events so that I could post them later. I may have gotten a couple of things written for the wrong days, but all of the events are true. Sorry it's so long. I actually left a lot out. I wish I had photos. Taking photos here is illegal in a lot of places and I haven't chanced it anywhere yet. So, here's my journal of the last several days.

Day 1 – Monday
Arrive in Kinshasa at 7pm. Our team had hired two men to help us collect our bags, but when we arrived, there were three men doing the job. We, of course, knew none of them, and couldn’t have stopped them if we tried. In fact I think David did try. Once Garth and Brian got us to the vehicle, the third man, who had stayed on our heels this entire time, demanded money for his service. We were happy to let Garth take care of it. We were taken to our home and introduced to one of our new sentinels. We found beds made, clean water, pizza in the freezer, and food in the fridge. John, a pilot but also our team’s IT guy, had even set up our internet for us. Discovered none of the exterior lights work, which is a safety issue for us and for our sentinels. Garth said he would tell the landlord.
Day 2 – Tuesday
We tried to cook eggs for breakfast but the stove wouldn’t work. Spent the day with Garth. First we went to Josh’s school to get him enrolled. Josh and I were able to take a tour of the campus. We went to the U.S. consulate to register, only to learn that you can no longer do that in person. You must do it via internet. Experienced our first restaurant in Kinshasa. We had these things called schwarmas: basically chicken, French fries, and coleslaw wrapped in a type of tortilla-shell-thingy. And Coke in a bottle, with real cane sugar instead of corn syrup. We looked at furniture and appliances but didn’t buy any. We were getting an idea of what is available and what the prices are. Dinner with Garth’s family. Power went out this morning but came on again about ten hours later.
Day 3 – Wednesday
David discovered that the stove has three breaker switches and only one was on, so now we can use the stove. Shopping. We were told to make a list of things we needed so Garth could take us shopping. All the newness, combined with jet lag had our heads a-spin. I couldn’t come up with a very good list. We wrote down some food items and some household items. Went to several stores and found about half of the items on our list. I’m told that’s not uncommon. We visited a physician’s assistant/missionary to discuss staying healthy in the Congo and what to do if we have problems. We had a lovely lesson on the various parasites. Today was Josh’s first day of school. One of our team members, Sandy, lives right down the street so she gives Josh rides to and from school. Dinner with John and Marilyn. He makes amazing salsa. I must get his recipe. This time of year is rainy season and we had our first tasted of that tonight with a big storm. Arrived home and discovered our roof leaks in a few places and one of our windows had broken. Power went out for a few hours. I’m thinking this might be something I should just expect. Emily was invited to a girl’s Bible study at the TASOK campus (Josh’s school).
Day 4 – Thursday
We have city water, but it is inconsistent and not drinkable, so we have a reservoir that holds 1,000 liters for when the city water is off, and a filter. Today we learned that we need to keep an eye on the reservoir, or have our sentinels do it. The water had been off for a while and we didn’t know it so I was doing laundry, washing dishes and floors, and we were all taking showers. We found out the water was off when our reservoir became empty. Thankfully, water came back on shortly after and our tank filled back up, so we learned our lesson without having to haul water from a friend’s house. Now we know. David got up in the crawl space and looked at our roof. We thought it was tin. It looks like tin from the outside. It is actually asbestos, which is why no one collects rain water off their roofs. It is old and there were at least two cracks that he could find. Dinner with the Writebol family. Brian Writebol is the other full-time mechanic here.
Day 5 – Friday
The stove has some wiring issues. Something about arching and burning. David put some electrical tape over the bad spots. I’m not too sure about all that, but I have to cook. David Francis took us shopping for furniture. We found a dresser for Emily. We ordered a sofa and loveseat from this business that was about 6 square feet, made of tin and wood with dirt floors. They get fabric, foam, and wood from where ever and make furniture with only hand tools. It is far from perfect, they don't even cure the wood, so sometimes after you buy it it warps or cracks, and they stain it any color you want. Someone said they thought the stain was shoe polish but I don’t know. Considering their resources, they do an amazing job. When we arrived home, there was a man in the yard who claimed to be the plumber. The landlord had sent him to fix the leaky toilet. It was supposed to have been repaired by October 1, and our MAF guys had repaired it on the 11th before we arrived, so he was sent home. David and David also worked on the wiring for our dryer because it was burning up the outlet and plug when we used it. Some of the families in our neighborhood have a weekly play day so I took Emily and Daniel . This week it was at the Greene’s home. They are local missionaries. We stopped at Sandy Francis’ for a while. She has kittens at her house, which we enjoyed. Potluck dinner with the whole MAF team. We had a very nice evening getting to know people better and watching them interact with each other. They are like a big family, and they just welcomed us right into their family “ as is” . Arrived home to discover we had no internet.
Day 6 – Saturday
No internet. Every Saturday there is a softball game at TASOK and people from MAF, the embassies, and local missionaries participate. Josh wanted to play, so I went to watch and Daniel went to play with his new friend Nicholas. The black flies had a feast at my expense. Another lesson learned. Wear bug spray at TASOK. Tried to mop the floor. I can’t figure out this mop thingy. It’s actually a huge foam squeegee with a long wooden handle and you are supposed to somehow put this shammy type cloth on the end and mop with it, but the cloth doesn’t stay where you put it. It kept falling off. The mop is too wide for the bucket. Am I supposed to wet the cloth or just pour soapy water on the floor? I just gave up and got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the floor by hand. Got a backache but we discovered that our kitchen floor is green. At least when it is wet. Dinner with Rod and Valerie. We got to hear their testimonies and how they came to be with MAF, and play with their kittens. We fell in love with one of them, but I think she is spoken for already. Emily is trying to talk David into letting us have one of Sandy’s AND one of Valerie’s.
Day 7 – Sunday
We went to IPCK, International Protestant Church of Kinshasa. About half of the congregation is Congolese. There are members from all over the world, which was fun. There is no air conditioning, so all of the windows were open and everyone outside can hear God being praised. David and Sandy took us out for lunch and took us grocery shopping. By this time, I had a better idea of what might be available and had actually planned a few meals and made a decent list. We found almost all we needed. I think I paid about 2.00 per ounce for cheese, and that was the cheap cheese. I didn’t buy very much. We found pepperoni at one store. It wasn’t on my list, but it is very hard to get here so I bought some for the freezer. Still no internet. At bed time, our oldest decided to tell us the bathroom floor in the main part of the house had been wet all day. Yes, it was sewage. It had decided to wait til the plumber was goneto show its ugly side.
Day 8 – Monday
Hooray! John got our internet repaired! Unfortunately, we had to have a person on the roof to do it, so now we have more cracks in the roof. Valerie picked me up and we went walking at TASOK. I am still itching from the black fly bites, so I remembered my bug spray. The Greene family had us over for dinner. Came home to discover we only had electricity to half the house. Some of our wiring was burnt through. Isn’t that nice to think about when you aren’t home? Apparently, the window a/c unit we put in the boy’s room cannot be on when I do laundry. David made a temporary repair, but he had to cut power to the water pump (no water), internet, and washer and dryer in order to cool the boy’s room. That’s the only a/c unit we have installed. I wondered, if this is what happens with one unit, what will happen if we try to cool all of the bedrooms? I was really, really tired and for some reason I decided I needed to wash dishes before I went to bed. Since the water pump was off, we only had a tiny trickle coming out of the tap. And my hot water heater wasn’t working. I actually cried because I couldn’t wash dishes. Can you believe it? I should have thrown a party! I mean, who actually WANTS to wash dishes? I was just too tired to handle it.
Day 9 – Tuesday
Our driver’s licenses have arrived. They messed up my entire date of birth, the day, month AND year. AND!!!! They made me OLDER. I tried to give it back to David. I told him I don’t want to drive and I don’t want to be older. He made me keep it. They messed up his too, but they got his age correct. They gave him an endorsement to drive buses and semi-trucks. He has never done either one. In our neighborhood there is a Women’s Bible study on Tuesday evenings, so Esther picked me up for that. Our trash had been piling up because we didn’t know what to do with it. David dug a hole in the yard for the compostable stuff. We separated the burnable stuff out. The rest went into a bag that Francis family gave us for the trash pick up. You have to pay “ by the bag”. David Francis came over. He and my David worked on the wiring (not fixed but better) and the toilet, which was till leaking sewage even though no one had used it in over two days. You can’t buy wax rings for the toilets here, so someone had used cement instead. We hope it is fixed. I’ve had “mop” on my shopping list since we got here. Now I have “MOP!!!” on my shopping list. Guess I could try the squeegee thingy. I’m thinking it might be a challenge trying to use a 30 inch squeegee with a fasten-less cleaning rag around our toilet base. David checked his email and learned that our shipment had arrived on Monday. We’ve been told it could be several more weeks before the “powers that be” decide to let us have our stuff. Tonight was my first night cooking. We were talking about making substitutions, trying to find stuff in the stores, the unavailability of convenience foods, the occasional power outage. He made the comment that “cooking in Kinshasa is kind of like camping in your own kitchen.”

Visas and a Place to Live

2010-09-21T15:27:00.005+01:00

We have had an eventful week and it is only Tuesday! Yesterday we received our visas and reached the 97% mark in our ministry support. Josh received his diploma from the high school in Quebec also. It's mainly a souvenir, since it is only recognized in Quebec, but he thinks it is cool. It's also a reminder of all he accomplished in his ten months in Canada. He grew up a lot and made many friends, survived his first year in public school, and ended the year on a positive note. In Quebec the kids graduate after the 11th grade, so he will finish his senior year in Africa and will end up with two diplomas from two different continents, which he thinks is really cool. There are three families here for standardization right now, and yesterday afternoon the wives enjoyed a cooking class. The focus was cooking from scratch because we will be cooking that way overseas. I've had some experience in cooking from scratch already, so that wasn't too new for me. I did learn some interesting substitutions. For example, we used manioc in place of potatoes. Manioc is the staple starch in DRC. Manioc root looks like a tree branch and is about as hard to peel. I thought it resembles potatoes when you boil them too long and they get sticky, but it tasted pleasant enough. This morning we received word from our program manager in DRC that they have found a home for us. I don't know what I was expecting, but I'm pleasantly surprised. For one thing, it has 1 and 3/4 bathrooms, so for the first time since we left Florida, we will have two toilets. It is within walking distance of another MAF family, which will make carpooling easier and we'll already have friends in the neighborhood.

It's A Date!

2010-09-19T20:34:00.004+01:00

We have a tentative departure date! We are still raising ministry support, but we have already raised 96% of what is needed, and if all goes well, we will leave the U.S. on October 10th and arrive in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on October 11th. Please pray for our support to reach 100% quickly. We are very excited, and yes, a little nervous. Visa applications have been submitted. There is one more vaccine to go, the last of a three-round rabies vaccine, which I am not looking forward to because the side effects seem to increase with each round. I am busy trying to tie up loose ends and sort through our stuff. Our team in Kinshasa is looking for a place for us to live. Mail works a lot better here than there, so one of the things I am trying to do before we leave is write letters and thank you notes. I remember when I was a child, if someone gave me a gift my mother would strongly encourage me to write a thank you note. Being a child, I didn't want to stop playing and write a note. That felt too much like homework. Now, though, having a list of people I need to write thank you notes to is an opportunity for me to count my blessings, one at a time. Each note is a reminder that God loves me and has blessed me, and an opportunity to let God use me to bless someone else. So, I'm going to stop blogging and go write some thank you notes.

Back in Nampa

2010-08-17T14:52:00.008+01:00

We are in Nampa, now! David is taking classes and brushing up on his mechanical skills. He is glad to be working in a hangar again. Yesterday I got our oldest enrolled in the local high school. This summer has flown by! School begins tomorrow. We are praying for God to raise up more people to pray for us and support our ministry with MAF so that we can leave as soon as possible for Africa. We are eager to go and Josh needs to be there by mid-October in order to be able to transfer to his new school as a senior. We only have 12% more to go. Please pray with us. Josh and Daniel both had birthdays recently. Daniel always seems to have a birthday "on the road". Depending how you look at it, he either gets the short end of the stick or the "easy button". We are almost never at home, but this usually means he gets more than one cake and more than one party because we have one at home and one with whomever we are visiting. While driving up from Missouri, we drove through a town in Idaho called Twin Falls and decided to stop. There is a waterfall there called Shoshone Falls that is comparable to Niagara Falls when the water level is up, but it was low when we visited. It was still beautiful. There were places to hike and lakes. It only cost 3.00 for parking and everything else was free. That is way cheaper than Niagara Falls was and we had more fun. Twin Falls is also where Evil Knievel made his attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on his skycycle. The dirt ramp is still there for people to see. We thought Twin Falls had a lot of character. In addition to the historic Evil Knievel jump and the water falls, we saw two car dealerships. One was owned by someone named Con and the other was owned by someone named Rob. We were so travel weary that we thought that was really funny.

Mystery church shopping?

2010-07-25T16:33:00.005+01:00

Recently I heard something on the radio that I had never heard before: an advertisement about mystery church shoppers. In my past I was a mystery shopper for a while and I am familiar with how that works, but I had never heard it applied to churches before. The speaker in the ad stated “Churches know why people stay. They want to know why people don’t stay.” For a fee, the mystery shopping company will send a “shopper” to your church. Later, you receive a report informing you of the shopper’s experience in your church and their impressions, everything from how clean the bathroom and sanctuary were to how friendly or unfriendly the church members were to the quality of the sermon to parking availability. That set me thinking about what does cause a visitor to decide to return, or not, to a church. As someone who has spent the better part of the last two years being a visitor in multiple churches and denominations, I tried to think about my experiences as a guest and how I felt. When I felt really drawn to a church, what was the reason. Was it a clean bathroom? No, not really, although that certainly matters. Was it convenient parking? Friendly greeters? The music? The sermon? It really wasn't any one of those things by themselves. They are all significant. I think the key difference is relationships. Our God is all about relationships, and as His people, we should be also. When I visit a church and someone there seems genuinely interested in a relationship with my family and me, that blesses me hugely. The priorities in our life are the things we focus on. So I hope the next time I am at church and I see someone I don't know, I make them a priority. Philipppians 2:3 says “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” This is my prayer, and something I am hopefully getting better at.

Happy Birthday, Em!

2010-07-13T03:47:00.003+01:00

Today was my daughter's birthday. I bought her a rose and her daddy took her out for lunch. Then later today we had a small family party. These videos are for the grandparents, aunts and uncles. The reason there are two videos is because one gift had arrived in the mail and we put it up and forgot to bring it out at first. Happy Birthday, Em! You're amazing and we love you!!!

God can use Facebook

2010-07-11T01:34:00.001+01:00

Today I met a cousin of mine for the first time. We found each other without even looking for each other because of a mutual friend. My friend posted something on Facebook, to which we both commented. My cousin then made a comment about my maiden name being the same as hers and joked that we must be related. We do have a fairly unique name, Hertenstein, not nearly as common as Smith or Johnson or Burton. So we began to investigate and discovered that her father and mine are first cousins, making us second cousins because we had the same great-grandparents. She "happens" to live only a twenty minute drive or so from where we are staying right now, so we met for lunch. I discovered we have some things in common, our love for Christ, our preference for Coke over Pepsi, both happily married twenty years this summer, teenage daughters, bashful sons, and who knows what else. I am so grateful to have "found" this new friend! I don't believe in coincidences or luck. Nothing that happens to me is a surprise to God, and He is not random. I believe He intended for us to meet. Facebook can be an incredible waste of time if you (or I) allow it to be, but it can also be a great tool and a blessing.

Back in the U.S.A.

2010-07-08T17:28:00.001+01:00

We're back! We crossed the border into the U.S. on June 30th, our 20th wedding anniversary, and arrived at my sister-in-law's home happy but tired. We left the kids with my in-laws and went to a nearby small town B&B to celebrate our anniversary. In case you think the kids got jilted, their aunt and uncle treated them to laser tag, a movie, shopping, and all the junk food any kid could want. It was good for all of us. We are now in Missouri, packing and working on ministry support. It feels kinda wierd going through the checkout line at the store with enough unscented solid deodorant, vitamins, and tylenol to last a family of five for two years. It does make people stare. It also felt a little wierd the first time we went into a store and everything we heard was in English.

Sometimes you need to stop and smell the roses, so on our way down from Canada, we stopped at Niagara Falls. I had been to see the falls years ago, on my senior trip, and wanted to share it with David and the kids.

Lessons learned

2010-06-25T04:52:00.006+01:00

Yesterday we graduated from French language school. It's been a long and challenging ten months. It wasn't only challenging because of the French courses we were taking. This was a year of big changes for all of us. Josh experienced his first year in public school at the same time he experienced his first exposure to another culture. That's really like learning two cultures at once. Emily had to work independently in her studies during my class hours and save the rest for when I came home. Daniel sat through hours and hours of church without understanding what anyone was saying because David and I were required to attend a French church as part of our schooling. I had to balance being out of the home half of each day and having studies and homework of my own with teaching Emily and Daniel and managing our home. David had to balance school with being a husband, father, friend and neighbor. All within a new environment and culture/language. We learned a lot about relationships, priorities, flexibility, and faithfulness. When we first came here, one of my kids didn't believe me when I said that God knows our needs and will provide the relationships we need in Québec. Now that child admits he/she was wrong and doesn't wish to leave his/her many friends. But a lesson was learned, and now there is a confidence that God will take care of us. We are now busy packing and cleaning our apartment and squeezing in every spare minute we can with our friends before we go. We'll be here a few more days because Josh has prom this weekend.
We have grown to love the people here. They have been very polite and friendly to us and very patient with our bumbling attempts to speak their language. We like our church and our pastor here very much and were just getting to the point where we understood almost all of the sermons. We have made wonderful friends, not just among our fellow classmates but among local people also. There are some things we won't miss so much: milk that comes in plastic bags instead of jugs, cold weather, having to go to several different stores to get things we need because the grocery stores here don't have built-in pharmacies, make-up aisles, toy aisles, etc.; stores that close at 5pm - the time when most people are finally free to shop. But really those aren't important issues as much as they are inconveniences. I would guess someone from Québec might feel overwhelmed by their first experience in a super Wal-mart, as the Wal-mart here is far from that. We have tried new foods and liked many of them: fresh, real maple syrup, tartinade (a meat pie that is traditionally made for Christmas), Cretons (a meat spread often eaten on toast or crackers), and poutine. Our very first week here we were told that no one has experienced Québec until they have tried poutine. Poutine consists of french fries, with gravy on top, and cheese on top of that. Not just any cheese, though. Fresh cheese curds, usually made that same day, that makes squeaky noises when you chew it. There are many varieties, but that is the basic poutine. Last night, to celebrate that all five of us finished a school year here, we went to Stratos'and had poutine one last time.

Finishing

2010-06-22T23:28:00.005+01:00

I finished another quilt! Well, just the top, actually. But that's the hardest part. This one only took about 5-6 years - LOL. I had too many quilt projects going at one time and relocated three times, so this was a project that I started and stopped many times, with a lot of time between each "restart". This is my fourth completed quilt top and it will be the first one I keep for myself. I know I won't need a quilt in Africa, but just having it there to look at will make my house feel like "home" to me, so it is going. And who knows, maybe one day we will purchase a window A/C and if so, I will want a blanket. I love the batik fabrics in this one and since I have worked on it in three states, one province and two countries, it's kind of special to me.

David and I completed our final exams today. We graduate tomorrow! After that, we will be cleaning and packing like crazy and then we'll begin our voyage back to the U.S. Our first stop will be Wisconsin. Then we'll head south. I'd like to write something profound, or even interesting, but I'm tired. Anyway, here's a photo of my not-quite finished quilt.

Photo perspectives

2010-06-12T23:45:00.008+01:00

Before I write here, I often review the previous entry so I can sort of pick up where I left off. Since the last time I wrote, we took the kids to Coaticook Gorge, home of the world's longest pedestrian suspension bridge. We are actually going there next week with our language school, but David and I wanted to take the kids on a day when we could take our time and go at our own pace as a family. It was a good thing we did, because Josh's ankle was still sore from his rugby injury and we ended up not completing the entire 3 kilometer trail. We did, however, cross the bridge - twice. Emily and I had to muster up our courage, because we aren't fond of heights, but it was well worth it for the beautiful view from the middle of the bridge. David and I went on a field trip with our French language school to the Village Québécois d'Antan (Quebecois villiage of former days) in Drummondville. There are 52 buildings, all dating back to the 1800's and the very early 1900's. They aren't all from Drummondville originally, some have been moved, but the effect is that you feel as though you have stepped back in time. There were residential homes that showed what life was like for the average family, an apothecary complete with a garden of medicinal herbs, a fromagerie (cheese shop), general store/post office, blacksmith, printer, farm, soap makers, candle makers, car museum, etc. As I was reviewing my previous post and looking through my photos of our excursions, I found it interesting that I had written about treasures. What I treasure emotionally and materially sure did seem to come to light through my photos. Most of my photos were of people I love, such as the one of the kids here, or things that I am very enthusiastic about, such as the antique sewing machines, quilts, and the gardens from the village. I took only a few photos of the antique cars and the other things we saw. My pictures are more than just my life through the lens of my camera, they show my bias, my interests and passions. I wonder then, what picture other people have in their minds when they think of me? Do my children see in their minds a pair of hands preparing a meal or putting a bandage on their skinned knees? Do they see a pair of arms wrapping them in a hug? Do they see a face with an impatient or angry expression, or do they see a warm smile? I want to be a blessing. I want my family and friends to smile when they picture me in their minds. That is my prayer.

Where Our Treasure Is

2010-05-23T19:15:00.014+01:00

Every two weeks, the three French classes combine for a field trip. This past Friday our field trip was a treasure hunt, or chasse au trésor, in downtown Sherbrooke. We were divided into teams of three (chosen by the professor), given our instructions, and sent off on our way. We were all to meet at a coffee shop when we finished. I was partnered with two missionary friends who live in my building, Grace and Amy. This was great because we already had a camaraderie and were used to eachother's French (or rather our "Frenglish"). The down side for us was that a number of our tasks involved finding strangers and asking them questions, and none of us felt especially comfortable talking to strangers, in any language. Most of my friends consider me to be friendly and outgoing, and for the most part I am, when I am in a familiar setting. I will talk until you drop if I know you well. But talking to strangers, especially if I have to take the initiative and talk first, is way, way, way out of my comfort zone. However, the old adage that there is strength in numbers is indeed true. My friends and I each took turns speaking with people, helped each other with our French, and encouraged each other. It IS easier to be brave when you know you have someone in your corner rooting for you. It IS easier to do a task when a friend comes along beside you and helps. It IS easier to persevere when you receive an occasional "well done!" My teammates and I shared the same objective and encouraged each other so that we could accomplish our tasks, even if it meant stepping outside of our comfort zones. Jesus said in Matthew 6:21 that where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also. For Christians, our treasure is Jesus. He should be the One I am most devoted to, most passionate about, and the central focus of my life. My objectives are to know, follow, and glorify Him. Am I willing to step out of my comfort zone for Jesus? Am I encouraging my brothers and sisters in Christ as they follow Him? Our team accomplished our tasks and, surprisingly, reached the coffee shop ahead of the other teams. We had time to take a few photos and visit with the other students as they arrived.

A Great St. Louis Recipe

2010-05-17T23:40:00.006+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

I guess I am on a recipe roll. I expressed a desire on Facebook to bake a St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake and received some requests for the recipe. Yes, it did originate in St. Louis, in the 1930's. I have also heard this recipe called "butter chewies", but since it did originate in St. Louis, I prefer to call it by it's proper name. I grew up in St. Louis and while I am proud of my heritage, this recipe is a favorite of mine by its own delicious merit. Cut the pieces small - it is very rich. It goes great with coffee!

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

1/2 cup butter
3 eggs
1/2 tsp almond extract (Vanilla extract can be subsituted but is not as tasty.)
1 box yellow cake mix
8 oz cream cheese, softened
4 cups powdered sugar, plus a little extra
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 pan. Melt butter. Empty Cake mix into a large bowl. Stir in butter and one of the eggs. Press mixture into pan. In separate bowl, mix cream cheese, almond extract, 4 cups powdered sugar and remaining two eggs. Beat for three minutes on medium speed. Spread in pan. Bake for 35-45 minutes until golden brown on top. The cake will be gooey on top, so don't over bake! Allow cake to cool, then dust with more powdered sugar.

Cake! and conversation

2010-05-16T03:48:00.008+01:00

Image via Wikipedia

The French Language School we attend is a ministry of Word of Life. In addition, Word of Life operates a number of Bible Schools, including one here at our campus. Most of the Bible School students are recent high school graduates, not much older than Josh. Last Fall when school began, each language school student was paired up with a volunteer Bible School student. We were assigned to meet for an hour a week and read outloud from the French Bible. Our students were assigned to correct our pronunciation and help us to understand what we were reading. This week was our last week of required meetings with our students because they are leaving this weekend on mission trips, then taking a two week break before beginning the summer camp season. I am blessed with a sweet and patient student who wants to continue meeting with me after she returns from her trip in order to practice conversation in French. I wanted to do something to show my gratitude and affection for her, so I made a chocolate cake for her. She loved it, and it was a great pleasure to be able to do something for her. I receive a lot of requests for my recipe, so I will post it below. I love chocolate, but I never used to enjoy chocolate cake. It just didn't taste chocolatey enough for me. I came across this cake recipe somewhere, I can't remember where, and it trumped every other recipe I had ever tried so this one is now the only chocolate cake recipe I use. The frosting recipe came from a dear friend. It's rich, so it is best eaten with coffee, but that's ok because I also love coffee.

Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp EACH baking powder and baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup boiling water
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1 cup milk
Heat oven to 350*. Grease and flour two round or one 13x9 inch pans. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda, and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water. Pour into pans. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting - makes 2 cups
1/2 cup real butter, softened
2/3 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
Cream butter. Add remaining ingredients and beat to spreading consistency. If it is too thick, add a small amount of milk.

Beginning a New Class

2010-05-02T22:58:00.001+01:00

We have gotten our first week of the conversation course finished. Honestly, I'm not sure what I expected. It is very challenging. Our classes are much smaller in number and David and I are no longer in the same class, so we are "on our own". We've been married nearly twenty years, so we draw a lot of strength and confidence just from being near each other. Since July 2008 we have worked together all day, every day, and being apart even for a few hours a day is strange. It takes a lot of mental work to hear something in French, translate it in your head to English, think of an English response, then translate to French and speak it. In some ways I am improving: I am getting braver about trying to speak and trying to use new things I have learned. The downside of that is that I make a lot of mistakes. I know this is the best way to learn, but it is also the best way to embarrass yourself. So I am making a ton of mistakes and embarrassing myself repeatedly, but it's a good thing! lol. We are not allowed to speak English even during the breaks, so sometimes our breaks are really quiet. Sometimes we start out talking but then we reach a point where we don't know how to say the next thought we have so we just sort of stop talking and stare at each other.
Today we visited a church in Sawyerville. It is an English church that has just begun having a service in French three weeks ago. We were there to encourage our friends Grace and Orest as they presented their ministry in French for the first time. After the French church service, we went to the French Sunday School class, followed by the English church service and a potluck lunch. Last week we went out for dinner and a walk downtown with Orest and Grace to celebrate the end of a week of exams. We also took the kids to a favorite park of ours called Johnville Bog and Forest Park. Here are some photos from last week.

I've got sunshine!

2010-05-02T22:00:00.011+01:00

Marcia at One Little Pink Rose has honored and humbled me with a blog award. Thank you, Marcia! I'm the one who should be honoring you! Since I can't give Marcia an award she has already received, please check out her blog. It is well worth your time.

The Sunshine Award is traditionally passed on to blogger's who inspire others and show positivity and creativity, so, in that spirit, I chose my nominees from blogs that I visit regularly and are very informative and inspiring to me.
The rules for accepting the award are:

This is what I've done and the nominees should do the same if they choose to:

1) Put the logo within my blog or on my post

2) Pass the award onto 10 fellow bloggers

3) Link the nominees within my post

4) Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog

5) Share the love and link to the person whom you received this award from.
Unfortunately, I don't do a large amount of blog reading, so I don't have ten nominees. Here are my nominees, in no particular order. Please visit their blogs and feel free to encourage them with a comment.
1. Grace and Orest @ Desert Talk
2. Joy @ The Stay-At-Home Missionary
3. Michelle @ She Looketh Well
4. Jules @ On Eagles' Wings
5. Sharon @ I'm A Keeper...And A Teacher
6. Beloved Mama @ Beloved Mama
7. TJ @ TJ's Musing

A Quick Catch-up

2010-04-23T20:56:00.016+01:00

Ok. Learning a foreign language when you are an adult with a family to take care of and two kids still homeschooling is a WEE bit time-consuming. And where there is time, there is no energy. SO - I have neglected all of my hobbies, including my blog. We have completed the beginner and intermediate level courses as of two days ago. On Monday, we will begin the conversation course. This course is not quite as intense as the others, so I am hoping to be able to communicate better with my family and friends and maybe even deal with a few photos or do a little quilting. Here is the best rapid-fire catching-up I can give you. In August, on our way from Missouri to Québec, we spent some time with my parents and I gave her the quilt I had been working on for the last five years.

We began school the first week of September. In Canada, Thanksgiving Day is in October, so while our loved ones in the U.S. were observing Columbus Day, we were having our Thanksgiving feast with the other missionary families.

For Christmas, a couple from our church here invited us to spend the day with them. They treated us like family and we had a wonderful time. They can speak English well, but they make us practice our French as much as we can. It is a huge blessing to have friends like them here while we are far from our own families.

In January, we began the intermediate course, what our professor calls "the true French". It was quite a bit more challenging than the beginner course. God blessed us with more friends and more opportunities to practice conversing in French, which seems to be the most difficult part of learning French. Reading and listening skills came more easily.

"Spring break" for us came the first week in March, while it was definitely still winter here. We took a day and drove to Québec city, the capitol. We walked all through Old Québec and toured the parliament building. Québec is the only fortified city in North America.

After exams were over this week, six of the language school students graduated. We have developed close friendships with some of them and are very sad to see them go.

Mira, Myra, My Lord and Me

2009-08-13T04:03:00.004+01:00

Ok, I have to write down what happened today because it was so encouraging to me. Since we gave our dog, Mira, to her new owner nine days ago, I have really been missing her. This morning during my prayer time I cried about Mira, sharing with God how much I miss her and how I hoped she was adjusting ok to her new home and wondered if her new owner (Get this, her name is Myra!)was happy about her decision to take Mira. Today was the day we had to drive our stuff for our Africa shipment to Kansas City, so a friend of ours drove up to the house this morning and traded his truck & trailer for our van. He is a physician and a couple minutes later he called and said he'd left his stethoscope in the truck. Josh and I drove it to his office and when I walked in to hand it to the receptionist, I heard "Well, hello, Nancy!" I turned around and there was Myra! So I sat with her for a couple of minutes and she shared that she had been praying for us. Then she said that Mira is just crazy about her, follows her everywhere and wants her attention all the time and that she loves the dog. I had to go, but I gave Myra a big hug and my thanks. I have told my children many times that God cares about animals, that He counts our tears and cares deeply about the things in our hearts. Today was my turn to be reminded. I don't believe in coincidences. God knew what I needed and provided the answer as only He can. Just last Sunday morning our pastor prayed for us and asked God to "just love on the Burtons". I'll have to let him know that God has been doing just that.

Full Speed Ahead

2009-08-09T23:00:00.003+01:00

I haven't forgotten to blog, I just haven't had time. We have had our van in the shop again. Old story. Hopefully it will be finished soon. We went camping this past week with some friends of ours. Primitive camping. Bring your own water and dig your own potty camping. We were right on the bank of the Current River. The kids got to play in the water. Our friends have horses and brought them along so we all got to take turns riding horses in some really beautiful country. We had a blast until Friday. Friday morning, David woke up in pain and having trouble breathing. By the time we broke camp and drove four hours to home he was worse. One of our friends with us is a doctor so he checked David out and promptly sent him to the hospital. He has pericarditis, an inflammation in the sac surrounding his heart. We aren't sure if it is viral or if it was brought on by a response to his yellow fever vaccine. He got to come home yesterday and is slowly regaining his strength. The doctor said his heart wasn't damaged and he should be himself again in a few weeks. We are going crazy packing and sorting. Last week we also said goodbye to our dog and turned her over to her new owner. She went to a really sweet lady who I know will be kind to her, but it still hurt all of us to let her go. We miss her. We also celebrated Daniel's 8th birthday. I have pics from the campout but in all the chaos of taking care of David I left my cameras at our friends' house and didn't have it for Daniel's birthday celebration. I used Josh's camera but his flash is broken. If any of them turn out I'll post some later. We are taking some stuff to David's brother's for storage, wrapping up loose ends, packing for Canada, trying to plan a yard sale, and hopefully leaving on Monday, so I'll probably not be blogging for a while. We expect to arrive in Canada on the 24th. We'll have a week to get Josh enrolled in school and get school supplies and learn our way around town before school starts. So, our adventure is going full-speed and about to take a turn in a new direction. We are excited, but there are constant reminders that we can't do this in our own strength. Praise God that we don't have to and aren't supposed to!

My Baby is Growing Up!

2009-07-23T05:24:00.004+01:00

Yesterday, Josh turned 16. Today, Josh passed the exam to get a Missouri driver's license. Needless to say, as his mom, I have mixed feelings. I wish he wouldn't grow up quite so quickly! I am proud of him and excited for him. He set a goal, worked for it, and succeeded in reaching that goal. He has passed a milestone in his journey toward adulthood. On the other hand, now he will be driving without the benefit of one of his parents there to catch his mistakes and help him make good judgements. He'll have to rely on what we taught him and learn from experience. Also, it is not insignificant that when I called the insurance company today our rates more than doubled. Ouch! The agent on the phone tried to make me feel better by telling me that the rates would go down again when Josh becomes 25. Since by that time he will be paying his own insurance, I'm happy for him but it gives me little comfort here in the present time. So, any moms out there who understand all these mixed feelings who happen to read this, I would love some empathy.

Finished!

2009-07-20T15:50:00.005+01:00

Last Friday, I finished a big project that I have literally been working at off and on for five years. I will eventually post a photo but I can't yet. I can't even say what it is yet, because I plan to give it to someone who happens to read my blog. I just had to write about how excited I am to finally have it finished! What a good feeling!

Yesterday we worshipped at Mt. Auburn Christian Church in Cape Girardeau. We didn't realize until we got there that it was their Sunday to present their vacation Bible school program. What a great service! The kids sang that you don't have to be big, or strong, or smart or great for God to use you. You just have to be willing. It's a very elemental truth, one that most Christians learn early, but one that we often need a refresher in. It is such a joy to see so many seeds of Truth planted in young hearts!

***UPDATE***You can now see my completed quilt project HERE.

Calm and Chaos

2009-07-10T01:28:00.006+01:00

We've been busy, busy, busy! We are still speaking to churches, groups, individuals, anyone willing to listen to us, about our ministry with MAF and what God is doing in our lives and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where we will be serving. Language school begins soon and we'll be packing up and driving to Canada next month. We are sorting through our stuff and deciding what goes to Canada (very little, thankfully), what goes to Africa, what goes in storage, and what goes AWAY. We have been purchasing things we need and we have a dear friend who is working on planning a shower for us to help with that. We are taking care of legal stuff, insurance, paper work, tying up loose ends. Getting vaccines, helping our dog get to know her future owner, visiting friends and family. You get the idea. I always enjoy my morning cups of coffee, one with God and one with my hubby, and now that peaceful time of day before the chaos begins is even more important to me. This week for a break I scrapped another page. This is an older photo but one I had never scrapped before, and I wanted to get it done for Emily. I hope you like it. I used a kit called Pinkalicious, designed by Kristi Cakebread. You can purchase it at www.scrapbookmax.com .

Cowboy Daniel

2009-06-25T22:42:00.005+01:00

One of my favorite web sites is www.scrapbookmax.com . I scrap for a hobby and a couple of years ago I discovered digital scrapbooking. I was skeptical at first, then I decided to try it. Now I am totally hooked. My papers, embellishments, templates, etc, fit neatly into my computer until I am ready to print pages. I can use each paper, pattern, frame, embellishment, etc an unlimited number of times. I can even scrap when I am traveling via my laptop. And clean up is EASY! Overall it is also less expensive, which leaves me more money for my other hobby, quilting. Each week the designers at Scrapbook Max present a challenge that is intended to help you learn more about digital scrapbooking and how to maximize what you can do with your software. I happen to use their software because it is very reasonably priced and user friendly. The challenge last week was to randomly select a photo from our files and scrap it. I landed on this one of Daniel. It was in a file of "undated" photos and I haven't decided yet whether I took this photo in fall 2003 or spring 2004. Other than the missing date, I really liked how this turned out. I used a kit called "All American Cowboy" by Yardbunny.

Wisdom and Words

2009-06-20T15:36:00.005+01:00

Proverbs 15:1* (Photo credit: stephen.h2010)

The ladies in our church are going through the Beth Moore studies in the book of Proverbs. This week the topic was "Wisdom With Words". Beth used several passages from Proverbs and from other books of the Bible to show that just as God breathes life through his words, we are made in his image and our words have power. We need to pray for wisdom and use our words to bring life and healing to others. Proverbs 12:18 says "Reckess words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Beth read that verse and questioned how many of us are walking wounded with holes in our hearts because of words that others have spoken to us. When she said that, I sensed God asking me how many people have I cut deeply with my recklessly spoken words. I didn't hear what Beth Moore was saying in the video during the next few minutes because God and I were having a pow-wow. God called to mind something I had said that very day that I needed to repent of and apologize to the person I had spoken to. I am so thankful that God is in the business of changing me. I know that what we say is really a reflection of what is in our hearts. Jesus prayed for believers in the garden that God's love for Him would be in us. "Lord, I want people to know I am yours by the love that comes from my heart, revealed in my words and my actions. Please make me more like your Son, who only spoke what You told Him to, the way you told Him to, and never used words recklessly when He was here on earth. Give me wisdom so that my words will bring life and healing to others." Here are some more verses about wisdom with words:

John 12:49-50
2Cor 4:13
Proverbs 18:21
Proverbs 15:4
Heb. 4:12
Proverbs 18:8
Hebrews 13:15
Proverbs 15:28

Bragging On My Kids

2009-06-18T05:57:00.005+01:00

I know it irritates others when a parent talks constantly about their children's accomplishments, how wonderful they are, how smart, how cute, blah blah blah. So, I will try not to go on and on about it, but I am proud of my kids and this past week and a half they have given me reason. Josh and Emily both helped in Vacation Bible School last week. Emily, though, was in the classroom for 2-3 year olds and worked herself weary every night and kept her good attitude. Daniel, my cautious one who doesn't like to try new things, has been learning new games and actively participating in VBS and children's church. Josh took two CLEP tests and passed them both with very decent scores, earning dual high school and college credit in those classes. I didn't get photos of any of those activities, so in honor of Josh's academic progress, I dug out an older scrapbook page and scanned it into the computer. I had to do it in two parts and stitch the photos together, so it may not be the best quality.

Friends And Flowers

2009-06-15T13:19:00.005+01:00

Wow, has it really been over a month? Time goes so quickly! We've been on the road again. We had a very busy time in Florida. We got to spend time with friends and say goodbye to them before leaving for language school this fall. God opened doors for us to make new contacts and speak in churches and small groups. We got to spend a couple of days with my parents, which is always a blessing. After we got back we had a few days to recoup and then we drove to Columbia, MO. to speak at a church that we were members of in the early days of our marriage. It was a real treat for me to get to see friends I hadn't seen in 12 years and walk the halls again of that church. Our first two babies were dedicated in that church and we met some amazing friends there, so we will always have a special place in our hearts for Calvary Baptist Church. Here's a scrapbook page I did with a photo from our trip. Ben and Shirley were our Sunday School teachers years ago and are dear friends.

Simple Pleasures

2009-05-10T04:53:00.006+01:00

Sometimes I am delighted by the simplest things. Earlier this week, I went outside to cut some roses from a huge rosebush in our yard and startled a female cardinal. I walked around the back side of the bush for a closer look and found a nest with three tiny eggs in it! I was excited enough that I called the kids to come and see it. Soon there will be baby birds right under our dining room window. What fun! Last night we were on the road and I was listening to praise songs. At the same moment that my mp3 player began a Chris Tomlin song praising God as our creator I looked up and noticed a huge, perfect, full moon. How cool is that?! Today as we neared our destination in Florida, I decided to see if our favorite Christian radio station from our days living here before was close enough to pick up on the radio. As soon as I had it tuned in we recognized the song that was playing and all 5 of us simultaneously started to sing along. Instant fun! We got the added bonus today of getting to see old friends again after eight months away.

1 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
2 From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise [b]
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! -- Psalm 8

Tears and Raindrops

2009-05-02T23:09:00.006+01:00

Rainy Window - School (Photo credit: John-Morgan)

It rained today in Nampa. A perfect picture of my feelings. We haven't even begun our goodbyes yet, but I have already had a couple of crying spells just thinking about it. It hurts to let go, to say goodbye. But I've come to understand that both rain and pain can bring growth and an outward beauty that reflect the strength within. So I will do my best to embrace these days, even though there will be tears, and look forward to the next adventure God has for me -- "Look among the nations and watch - be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you." Habakkuk 1:5

Tonight we will spend some time with our friends we have made here before we all go to our new destinations. Please pray for all of us, that God will comfort our hearts, protect us as we travel, and unite us in spirit as we serve Him together with MAF.

Commissioned!

2009-05-02T07:47:00.006+01:00

Believe it or not, even after our encounter with the snake, we went back to Succor Creek again last weekend. This time we took two families with us who had never been there. We had a picnic and did some hiking/walking, and explored a cave. Yes, we did find another rattlesnake, but at that point we had split into two groups and I was in the lucky group, I mean the group that didn't meet up with the snake.

Classes have been interesting but draining this week. There have been a lot of emotions, at least for me. We know that after this we are going off in all sorts of directions and have no idea when we will get the priviledge of seeing eachother again. Most of us were in class together last summer also and we have all grown to care for one another. Leaving will be difficult.

Yesterday we had commissioning chapel. I made a scrapbook page of some of the photos. If you click on the image it will enlarge so you can see it better. It was a joyous occasion because we were being prayed over and encouraged and marking a milestone in our journey, but was also serious because we knew that we still have much work to do raising support for our ministry before we can go. Please pray for God to open doors for us and to raise up people who will want to be part of what He is doing through us. Pray also for decisions we have to make regarding the kids' schooling while we are in language school, and for our visa applications to go through without any trouble.

Rattlesnake at Succor Creek!

2009-04-20T05:33:00.001+01:00

Today was filled with adventure. One of our homework assignments was for our family to attend a church of a different culture, so we went to the Peace in Jesus Vietnamese Lutheran Church. None of us were quite sure what to expect, but we all had a wonderful time. Everyone was warm and friendly. We couldn't sing in their language, but we recognized several of the tunes so we knew the jist of what they were singing. In our hearts we were able to sing and worship with them. I admit I didn't get much out of the sermon, but still enjoyed watching and observing. The pastor obviously was passionate about what he was sharing. We even picked up a few words by the end of the service. Then this afternoon we joined another MAF family and went hiking at Succor Creek, Oregon. We cooked on the grill and enjoyed the amazing scenery. On our walk, I came very close to stepping on a rattlesnake and after I got over being seriously startled, I just had to take pictures! And video! From a distance, of course. We certainly had something to talk about on the way home and thanked God for his protection and the beauty of his creation.

Class has begun

2009-04-19T00:23:00.005+01:00

Friday was our first day of non-technical orientation at MAF. We had class all day, followed by pizza and ice cream with the kids Friday night. The new apartments here don't have televisions yet, so we watched old episodes of our favorite tv shows on-line with the laptop. We are excited to get to see some of our old candidacy classmates again and spend time with them. The kids have been enjoying their time with friends they haven't seen since last summer when we were here for deputation. Also, MAF is hosting activities and classes for the missionary kids to better equip them to adjust to new cultures. Yesterday they got to try foods from several different countries. It feels like we are back in school, we were even assigned homework! (Mostly reading, and nothing overwhelming.)

Mighty Mountains

2009-04-16T03:19:00.006+01:00

Wow! In just one day we: saw antelope and sheep galore, drove to Firehole Canyon in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Center, saw wild horses in Green River Wyoming, and drove through a snow storm! We crossed Wyoming and are now in Ogden, Utah. I finally remembered to move my camera from my suitcase to the front of the van so I got photos today! I did a quickie scrapbook page for you. If you want to see it larger, just click on the image. Daniel and I have been reading a book together called "Mountain Born", about a little boy growing up on a mountain. His family raises sheep for a living and the book describes shearing in one chapter. We had the priviledge of seeing both wooly flocks of sheep and some that had been recently shorn and still bore the telltale marks, so Daniel got to see the difference first-hand. Emily especially enjoyed the antelope. I think David would say the highlight for him today was seeing the wild horses. All five of us were reminded constantly today of the creativity and majesty of our God.

Tired

2009-04-15T02:23:00.004+01:00

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This morning we left early and drove up the western edge of Missouri, cut the corner of Iowa, and drove all the way across southern Nebraska into Cheyenne, Wyoming. My limited experience of Nebraska is that it is rather boring, and quite stinky. We saw, and smelled, a plethera of cattle. It's been a long day and we are all tired, but very happy to be out of the van for a while.

Isaiah 40:28-29 (New International Version)

28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

Let the Driving Begin!

2009-04-14T02:48:00.006+01:00

Today we started our big road trip. We are on our way to MAF headquarters in Nampa, Idaho for orientation. We drove to Pleasant Hill, MO and are staying tonight with David's brother and his family. Other than rain, we had an uneventful trip, which is unusual for us. We usually have someone get sick or the van breaks down, or both, so we are grateful. Tomorrow we get up early and hit the road again. We borrowed a car-top luggage carrier and somehow it seems like we have even less space than we had before we borrowed it. Must be some sort of Murphy's law or something. Part of the space problem is because we packed all of our school stuff so the kids can keep up with their schooling. And Josh's guitar. And I MIGHT have purchased too many snack items for the road.

The Grave Couldn't Hold Him!

2009-04-11T17:04:00.004+01:00

Happy Easter! Our life has been crazy with illness, car troubles, travels, and school. I have neglected my blog. And we are about to hit the road again, but I wanted to share this video with you because I think it is excellent. It is a portion of a sermon by S.M. Lockridge that has been put to music and video. Let me know how you like it.

Broken Trees

2009-03-16T22:53:00.008+01:00

Nearly six weeks after our ice storm, I can still walk through my neighborhood and drive through my county and see evidence of the storm’s destruction. Broken trees line the roads and occupy the lawns and yards. They aren’t just missing a limb or two, they are pathetic, bowed, broken off in multiple places, and bare. Since every tree is affected, it’s almost eerie. The weight of the ice and the force of the wind were just too much for them to bear. Some of them were destroyed completely. Some, with time and nurturing, will eventually fill back out and be beautiful again. Last week as we were driving, I was looking out the window at the broken trees and began to think about how like the trees people are. Our community, nation and world are filled with people who are broken and damaged spiritually and emotionally under the weight of their sin and the oppressions and stresses of this life. They are hopeless without Jesus. He can make them into what they were meant to be, beautiful and full of life. Lord, here I am. Please give me a heart to serve and reach those who are "broken". Don't let me pass them by. Give me your eyes to see them.

Titus 2 Blog Party

2009-03-03T22:29:00.012+01:00

I just discovered Michelle's blog - She Looketh Well - today! Michelle is hosting a Titus 2 blog party, a chance for us to meet other bloggers and have some fun. Go check it out! So, anyway, here is my Titus 2 Blog Party post and introduction. Hi, I'm Nancy Burton. I'm a new blogger, since the first of the year, and still getting the hang of it. In fact, I didn't know how to even put those links above until today and I had to ask someone how to do it. I'm a Christian, a missionary wife, and a home school mom. Right now we are "prefielders", still getting ready to go. We are scheduled to depart for language school in August and are pretty excited about the adventure God has us on. He is using this time to stretch us and grow us. We have made incredible friendships, learned more about the internet, computer programs, writing and corresponding, budgeting, flexibility, trusting, and waiting, just to name a few areas. Trusting and waiting have been in the forefront. The one thing I am constantly reminded of is that I am not in control, nor am I supposed to be. I have been forced to trust God more and wait on Him more than I ever have before. I am sure this will serve me well when I get to Africa. I started blogging because my teenage son kept encouraging me to try it. He was having such a good time with his blog, keeping in touch with his friends from far away that I thought it might be a good way for my friends and family to keep up with me, especially once we leave the U.S. I still haven't decided on a permanent name for my blog (suggestions, anyone?) or gotten around to learning how to personalize my template. Even though I am new to blogging, I have already discovered some cool blogs and benefited from the wisdom that others have been willing to share on their blogs.

Praying Scripture

2009-02-28T18:25:00.005+01:00

I like to pray Scripture verses. It's something I learned from one of the Beth Moore Bible studies I have done. When I first heard someone use Scripture in prayer, it seemed new and different to me, but I realized that as long as it is in correct context, what better way to know you are praying in line with God's will? And there are so many amazing verses of praise to God that I can use to lift up His name! It has also helped me to become better at memorizing Scripture. Imagine being in the middle of a prayer and telling God to hang on a minute while I find that verse I wanted to talk with Him about. Praying Scripture really added a new dimension to my prayer life. Recently God gave me Psalm 63:1 to pray for myself and my family: "O God, You are my God, earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water." I pray my children will earnestly seek Him and that they will have a longing and a thirst for Him. I also pray that anything other than God that they might turn to for satisfaction in life will be like David's "dry and weary land" and will cause them to turn back to God for true satiety. I'll just share one more. Proverbs 21:1 states "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; He directs it like a watercourse wherever He pleases." I am praying this for our nation's leaders, all of them. Whether I voted for them or not, whether they are Christians or not, God is in control. So I pray He will direct their hearts for His glory and the good of our nation.

A week or so ago we went up to Columbia, Missouri for part of our ministry partnership to meet with some families and old friends. It was a great time of renewing friendships and we were so blessed to get to fellowship and pray with people who have meant so much to us over the years. One friend took this photo of us before we left. No, Daniel did not have a growth spurt. He is standing on the hearth.

The Big Ice Storm

2009-02-10T15:49:00.007+01:00

Three days after my last post, we woke to the sound of a very large tree limb landing just outside our bedroom window. Our region had an ice storm that lasted two days and did extensive damage to trees, properties, and power lines. I took a few photos that I'll post. We went four days without power, the same amount of time we were without power after Hurricane Wilma three years ago, but there the similarities end. For one thing, it was cold here! We didn't have to worry about heat in Florida. For another, after the hurricane, people in Florida still pretty much kept to themselves, cleaned their own messes, and didn't want to be bothered. Up here in this small town, there is still a strong feeling of community, of "we are all in this together". Everyone checked on their neighbors. Churches served meals and provided warm places to sleep at night. Groups donated food, worked together to unblock driveways and help those who couldn't help themselves. Very different. I'll share a neat little story about how God knows all and has good plans for us even when we aren't aware of it. When we left Missouri five and a half years ago to move to Tulsa, we sold our kerosene heater to one of our neighbors. When the storm came and we had no heat and began to run out of firewood, that neighbor loaned us back the very same heater! That may sound like he was just being neighborly, or a good friend, but there are two things that make this a very signigicant occurance to me. First, if we had taken that heater to Tulsa with us, and we did consider it, there is no way we would have taken it with us when we moved to Florida and it would not have been available to us here again. Also, when we came here to look for a place to live and move back to Charleston, the only available house to rent in the entire town that we could find was just a few houses down the street from where we used to live, so we had the SAME neighbors. I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in Providence. That day we sold the heater, we didn't really entertain the notion that we would ever see or need it again. But God knew. And we almost decided to wait and keep looking for a different home to rent here because this one was smaller and had only one bathroom, but we sensed that this was the one God had provided for us and that He wanted us here. Anyway, we are all fine. We are grateful for our electricity, for hot food, and for God's protection. Lots and lots of limbs fell all around our home and our vehicles and all were fine.

I Don't Like That!

2009-01-23T13:56:00.006+01:00

I've recognized since they were born that God created each of my children as individuals. While they have much in common, they are each distinct in many ways, with different gifts, strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. Those who know us can even attest to the fact that they look totally different from one another (I have a brunette, a blonde, and a redhead). And I am sure that everyone who has children or knows any children would say the same about theirs. We are like snowflakes. God doesn't make carbon copies. But every now and then, the differences between my three kids, raised in the same home and coming from the same gene pool, are very broad. I have sung to all of my kids since they were newborns. Sometimes I sang a lullaby to calm them, and sometimes I sang something silly or loud while playing with them. Josh liked it but outgrew it at about age 4 or 5. Emily still likes it. Daniel never liked it and let me know that as soon as he was able to say the words "I don't like that." I seldom thought about it but was reminded the other day when Daniel's Kids in Action teacher told me she played her phone ring tone when she wanted to tease Daniel. Just threatening to play it would make him cooperate in class. Even as she was telling me this, Daniel was groaning because he knew, of course, that I would want to know what this terrible ring tone was that irked him so. Well, it's the Cuppycake Song. For those of you who like me have not heard it before, I have embedded it below for your listening pleasure, or displeasure. I can totally understand why any little boy would not like that song, especially once he reached a certain age, but I especially understand why Daniel wouldn't like it.

Let Them Eat Dumplings!

2009-01-21T20:29:00.007+01:00

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Normally, I would not think the act of feeding my family something worthy of journaling about, after all, I do it about twenty times a week. In fact, if I am honest, sometimes it is more of a chore than a ministry to cook or clean for my family. It all depends on my attitude. I can look at it like it is a job that takes time and energy I would rather use in a different way. OR, I can see it as a huge blessing to be able to serve my family and show my love for God and for them in the things I do for them. This morning, my oldest asked me if we had anything for breakfast. He knew exactly what we had for breakfast foods, so what he really wanted to know was would I fix something for him that wasn't already readily available. I could have told him that he needed to hurry up and eat something and I didn't have time to cook for him because we had to get school going. But for some reason, I guess because I love him, I told him I would make something if he didn't mind getting ready and starting school work while he waited. I decided to try a new recipe I found for apple dumplings that is super easy. My family loved it! Josh was almost in a state of euphoria. Daniel was the only one who didn't like it (no surprise there). The rest of us heartily enjoyed the food and each other's company. I was going to try to relate our experience to Scripture, but I really didn't want to read about gluttony so soon after committing it. I found my recipe in the MAF cookbook but it is also all over the internet from various sources so I feel it is ok to post it for you to enjoy. I would take a photo and post it, but there isn't any left!

APPLE DUMPLINGS

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 8 slices each
2 cans crescent rolls
1 1/2 sticks butter or oleo, melted
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
A 12 oz can of Mountain Dew

Roll each apple slice up in a crescent roll and place in a 9 by 13 inch pan. Pour butter over rolls. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over all. Pour Mountain Dew over everything. Bake at 350 degrees 30-40 minutes until golden.

Another Milestone

2009-01-16T06:20:00.012+01:00

Josh has had his driving permit for a few weeks now, but David has always been the one to take him out driving (There's a reason for that). Today David and I made a plan to do the grocery shopping together while Josh was in Tae Kwon Do so that we would only have to drive to Sikeston once. When it was time to go, David decided to let Josh drive. I have to admit, he didn't do too badly, considering he is used to driving David's little Metro and not the mini-van. I bit my tongue a couple of times, but I was a good passenger and let David do all of the correcting and instructing. Only once was I genuinely frightened. Fifteen and a half years ago, I knew days like this would come but could not imagine yet what it would really be like to have my BABY driving me around town. I have seen him grow spiritually as well as physically, especially in the last couple of years. It is a strange dilemna to be a mom. It is so painful to let go and let them become independent of me, but it is so incredible to see that even while they are moving away from me, they are moving toward their Heavenly Father and placing their dependency on Him instead, which is how it should be. To celebrate Josh's new milestone, I decided to post a page from my scrapbook featuring Josh with his first set of "wheels".

Oh, and after we finished shopping we still had a hour before Josh's class would end. It was 11 degrees outside with a below freezing windchill, so guess where my sweetheart took me - an ice cream shop! Yep. We got coffees and donuts and had the whole place all to ourselves. It was actually very nice. I think we might make a habit of it.

I Hate Broken Wal-Mart Buggies

2009-01-09T03:41:00.003+01:00

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We had houseguests the last couple of days. My sister-in-law, Rachel, and her husband, William came for a visit. It is always fun to be around them but this was their first time staying in our house so I hope we didn't frighten them off. I am fully aware that we are a tad bit bizarre. Anyway, it was very nice to have them here. And to top it all off, we got to have another Christmas party because they had been snowed in when we were all supposed to meet for the family Christmas party. Yaaay! I love parties!

I named my blog, at least temporarily, "Cool Beans!" because it means "awesome!" and there is so much about my life that really is awesome. But one thing that is not awesome is the periodic shopping trip to Wal-mart. I wish just one time I could go to Wal-mart and not end up with a broken buggy that I have to wrestle with for an hour and a half. Trading it out does no good because they are ALL broken! Today was no exception. I don't know what the opposite of "Cool Beans!" is, but if I knew, that would be the adjective I would use to describe Wal-Mart buggy wrestling matches. But I am home safe now and there is food in the house. And it didn't rain on me like the last time. God is good!

Doing the blog thingie and seeing old friends!

2009-01-05T02:42:00.004+01:00

Okay! I finally allowed my son to talk me into creating a blog. Being a wife, home school mom, missionary, daughter, sister, friend, quilter, sewer, scrapper, etc was not keeping me busy enough so I had to add blogger to my list of occupations.

Last night we drove to St. Louis to spend the evening with old friends from my high school and church youth group. It was great to see how my friends were doing, meet their kids, and catch up. There's no friend like an old friend. We all just sort of picked up where we had left off roughly twenty years ago. The neatest part is they are all Christians who take their faith seriously and love God deeply. We had a great fellowship. The only sad thing about it was that more of us couldn't be there. I hate the whole new year resolution thing, but I am going to try harder to communicate with the people I care about and keep up with them.

I'm still learning this blog thingie so hopefully I'll improve as I go.