First Week of Furlough

MAF Office in Nampa

A week ago today in the wee hours of morning we landed in Boise, Idaho. It does not seem like a week has gone by! Already we have had some memorable moments:

* stepping off the plane in Brussels was like entering a portal to another world - "first world"

* hot water/showers, and actually feeling clean after we rinsed off

* hair that behaves

*people are so friendly and polite!

* driving! Oh my! Smooth roads, orderliness, street signs and street lights

* re-teaching my son to make microwave popcorn

*first time I put on a clean shirt and it smelled clean

* milk in a jug!

* pulling something out of the fridge that is actually COLD

* getting all our groceries, toiletries, etc at one store and finding everything (In reference to my post about what it might be like to go to Wal-mart, not much had changed really. I still had the entire floor plan memorized and had no trouble finding things. The big difference is that it took me twenty minutes to pick a deodorant, and the first time we went to Wal-mart, we came home with only two food items: milk and Oreos. We may have been tired but at least we had our priorities right.)

* While putting away groceries, someone forgot what crescent roll dough was and put it in the freezer. oops.

* one of my kids was the first of us to accidentally speak French to someone instead of English, and yes, the rest of us laughed

* INTERNET!!!

* getting to dry my clothes in a dryer!

* David mentioned the other day "No one in this family except me knows how to turn lights off." That made us realize that in our house in Kinshasa, it rarely mattered if the switches were on or off. It's hard to waste electricity when you don't have any.

We have all been to the doctor for physicals and are attending meetings/debriefings. Next week David has some training in the hangar and I hope to use that time to get a few much needed clothing items for the kids and me.

It has been a real treat to be in Nampa and see again our friends there. These are the people who work behind the scenes to help all of us who are on the field with everything from processing support gifts, writing literature and making our prayer cards, arranging our travel, raising funds to get us planes, helping us with insurance claims, training us, coaching us, processing our mail, and more. They pray for us, advise us, serve us and encourage us. Many of them have served overseas and know all the ins and outs and understand all that we experience. They know how weary we were when we arrived without us having to tell them and they have loved on us since we got here. I have met missionaries who do not have the kind of support that MAF gives to their missionaries and it makes a huge difference! If any of our Nampa friends are reading this, THANK YOU! We love you too!

Dancing With My Friend

We went to say goodbye to some friends yesterday and they snapped this photo, then emailed it to me with the caption "help, let us out of Congo!" Yes, we are READY to get a little break, but we'll be back.

My friend TJ blogged yesterday and many of her words resonated the feelings and thoughts of my own heart. I want to be open to letting God teach me to dance. I don't just mean in the physical sense. I mean that I want to let go more, relax in Him and trust Him more, be more willing to put myself out there for Him if that's what He wants and to receive the joy that He means for me to have in the process. Here is a link to TJ's post "Here In This Place I Learned To Dance." I haven't seen TJ in several years, but maybe one day our paths will cross again and we can dance together! 

We are about to go face traffic and check our bags in at the airline, then we will have about a five hour wait at the airport before our flight tonight. Next time I post it will be from the other side of the pond! Lots of people have been and are praying for us and we are so thankful! 

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

But I managed to do it to my favorite RevereWare sauce pan. We were cooking and heard a popping noise. When we lifted the pot, the bottom had come off. I got my set of RevereWare pots for a wedding gift, twenty-three years ago this month, and have dragged them with me everywhere. I had sort of taken for granted that they would last til I died. I did not even know these pots were two pieces instead of one. Oh, well. Now it fits in better with this family of cracked pots.

Thursday was my last evening with the ladies Bible study group from Nsango Na Bomoi, Christine's church. I will miss these faithful women and look forward to seeing them again in January.

We had to order them to smile for the camera! The Congolese usually sport serious faces when they have their photos taken.

Promised Pics, Preparing to Leave, and a Post by One of Our Pilots

As promised, here are pics from Emily’s graduation.  Sorry about the low quantity/quality.  A new camera is very high on my wish list for furlough. I think I may have even found the one I want. 

I love, love, love this photo of Emily and David!













We leave in a week! We’ve been going through all our stuff, getting rid of everything that doesn’t fit or doesn’t bless us or that we do not use. FLYlady would be so proud of me for finally doing this. I only read her book like ten years ago. In an act of ultimate irony I gave it away. Not because it didn’t bless me though. I was moving to Africa and got rid of hundreds of books. We could only bring so much with us. It was either the books or the kids. 

At least when we come back and unpack all this stuff, there will be less of it to deal with and it will all be useful, right? Of course, it will. We never really finished finding proper  places for it all after the last move because we still haven’t finished repairing and painting the house. There were always more pressing issues like burning wires and graduations and car repairs. High on my wish list for AFTER furlough is a more reliable car.

I’m almost afraid to say it, but we have had good electricity the last few days, which makes cleaning and packing a lot easier. We’ve had our other issues. Emily got sick. Now I am sick. The dryer broke, again, and will have to be replaced when we come back after furlough. You would THINK that during DRY season, laundry would dry quickly on the line because the humidity is lower, but it is just not working that way. At least no one has gotten any mango fly worms from our clothes. Yet. (more about mango fly larva, also known as tumbo flies, HERE .) That post about the tumbo flies goes all the way back to 2010 and as I read it I thought "It's no wonder we are tired and ready for a break after two and a half years of that craziness!" 

While we are preparing to leave, our friend and teammate Nick Frey is in Canada for a couple weeks and has written a great post for the MAF Blog (click HERE to read Nick's post) contrasting Kinshasa and Congo with life in a first world nation. His post is a great reminder the heart of MAF and why we are here. He's a pilot so he gets to see the physical isolation of people in Congo on a regular basis. Not so much for our family since we are always in Kinshasa, but we see first hand every day that even in this city of millions, people live in self-imposed isolation, whether intentional or not, behind their concrete walls, their emotional walls, their social status, and their fears and superstitions. Pray for Congo, for our pilots, mechanics, IT folks and national staff, and for our travels next week!

I've updated our Media Page with some new items!

Don't mind me...

Coffee & Donuts (Photo credit: Jeremy Brooks)

…I’m just a missionary on furlough (almost).

We leave in two weeks for our first furlough. I don’t know if this happens to every missionary family but as our departure time creeps closer, we’ve begun to notice some strange mental shifts. Nothing scary or creepy, just little things that by themselves mean nothing but collectively make us a little bizarre.

We see photos on the internet of our friends, and after a cursory glance at the people our eyes are drawn to things in the photos that we never would have noticed a few years ago. Carpet. Door knobs that are not five feet above the floor. Sidewalks. Starbucks. Donuts. And we sort of go into a trance and drool. It’s disgusting.

We talk about things we used to take for granted like peace and quiet and fresh strawberries, peaches and blueberries and we sound like Sam and Frodo at Mordor when they realize they can’t remember the taste of strawberries or the sound of the trees. Pathetic.

English: Wal-Mart location in Moncton (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve heard stories of expats returning to the states and crying the first time they went back to Wal-Mart and thought to myself, "no way, not me, Wal-Mart and I are old friends and I CANNOT WAIT to go back." Lately though I am not so sure of myself. Since we've never had a furlough this is all pure speculation but I might cry after all. I might feel overwhelmed. I might be just as likely to cry tears of joy. “Look, Honey! They have EVERYTHING on our list right here in ONE store! And it all has a price tag on it! And none of it is expired! And the labels are in ENGLISH!”

I might do a happy dance.

I might take forty minutes to drive the twelve miles to the store because driving in excess of 35mph feels terrifyingly fast.

I might try to order my meat by the kilo instead of by the pound.

I might try to give a tip to any pedestrian within six feet of my car and thank them for keeping an eye on it for me.

I might hand my merchandise to the cashier and after he/she scans it, ask, possibly in French, “Is that your BEST price?”

If I am going to behave strangely, Wal-mart might just be the safest place to do it. Still, maybe I will make a t-shirt for furlough that says “Don’t mind me, I’m just a missionary on furlough,” just in case someone wonders about me. It might prevent an awkward moment or two.

Almost a Graduate and Almost a Quilt

Remember this quilt top? There's a story to tell that I will share later, but I am just about jumping up and down with excitement because my top is finally getting quilted!

This is my fifth quilt (you can see the other four by clicking on the My Quilts tab at the top of this page). I quilted the first four on my own, one by hand and the rest on my traditional sewing machine. I never seemed to have enough time and electricity to get to this one though, and it is the first one I decided to keep for myself so it got put on back burner. I guess I could have hand quilted it but I just didn't want to. I would pull it out and look at it longingly because I love the batiks and this quilt kept calling me. Finally I caved and decided to take it back to the states when I took Josh back for college and hire a quilter. It got stored for another year partly due to cost and partly because I was nervous about putting my quilt top in the mail.

Ultimately I chose my dear friend Marcia, of Little Pink Rose Quilting and Sewing to be my quilter. Marcia and I have been friends for several years, and her husband has been friends with David and me even longer - we went to college together.

You can get a sneek peak at Marcia's work on my quilt by clicking HERE. It goes without saying that I will post about this quilt again when it is finished and then I'll share why it is special to me.

Meanwhile, we are busy packing and preparing for furlough. Tonight our daughter graduates from high school. We are so proud of her!

I have a glitchy camera and unfortunately will probably have to rely on my friends for good photos and it will take a few days to round them up and post about it. So I wrote a post a while back and scheduled it to publish tomorrow automatically. The blog posts will probably slow down quite a bit after that until we get to the states.

Out-zoning

zero gravity (Photo credit: Tattooed JJ)

I worked in social services for three years in Missouri and had to do the occasional home visit, so I thought I knew what poverty looked like. Until I came to Kinshasa and visited people here. I saw families living in tiny two room, window-less homes with tattered curtains for doors, dirt or concrete floors, no electricity, no indoor bathroom, and no water. This was not in a village in the interior, this was in a city of 10-12 million people. 

Sometimes, we let God lead us out of our self-defined bubble of safety and security and then we think "phew! Made it!" and we praise God. We see that He used it to change us, to bring glory to Him, and we are glad we surrendered our fears, took His hand and let Him lead us.  But that's not the end. Every time we step out of our comfort zone, it creates a new boundary. The zone may grow larger but we still have to keep being willing to let God take us to new levels so that we are humbled, stretched, and usable and He is glorified. It's scary. It's hard. But when we are part of something that is impossible apart from God, and people see it and praise Him, and it's not just us who are changed but also those around us, how awesome is that?!

Fellow MAF'er Liz Schandorff shared her experience in her post "Going Outside My Comfort Zone" on the MAF blog. Liz's experience mirrors some of mine and I hope you will read her post and see why she is willing to step out of her comfort zone again and again - why we all should be.

Good read, folks!

Emily's Loose Ends

I'm trying hard to wrap up more loose ends before we travel. This being her last year of high school and also her last few weeks in Congo, pretty much everything in our life revolves around Emily right now and that's ok. I started this rug for Emily during Christmas break and I injured my thumb in January before I finished the rug. I still have some trouble with my thumb but it is steadily improving. It's finished now, in part because I ran out of the fabric she chose out of my stash. It was intended to match her blue and brown bedroom, which she is moving out of in less than three weeks. Oops.

With Emily in mind I also went in search of a tutorial for a more feminine bag to sew, and found

this one at Craftser. After the interfacing disappointment of my last zipper bags, I wanted to use quilted fabric for this one to give it more stability. This meant I had to make my own pre-quilted fabric, which meant re-learning how to use my walking foot that had not seen the light of day since language school. Poor foot, went to sleep in chilly Canada and woke up in Africa. 

I was in a hurry and it is a small bag so I only quilted on the vertical. I had some of that radical green left over from Daniel's quilt top, which perfectly matched the green in the TASOK fabric, so I used that for the lining.





I fussy cut one side to make sure the word "TASOK" was all there. This was my first experience with making a bag like this and with shortening a zipper, which turned out to be no big deal. There was a lot of bulk at the zipper corners even after I trimmed the seams but I think it is not too bad for a first effort.

 I like that it is wider on the bottom so it holds more stuff!

The uber-green lining!

I'm also packing and cleaning but no one wants to read about those things, or write about them. But look, I just did.

What Time Is It?

Sew this page ( p. 83) - Result 1 (Photo credit: atibens)

Sewing tools (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" (Ecclesiastes 3:7) 

This week I have experienced all of those. 

A time to speak: I had to talk to my kids about the consequences of procrastination and doing things half-heartedly. That's not the kind of speaking I enjoy but there are definitely times for it. There were also times for praise and encouragment. I went to my daughter's last school pep rally and got to see her play in the band and perform with the show choir. She had a solo and her microphone failed but she kept on going. Youngest has recently exercised a lot of patience and self-control for one his age so I got to praise him for that. Good times.

A time to keep silence. We are in a busy time right now that mostly revolves around our senior's end of year activities and around goodbyes. Last night our church had a party for the seniors in the youth group and each senior in turn had family and friends gather around them to pray for them. I had to let someone else pray for Emily. I couldn't speak my prayer out loud. It was too personal and I knew if I tried I would lose it in front of everybody. 

A time to sew. I wrote a couple of posts ago that I was going to clean my sewing machine and pack it away until we come back from furlough. I lied. I saw a pattern on the internet for a toiletry bag and had to try to make one. It was supposed to be a cosmetic bag for Emily but it turned out kind of masculine looking. That's ok. I have boys too.

I started with these tutorials: Plaid Scottie's Box Pouch and Skip To My Lou's Boxy Cosmetic Bag, combining elements I liked from each.

and with this. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? If you want to sew a toiletry bag, you first need a vinyl, asymetrical apron with no strings. Here's the thing. There is no Walmart, Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Hancock, or JoAnn here. No place where I can go to buy things like heavy weight interfacing or fusible vinyl. So I had to improvise in order to come up with a spill proof lining. All I could find that came close to what I needed was this apron.

I did have some medium weight interfacing, which I ironed on to the fabric. It helped but not as much as I had hoped it would.

Like the fabric? I bought it from TASOK a couple years ago when my son was still going there and they had their 50th anniversary. It was designed by the students!

You are not supposed to sew when you are tired. But since that would mean no sewing for the entire 25 or 30 years of child-rearing and I am not a patient person....

See anything wrong here? That's right. The zipper is inside out. I sewed when I was tired. This is what the Bible calls "a time to tear." And that cheapo blue vinyl LOVED my seam ripper. Not. Had to cut some new pieces of vinyl.

I did finally get these made. They aren't as sturdy as I would like but they are cute. And the zippers are right side out.