Beautiful Feet

On this day, twenty-two years ago, we welcomed our firstborn into the world. On this day, seven years ago, we officially became missionaries with MAF. Both have been amazing rides so far, a blessing and a priviledge, with lots of ups and downs, lots of laughs and lessons.

I am amazed when I see God's handiwork in the lives of ALL of my kids. I am humbled when God provides for them and cares for them and I realize how much time I waste being anxious for them instead of trusting Him.

I am also amazed and humbled by the believers in Congo who love God and have a passion for reaching their lost countrymen. I count it a privilege to be in a time and place where I get to meet and work with nationals whom God is using to make disciples. 

People like the women who keep the Mitendi Women's Center going, the teachers and staff who volunteer at the Mitendi Primary School, and pastors like the two in the photo above. In this photo they are preparing for a baptism service. The pastor on the left also spends time regularly teaching Bible discipleship at the Mitendi Center - and is likely the best or only father figure many of the girls have ever had.

National pastors face many unique challenges here in Congo. Please pray for them.

And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Rom 10:15

Widows and Orphans

Nancy and Nancy, heh heh heh

My friends Jim and Nancy Smith returned from their mission station in Nkara and will soon be on their way back to the U.S. for a few months. I had sent a sack of yarn with Nancy to see if any of the ladies in the Literacy Center would be interested in making baby blankets for the orphanage (more about the literacy center HERE) (more about the blanket project HERE).

One lady, a widow named Ibo, crocheted these blankets. That's her front row left. She is a graduate of the literacy center and now teaches the other students to knit and crochet. She told Nancy Smith that when her husband died, she became very angry. Then she went to the literacy school and met Jesus and He changed her life. Ibo has no children to help care for her. Culturally and economically, life here is very difficult for widows and for people who have no children; I was very pleased to be able to give her an opportunity to earn a little extra money. Now I have soft, new blankets to take to the orphanage before the chilly dry season arrives. Mama Ibo lives a long way from the children at the orphanage in Kimbondo and neither of them has any knowledge of the other. We are admonished in James that pure religion is to look after orphans and widows in their distress. By paying Mama Ibo for her labors and donating the blankets to the orphanage, one project is helping both! I think that is so cool beans!

Tuesday was my birthday. My family spoiled me and did all the dishes all that day and all the following day. Of course it had NOTHING to do with the face that my thumb is still messed up. It is improving. An adopting family came through last week and I was able to buy a splint for my thumb for them to bring. That has enabled me to give it both protection and support, so now I have a lot less pain.






We are all looking forward to furlough this summer. Already our family is praying for a place to live and transportation and doing our best to search for both from here. We have lots to do during our time in the states: doctor and dentist visits, settle Emily into college and teach her how to drive, visit family, friends and ministry partners, raise ministry support, additional training, shopping for supplies for the next term, home schooling Daniel, etc, etc, etc. Somewhere in there we are supposed to take some R&R. We would love for you to pray with us.

Toddler Olympics

I used to post at least once a week and sometimes twice, but for the last week or so, whenever I try to do anything on the internet that takes more than a minute, I get this:

“could not load the webpage because ____________.com took too long to respond. The website may be down or you may be experiencing issues with your internet connection.”  

I’ll keep doing my best. Obviously since I got this posted, persistence and patience pay off in the long run but the posts will definitely be less frequent for the time being. 

Here are the latest news and prayer requests. 

Last Monday my little man turned 11. We had a quiet family party and enjoyed an evening together. This coming Monday is the first day of school. Emily is a senior this year. Daniel is in 5th so he is now a middle schooler. Both of them are looking forward to new classes this year. Emily is happy about having both choir and drama. Daniel is happy about having medieval history. 

Sunday we had the privilege of meeting a couple of families who were coming through to adopt children. We picked them up and took them to church and then ate lunch together. 

We are still searching for a new place to live. I had hoped to find a place and be much further along in the packing and moving process before school starts because of the amount of time that home schooling requires. Please pray for us to be able to be flexible but also to be able to do the things that need to be done. 

Electricity has been pretty bad lately. While getting laundry done is a challenge, we are very grateful that the weather has not been too hot and that we have solar powered lights, gravity fed water, and a little gas stove to make life easier. The rumor is that power will continue to be sparse until rainy season arrives.

Friday, Daniel and I went to the orphanage. We arrived quite a bit earlier than usual and caught them eating their morning snack. All of the kids, who range in age from 2 to 6, were walking around with jars of baby food. It was the fruity stuff, not the nasty vegetable stuff, and they were eating it with their fingers and slurping it from the jars. It was also hair cut day. There were two stations set up for this. A worker would grab a kid, lather his/her head, and shave it with a straight razor. This happens once a month in order to prevent parasites and make it easier to treat ringworm, scabies and mango fly larva.

We have heard that our U.S. team is doing very well in the Olympics. These kids have never seen or even heard of the Olympics. But they do have their own Olympic-style competition on a regular basis. 

• Dot & Dash: A child dips his finger into his baby food, puts a dot onto the bald head of a randomly chosen neighbor, and then makes a run for it.

• Grab & Go: What happens when one child spills his food or drops a toy and other children happen to see it.

• Cling & Swing: A child grabs the leg of the nearest adult, usually me, and holds on tight in hopes of getting a free ride around the courtyard.

• Sit & Shove: A child sits on someone’s lap and shoves all other children off.

Sappy Birthdayversary

Birthday Cake (Photo credit: Will Clayton)

Here is an update on our prayer needs. We still need a place to live. The electric company is still harassing people. They have not picked on us, yet. We have a new team member, Emmanuel, who is adjusting to life here and working in the hangar with David.

Today marks four years that we have been with MAF! I never forget our MAF anniversary because it falls on our oldest son's birthday. Last week our daughter had her first birthday ever without her big brother. Today is the first time Josh will have had a birthday away from us. Next month, our youngest will have his first birthday away from his brother. I knew when we joined MAF, on Josh's 15th birthday, that one day there would be thousands of miles between us and our children. I told myself that would be ok, that God would take care of them. Even if we were still in the states, they would still have to grow up and leave the nest, right?

Mail box (Photo credit: Mark Sardella)

But I didn't realize how hard it would be. I can't just run to the nearest store and buy a gift and a greeting card and pop them in the mail. There is no postal service. No shopping mall. Between the time zones and the slow connection, we can't usually get skype to work. And right now, he has no phone service so we can't call him even on our phones. It isn't just birthdays that bother me either. I couldn't send him goodies during his finals. I couldn't go to his rugby games. Someone else has to drive him to the doctor or the store. There is no one to bake him a birthday cake.

So the prevailing mood at our house has been rather melancholic. We all miss Josh even more than usual. While I was in my self-pity mode I wrote this "letter to my children." It's pretty sappy and not very good, but oh well. It's the thought that counts.


My Mother Heart

I have two hearts. One is my human heart. The other is my mother’s heart. And they are sometimes at odds with one another.

My human heart knows you were never mine. You were a loan, entrusted to me for a time to love, nurture and train. I always knew I would one day have to let you go.

My mother heart will always think of you as mine, and will always long to have you near me.

My human heart knows that you will make mistakes along the way and prays you will learn from them, becoming better and not bitter.

My mother heart wants to protect you from even your own mistakes.

My human heart knows that you are learning to take care of yourself and make your own decisions, and that this is how it should be.

My mother heart wants you to need me, just a little.

My human heart knows that God has you in the palm of his hand. He loves you more than I ever can and is faithful and trustworthy.

My mother heart sometimes fears for you anyway.

My human heart knows I don’t deserve you. You are incredible, precious, and amazing. You give me joy and laughter, and yes, some tears. I love watching you: as you interact with others, as you learn and play, as you grow in your faith. I am proud of you and will always love you.

My mother heart feels the same way.

Birthdays, Babies and Bubbles

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.

Emily's birthday

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.

Back in Nampa

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.

Happy Birthday, Em!

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!!!

Full Speed Ahead

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!

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.