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I can’t believe it’s the middle of November… Time just seems to be flying by.  TJ’s brother and sister came up a 2 weeks ago, TJ and Peter flew up to North Dakota with a friend to help harvest corn, TJ came home, and Peter will be coming back some time this weekend… so Ruth has been hanging out with us.  Since we don’t have  a lot of room in our apartment she’s been staying with a single friend in her extra room.  She’s gone to church with us, visited Ha ha tanka state park, eaten most meals with us, gotten to know some people around here, learned about phonetics and team work and of course played ‘Settlers of Catan’.  Peter comes back this weekend, so we will be saying goodbye to both of them for a while.

We started Phonetics class about 2 weeks ago, and we are loving it.  We are learning how to make new sounds with our mouths and learning how to write down each sound phonetically, it’s definitely something we can visualize being able to use, so that’s fun!  We have also been enjoying our team-work class.  There is so much to learn concerning this area.  We can prepare as much as possible now, but I know that no matter what when we arrive on the field and are part of a team no matter who it is, it’s going to be hard, and we are going to have to learn to work together, so I’m enjoying just listening to teachers who have gone before us and have done this thing before.  Team work is no joke… a high percentage of missionaries leave the field because of conflict within the team.  I don’t want to think that we are above the line on this one.  Working with people is hard, and the only way if it’s going to work is if we’re humble and before the Lord in every way, being servants to one another, loving each other in the way that Christ loves us.

Something super exciting and encouraging to us:  New people have joined our support team!  God is so faithful and he is causing us to trust him more and more.  Thank you Lord for providing for us!

I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving to have a little break, and spend time with our little family.

We are praying a lot right now about where God would have us, so please be praying for us as we consider different countries.

Penny was 8 months on the 1st, and so I needed to document it  :)!  Yesterday Penny crawled from the living room to the kitchen, which is the first time she’s crawled that far, so officially she can crawl everywhere.

I need to share a couple things that Ava has said recently that totally cracked me up.  I was in the living room and she was in her room as I asked her “Where is your blanket Ava?”  She said (with quite the inflection)  “I have no. Iiiideeea”  it’s funny the things that come out of her mouth.  Another time she was going potty in the bathroom, I hear a “thud” and ask “what are you doing Ava?”  She opens the bathroom door just enough for me to see one eye and her lips, she says to me “NO worrrrrieeees momeeeee!”  I can’t help but laugh, and wonder where she gets these terms.  I know it’s probably from us, but I guess she just stores them up and randomly says them.

This morning we went to a baby shower, the mother-to-be is opening presents and she gets to a super cute outfit, everyone is saying “that is so adorable”  and of course Ava chimes in (and in her cute small voice) “that’s so Adoooorable”.  Sometimes I feel impressed with her, she will feel frustrated about waiting for something, whether it be changing her diaper or as she’s sitting in her chair waiting for her egg to be cooked, she will say (to herself) “be patient” which means she’s actually applying the principles we are attempting to teach her…  which is so encouraging!

That’s pretty much it, just wanted to update you a little bit, and tell you how much I absolutely love my girls, and am so grateful God has entrusted me with them.

Highlights of this month: TJ and I had our 4^th anniversary on the 11^th of October… we went to a little restaurant and had a lovely meal together (with Penny 🙂 TJ got me a new set of Pearls which are my first pearl earrings ever… what a guy!

We have been going through our Foundational bible teaching classes.  Everyone in the class took one of the lessons and taught it to the class, TJ and I taught lesson 11 which was on the plagues in Egypt and talking about how God is never changing.  It was fun to hear everyone in the class teach in their different styles and also to sit under the Foundational teaching was so good.  One of the main themes that seemed to impact me throughout these practice teaching lessons was the fact that God is faithful and never changes.  He has been showing me that in different ways including through this class, and it is such a good reminder to me who God is and what he promises, and the fact that I can stand on those promises without any doubt he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.  God has really encouraged us with promises of supporters for us that we totally didn’t expect, and are excited to have them on our support team.

For some reason I came to the training center not really thinking I would make any really close friends that I may keep for the rest of my life.  God has definitely provided me with one of those “gem” kind of friends.  Her name is Elise Hundertmark.  She often hangs out with TJ and I or just me, and there is never a dull moment, there is much laughter which is so fun and is much needed after a hard year.  She challenges me, spends time with me, confides in me, and probably gets annoyed with me.  I know there’s so much more to learn about a friend, but she is such a blessing to me, and I’m so thankful for her!  (She is the one pictured with Ava)  Ava LOVES Elise, random girls will come to the door needing something or other, and Ava will ask them “Where E-yeese?”  They say “What?”  And I just smile.

Penny just started going into the nursery in the morning, she takes a long nap, and seems to really like the nursery.  I’m doing better with putting her in (I didn’t want to at first, but I feel good about it now).  Penny is also sitting up crawling, laughing, and interacting with us so much.  She is so fun, and we love her so much!  Ava has been talking so well, and we love listening to her learn how to form sentences and put words in the right place.  She won’t go to bed without praying and if we forget, she yells “PRAYYYY!”  She prays to God “Thank you dear God. For heaven. My mommy.  My daddy.  My Penny.  my wa-Der (her water that she happens to look at sitting by her bed at that exact moment)!  Thank you dear God!”  We love to listen to her pray, it’s great!  She usually says those things, but also other things like she prays for her cousins, and often thanks God for her friend Shaddai.

We started getting raw milk this month as well which is so fun and delicious, I have great plans of things to do with it.  So far we’ve just been drinking it which is great!

We are loving our church here (Graceland).  TJ is involved with the music team and being the music leader on Sunday mornings, he is enjoying that and of course learning how to work with new people and new songs  :).  We are enjoying getting to know people from our church.  There is a couple that we are getting to know, they’ve come to our house a couple times, and we are looking forward to getting to know them better, and they also have 2 young children.

With being so busy we are having a hard time being good communicators with everyone that we know.  Please pray for us to make the effort to do that, and that we’ll remember how important those people are to what we’re doing. (maybe that’s you! 🙂

We wake up at 6 am to Ava running into our room “pitter patter pitter patter”  saying “I need huuuuggie! I need huggie!”  Tj proceeds to pick her up and put her in bed with us, she then wants a huggie from mommy, and of course is done in bed for the night, “get down now”  she runs to the living room to see what she can do, she sits on the couch and yells  “read biiiiible story!  read biiiible story!”  I stay in bed to feed Penny and TJ slowly moves out of bed to take care of Ava.

All that to say… We have been going through a child protection class, and the realities of child abuse is so disconcerting, but so important to be enlightened in what can happen if we don’t take precaution, and what to do to help prevent this from happening.  We have been reading this Book “Too Small to Ignore” by Wess Stafford.  It’s basically a story about his life, and the abuse that he encountered in a boarding school in Africa and how God has used it in his life and has impacted so many others.  He talks about the importance of engaging with your children today, letting your kids make cookies with you in the kitchen regardless whether it’s 10 times more messy or not, the point is that your including your kids in what you do.  He also emphasized getting involved in their world, and if your little girl invited you to her tea party with poo bear, dolly, and Minny Mouse that you would be HONORED to be invited, and be apart of such a wonderful event.  It is helping me look at my kids with a little more respect and  honor to be apart of their lives.  And also the importance in spending time with them (especially Ava right now) in joining with her in her imagination.

Penny turned 7 months on the first, and is almost crawling.  She gets up on her knees and hands and rocks back and forth like she’s going to crawl then lunges forward, so she can get pretty much anywhere by scooching and  pulling and lunging.  She has been getting much more active these days and only taking 2 naps, but they are usually pretty long naps.  One in class in the morning, and one very long nap in the afternoon.  I enjoy her so much, every day I wake up and cherish her as my baby because I know soon she will not be a baby any more  :(.  I love to see Ava and Penny interact as sisters when they are loving.  Sometimes Ava can be mean spirited, but most the time she loves on Penny and gives her huggies and kissies… it’s unfortunate when Penny grabs Ava’s hair at the same time, Ava instantly feels wronged, but we soon recover.  Ava is doing so well in talking.  She is figuring out how to better say things, like for example if you say “here, this is for you”  instead of her repeating that exactly she’ll say “this is for me”  but she still struggles, if someone is up the steps, she says “up here” instead of “up there”.  Her manners are getting better, eating with a big girl spoon and fork all by her self asking for help, she says “I need help please” and saying please and thank you all on her own.  She can now be very clear about what she’s asking us, which is really nice, and we are always encouraging her to say it the right way.   I am constantly impressed with all that she is saying and learning.  She comes home from daycare singing songs, and telling me what the kids did that day and how they got in time out, it can be pretty humurous.

It is our anniversary today… 4 years!  I so love being married to TJ, sure we have our disagreements, and man he can make me angry, but I cherish the relationship  the friendship, and the fact that we are so open with one another…  we both thrive off of that.  God has blessed me with such a great guy, and he is humbly at the Lord’s feet seeking him for wisdom in leading our family, and I love that!  I thank God for giving me this man.

TJ and I want to make the right decision about what field to go to, please pray for wisdom in that area.  I also need prayer with how I spend my time wisely, I have a hard time updating my blog, which I feel like is important… I WANT you to know what’s going on with me, and I want to be a good communicator.  TJ and I are wanting to build relationships with people at church, and we want to be ready to be used by God there if he wants that.  Sometimes it’s hard to know how to spend time with people there, but we see it as important.

We recently had an assignment in class to write a newsletter, so here it is.  We don’t have any programs yet, so we weren’t able to do as good of a job as we would like to in the future.

So… we have really jumped in since we got here. TJ and I have a fairly packed schedule and it is getting even more full as time goes by. We have pictured a schedule of our classes, it’s the colorful one :).

First of all, we love where we live which is in a small apartment, but we live around lots of single people and a few married, but it’s a really tight knit community right here where we’re at, and it’s really fun! TJ and I often go outside to eat lunch with a bunch of people right after we put our girls down for a nap. There are some new apartments being built, and we were supposed to move in to them before the semester was over, but we asked to stay in this apartment till the end of this semester because we really like the location. The new apartments are up on a hill, and not as easy to ride a bike or take a stroller down to class, so we thought we could draw out being in these apartments even though they don’t have showers and a laundry room.

What our day looks like: We get up anywhere from 5:30 am to 6:30 depending on when our girls wake up, we get ready for class, and even though we have roughly 2 hours to get ready every day, we seem to have a difficult time making it to class early (before 8). Class starts at 8 and Ava’s childcare doesn’t start till 9, so one of us brings her to the cry room where we watch class on the broadcasting TV for an hour, then take her to “tiny town” which she LOVES. Ava comes home with crafts very often, and seems to have a blast, which comforts us so much. They give us a pager when we go to class in case they need us, and we have yet to be paged, so we’re happy about that.

On Wednesday’s and Friday’s we get together with our e-link group, which is a group of roughly 15 people in our class and a few of them being staff members living here on campus. The purpose of it is to get to know people better, and to share questions and struggles with about classes or whatever. The staff can let us know if they see something they see we need to work on, and they even encourage us to do that for them. They have a part in evaluating us to make sure we’re on track. We are really enjoying elink, and are excited to get to know our group better… we already love them!

We get home after class, we eat lunch, and try to get some homework during the girl’s nap time in the afternoon. On Wednesday’s and Thursday’s TJ has work detail (required campus work), which is in the mechanic shop… he’s loves is except for Thursday when he got a piece of metal lodged in his eye… :/ (He was wearing safety goggles). Because I’m a mom, my work detail is cutting rags for people to use for cleaning.

There are several nights that we have people over for dinner or people invite us over. It’s been really fun to get to know some people around here and we’re looking forward to doing that more. We love to eat outside our house at the picnic table and just invite random people over for dinner.

Something we’ve been praying about is where to go to church and what ministry to get involved in, because it is a requirement that you find a church and ministry to be apart by a certain time. Our desire is to do a ministry as a family, so that we can include our kids, and be able to work together instead of separate. We went to one church, the people were really sweet, but we just didn’t feel right about attending there when we left. The next week, we randomly had a conversation with a staff member on campus who was talking about his church and their desire to disciple families within the church, and that they wanted new students to get involved in this type of ministry. We were really excited about this opportunity and right away thanked God for answering our prayers so quickly and started attending this church… today was our 2^nd Sunday and we really love the church, we feel like God is really blessing us. So as far as our ministry right now… we’re just going to be building relationships right now… one step at a time.

On another note, Penny turned 6 months on the 1^st of September. Her personality is really popping out, she has started yelling at us I guess you could say. She’ll be in her jumperoo, and she’ll just start screaming/yelling at us because she wants to get out. It’s fun to see her come out of her little shell. I loved the pictures of Ava and Penny there because it looked like one of them said something, then they just started busting up laughing. Penny is like a little celebrity in class, she gets lots of googly eyes, and several people love to hold her during class (there is not nursery for her), which is fine with me.

Something else that has not naturally happened before has just occurred in these past couple of weeks. Ava made a friend. There are some missionaries staying in the apartment next to us and they have a little girl named Shadai, and she is about 5 months older than Ava, and when they met Ava didn’t feel threatened by her in the least like she does many 2 year olds… they just started playing, and were instantly friends, Shadai kept saying, “Ava my new friend”. If you knew Ava well right now you would understand how excited I was. It’s not that Ava doesn’t get along with anyone, but this girl was different. Ava and Shadai could play together for hours without worrying about sharing or pushing or who has what. They are just content playing together, and it has made my heart glad in a way I can’t explain.

Yesterday TJ and I had a desire to eat some delicious donuts, so we found a sourdough donut recipe that I could use some of my starter with, they were more like cake donuts than light and fluffy but still very delicious!  TJ made us americano’s and we all enjoyed our delicious donuts.  Ava couldn’t keep her hands off them, she just kept reaching farther and farther, I couldn’t figure out how she was reaching all the way across the table, crazy girl!  But when she got her donuts all she really wanted was the chocolate, funny girl.

Ava has been sick since Friday morning, and still seems to be running a fever  🙁  I never liked it when she was sick, but it’s even harder now because I have to miss class.  They do have the audio for the class streaming throughout campus so on Friday I just listened as much as I could, but there are a lot of group activities and things that make it difficult, but you do what you can right?  Being a mom is my first priority.  Today is Sunday and we really wanted to try this little church that someone told us about, but TJ and Ava are not feeling well, so boo :(… next week I guess.  Choosing a church and getting involved is part of the criteria of being here… the pressure is on, so we’re bummed we can’t do that this week.

We had our first day of Class on Thursday, and it was fun to finally get out of orientation and into some actual class time.  One of our assignments was reading a book this weekend called “The way they learn”  It’s a book on different learning styles, and basically shows HOW each of us is different… how our minds work, and how we can operate better together in different learning environments.

Ava is a big girl now and just started sleeping in her toddler bed.

We are in the middle of our first week of classes and it is only orientation so far, but we are encouraged and just excited to be here.

Some highlights for us have been getting all moved in, and settled into our apartment, starting class, Ava doing great in child care, and Penny doing great in class with me.  Something that has been fun to watch is Ava’s love for the outside, I’m pretty sure she would live outside if she could.  This is such a good environment for her, she loves to play in the streams, in the grass, by the lake, fishing with daddy, on the 15 playgrounds around campus, I love that there are hardly any mosquitoes, and it’s not smoldering hot outside.  We are living in close vicinity with a lot of people (which is fun, we can just go outside to visit with friends after the girls go to bed), we have a bathroom, but no shower, so we go to the wash house to do our laundry and take showers… Ava and Penny take their baths in the sink, which works out fine  :).

Ava has been talking so much lately she can pretty much say anything, but the words won’t always be in the correct order in the sentence.  Like she will say “need towel paper daddy”  So we just restate what we think she’s trying to say in a sentence so she will continue to learn.  We are working on the “No daddy” “No mommy” “stop it!”  “Mine!”  She is VERY 2 right now, she really likes to be independent, never really wants to hold our hands, she says ” I do it!”  or “I do it sef”… at the same time we’re glad she’s taking initiative to learn things on her own.  She also started sleeping in her new toddler bed this past Sunday night, we woke up at 2 in the morning to Ava sitting on the bed starring at us, and proceeded to sleep with us, then I brought her back to bed, and she got up every hour after that, so I was concerned she was going to be doing this every night after, but No, she has gone to bed and stayed in bed pretty much every night, and I’m so grateful!

When Cherie and Kyle were here for a couple of days, Cherie left me with some sourdough starter she had brought, and I have been having  a blast with it, I have been making lots of sourdough bread, english muffins, sourdough banana bread, and tonight we had pizza on a sourdough crust, tomorrow I think I”m gonna try cinnamon rolls, it has been a fun easy highlight for me… so thanks Cherie!

TJ and I are so excited to be here, and to actually get involved here in what they have for us, a lot of it we really need to initiate ourselves, and that’s sort of the point of it, but we are looking forward to seeing how things fall into place in the next few weeks here, we’ll keep you updated on what we’re doing.  We are reminded of why we are here, and the the true need for workers to bring the gospel to these un-reached people, our desire to do this really been reaffirmed and we have been encouraged.

TJ has started his work detail which he will be doing a few hours a few days a week, he was put in the mechanic shop, so he’s pretty excited about that, because I’m a mother I will not have work detail (cuz I already have it ;).

Thank you for praying for us and please continue to pray for God to lead us to the right church here, and to be apart of the right ministries in our community, and that we can be ready to be used here in Camdenton Missouri.

First day of Orientation with most of the students and staff

making sour dough bread

Making English muffins with my sourdough bucket breadAva playing in the stream

This is where the girls take their baths

We are HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   We are thrilled to be here, it is still a little surreal, but we are definitely feeling God’s peace in this place and where he has us.

We packed up our house and loaded it on the “Shropshire” 35 foot goose neck trailer on Friday August 10th, and August 11th… the infamous departure date finally came, and we actually departed, we left our home of 4 years, our family, and our friends  :(.  Kyle, Cherie and their two kids graciously traveled with us, hauling the trailer with their truck. God kept us safe, and provided for all our needs on the 3 day journey up here, we stopped at some beautiful places, ate some horrible BBQ, and some delicious Ethiopian food (for the first time) .  We stayed in a hotel the first night in Georgia, and at the Ayer’s (good family friends) house our second night which was such a blessing… all their kids gave up their rooms so we could have beds to sleep in, and sent us off with a delicious healthy breakfast, and sandwiches for the road.  We stopped as a beautiful spot for lunch where there was water pouring out of rocks creating an aqua blue color.

As we arrived at the MTC our excitement peaked, and we couldn’t believe we were really here!  We saw our little apartment and how small in was, and wondered how we were going to fit all our stiff in this little place.  It has been sort of hard for me to have everything in boxes, and my house so disoriented.  The kitchen is tiny so therefore we have really had to make due with the space available, and do things to help create more space, which has also been frustrating for me, but good to learn how to be flexible.  I think I would say I had a bad attitude… :/  Something that lifted my spirits immediately was our NEW couch, there was an ugly blue couch in our apartment when we got here… someone mentioned a neutral colored couch in the furniture storage room, so went and looked at it, and LOVED it, the new couch changed everything for me  🙂  God is good.  We WILL move in the new apartments when they are finished being built, which could be a couple months, so we are looking forward to that.

This morning, while laying in bed not able to sleep God seemed to bring a lot of things to mind… He has been sooo good to us!  We HAVE a kitchen, and food to cook, so many people don’t have that luxury, we have  a place to live, a comfortable place to sleep, He has provided everything for us that we need.  Then I started to feel incredibly overwhelmed with Thankfulness that God has provided all these people in our lives to be a support to us, to pray for us to BE behind us.  All these things were a confirmation for me that God had us here, that he has a plan and a purpose to work out through us, and THAT got me excited… excited to be here, to be doing what God has called us to, to rest In the one who brought us here.  it is so easy to look past all these things, because things seem hard or every day seems packed with STUFF to do.  So thank you to those of you who ARE behind us, who ARE praying for us, we appreciate you so much!

I am sitting here at my in laws house, this is the last time of hanging out together for a while.  We have had to say goodbye to different people in the last week… this is the hard part!  Last night TJ and I sat in our house and reminisced about our beginnings in this house.  We started our marriage here, our family here, learned how to to fight, how to love, how to work things out, how to raise our girls (up to this point), how to cook and bake well, we’ve had my family come visit us, we’ve had youth group here,  and all kinds of house guests.  We’ve had any kind of meal you can think of, with all sorts of people.

We are officially GOING!  This IS the next phase of our lives, it’s hard to believe, but I think I can say we’re pretty excited.  People have prayed with us several times this week, had us in their homes for meals… We are so so sooooo grateful for the people who are behind us, who love us, who are praying for us, and who are being used by God to send us out in every way possible