100s Day

100s Day has become a tradition in our house. It started the very first year we home schooled; I think I was feeling sorry for the boys that they never got to do any "fun" school activities, so my friend Rachel and I designated one day "the 100th day of school" and did a bunch of counting games and let the boys count out "100 snacks" and we all had a great time. And now, 6 years later, all my boys know how to count to 100, but we continue the tradition.... because there's something about eating 100 snacks that is just COOL. :) 

Choosing 100 "something" to build with.... 

Measuring out 100 square inches, feet, yards, meters.... helps to have an airstrip as a front yard. :) 

Being "given" $100 to spend on Amazon.... they could pick whatever they wanted as long as the total added up to $99-101. Was actually a really fun activity and gave them a good idea of toy prices in America these days. :)

And breaking with tradition this year.... we skipped the snacks and we did 100 PIECES OF DINNER..... Oh my goodness, it was SO much food and so fun. I cut those things as tiny as I could, but it still amounted to a TON of food - each boy had a cookie sheet full - but they ate every. single. bite. We did percentages to get some extra math in (40% meat and cheese, 30% veggies, 20% fruit, 10% dessert!)

Pictures of the week

Rain. We've had tons of rain.... 38 inches in February to be exact. Not sure what happened to our promised El Nino droughts. Our backyard after a rainy night.... that's about a foot of standing water...

Because you always need to be prepared when mowing the air strip....

Making home made ice cream over the weekend. (Lavender Lime - recipe I adapted myself after having similar yumminess at ColdStone in Cali) I love my KitchenAid ice cream maker; it needs a bit of help in the insulation area with our heat and humidity. :)

HUGE spider Brant killed in our play room.... far upper left corner.

A close up of the kill.... it was a Golden Orb Spider. It's resting on a 2x4 to give size perspective. :)

Starting 2016 with a bang.... and a watermelon

Since the beginning of the year.....

We have studied California history and built our own bell towers...

And a mission....

And learned to help Dad mow the airstrip (this is only the first quarter!)

This little guy turned 7.... and lost his first tooth (naturally!) the next day....

Grandma thought I was crazy when I requested "edible eye balls" on my "bring from America" list. But aren't they cute? Yes, Ez's cake is in the freezer.... 80% humidity and butter cream frosting don't go well together...

We taught the tribal kids how to roast marshmallows... because, you know, we're here to help the people. :)

Our co-workers have been stuck in town for 7 weeks.... visa issues. So lots of just hanging around...

We spent a day upriver "helping" (by helping, I mean watching and doing absolutely nothing to help) the tribal people build a new canoe. (I guess they don't really build them; they hack a tree trunk into the right shape.) We got no pictures of the process, but I got some pretty scenery pictures. :)

And we had a tree felled right by our house.... it was the most scary "cultural experience" we have had yet.... it's that tree in the left of the picture - the one that is only inches away from our roof line....

They cut the tree with an ax in a matter of minutes and then used bamboo and vines (eeek!) to direct where it fell.... you can see the long thin poles of bamboo. Needless, to say, we had the boys out of the house and were praying hard! But it came down beautifully and missed the roof and our internet dish!

Our little boys are holiday junkies. They spent days and days working on Valentine's for each other. So this was what we woke up to on Sunday morning.... (those are painted rocks.... treasures gathered on our boat building trip as our village and section of the river has absolutely 0 rocks anywhere.)

We harvested our first watermelon! Such a fun treat on a hot day!

A few pics

Truth be told, we haven't been so busy I haven't been able to post pics.... really, we've been horrible at rationing our internet the last few months, so we always run out mid-month. So catching up a bit...

I requested a pumpkin on a supply order in August and got two beautiful ones that looked like this.... so they were spared being turned into puree while they served as "fall" decorations. :) 

Ezra got to his "Learning to Bake" lesson in his math book. A proud day when he made his "Apple Jack Cookies" all by himself. 

Really fun night in November - we did mini 'smores over candles with small marshmallows and egg drop cookies (like mini Vanilla wafers) and chocolate chips.

The boys' Christmas present from Brant's uncle. Yes, I gave permission for my six year old to receive a knife that's almost as long as he is. Yes, they really are sharp. Yes, we did not make it 24 hours after unwrapping them before busting out the band-aids.

Merry Christmas from our corner of the world!

Welcome to 2016

This past August we marked one year of living in the tribe. We celebrated with a steak dinner and measuring the boys' growth on the post in our kitchen. I took lots of pictures with grand plans to blog about God's faithfulness this past year, but you have yet to see those pictures.

The second half of 2015 has been a tad busy.

In the last six months we had lots of visitors - a short term college team, 2 pastors from the States, Brant's parents, 2 language consultants, 3 church planting consultants and 2 missionaries from other organizations. That is a whole lot of spaghetti and curry dinners and washing extra sheets and towels.

Our partners had to go back to the States for an emergency, were med-evaced out of the tribe twice for serious medical emergencies and then went back on their regular furlough.

I sat up half of one night with a tribal woman who didn't deliver her placenta; spent an afternoon sitting with women wailing and mourning their dead daughter, and saw a woman whose face was smashed in by her angry husband.

I have taught little boys contractions, cursive, long division, and multiplying fractions. We have studied levers and pulleys and the Civil War. I have nursed my babies through asthma attacks and malaria. I have listened to language recordings and studied verbs and aspect and mode and tense until my head spins.

I have had malaria four times since August. As I type, there is a horrible metallic taste in my mouth from a "new" medicine that is supposed to hopefully kick it "this time." I haven't decided which is worse - the medicine or the malaria, but right now I'm thinking I should have stuck with the malaria.

So today, this last day of 2015, I am tired. Brant is in bed with a fever. The boys are on hour number 2 of iPad playing. We'll tear them off the iPad soon and make them watch movies the rest of the day. We missed the big feast in the village today.

We are limping into 2016, folks.

January marks three years since we were back in America, and we are feeling it. Normally, we'd be taking a furlough about now, but we've had to push it back a bit because of our visa situation. Six months' delay doesn't sound like much, but today, it feels like these next six months might kill us.

And yet.... there's always an "and yet" - this was God's plan to end our year. We rest in that. We begin 2016 with an acute awareness that we will get through each day of this next six months only by God's grace and strength. Every verb that we figure out, every day that we stay healthy, every moment with our boys, every language hour that we log.... only by God's strength. We feel it and we know it.

That's not a bad way to start a new year.

Not much has changed

Six years ago last month....

This morning....

Not much has changed... except now they are all potty-trained and we have a way nicer couch. :) 

The one about how I hate death

We woke up this morning to blissful rain. As we cuddled in our sweatshirts and enjoyed hot coffee in the below 80 degree weather, we thanked the Lord that we are not yet in the grasp of the dreaded El Nino and its promised droughts. 

Brant worked with his new language helper for two hours this morning and made great strides in identifying different levels of tone. He was so encouraged he literally was jumping up and down. His excitement was contagious and the boys flew through their schoolwork with great attitudes as I unpacked boxes and cleaned fruits and vegetables sent in on our recent supply flight. 

It was a beautiful, cool, peaceful morning…. one you dream about when you envision missionary life in the tribe. 

And then…. you knew there had to be an “and then” in this story…. we got word that a woman from a village up river had died in childbirth. Her husband had attempted to take her down to the clinic, but she had lost too much blood and died last night. The plan was to bring her to our village to bury her; we’re still not sure why. We bribed the boys with candy and the iPad and locked them in the house, and Brant and I headed to the village to find out what was going on. We met our co-workers on the path and they went with Brant down to the port to wait for the boat that was supposed to bring her body to our village. 

I decided to take advantage of the lull and sit with a few ladies in one of the houses and practice some new vocabulary I have been studying. Not that anyone was very chatty. It was pretty solemn in the hut I went into, but the ladies welcomed me and gave me a spot to sit down. We sat for a few minutes and more people came into the hut. A growing sense of dread started to well up inside me as people in the hut began to weep openly…. a man sitting nearby motioned towards me and said “That is where they are going to put the body” ….at least I thought that’s what he said. But my funeral and dead body vocab isn’t really polished, so I did what every good language learner does when she doesn’t understand something…. I ignored what he said. 

I shouldn’t have. Within minutes, the funeral procession was coming inside the door. The wailing and crush of bodies was overwhelming. There must have been 80 or 90 people crammed into that tiny 20 by 20 foot hut - all screaming and wailing and weeping. They carried the body in and placed it right next to me. I tried not to throw up as tears started streaming down my face. They carried in the husband - too overcome with grief to walk. The mother came in and start grabbing at her daughter - yelling at her to wake up and shaking her. She collapsed on the floor - not 5 feet from where I sat. Yes, it was overwhelming. Yes, I am crying as I type this. 

They actually did prepare us for such traumatic situations while we were in our missions training. Focus on the physical details. Count the people. Notice the color of their shirts. Distract your mind. Dozens of women crowded around the body, screaming and wailing. The teenage girl I studied language with last week. The woman whose 4 year old son cut his finger with a machete on Sunday that I had helped bandage. A lady who had just given birth to a healthy baby boy. All their faces contorted and stricken with raw, violent, unrestrained grief. 

It was hopeless. Dark. Fearful. There was no Hope in that house and as I cried with the women, my heart broke. This woman, too, died too early to hear the Gospel. Her friends and relatives know little of the concept of Heaven and Hell, but they did know that the End was bleak and dark and scary. The Enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy and he had deceived these people yet again. No witch doctor or careful adherence to keeping the taboos had saved her. Hell was in that room. 

God was there too. I prayed through my tears and a gentle, cool breeze blew into the room and with it the reminder to my soul that God is already in the process of bringing Hope to these people. We are here. We shine the Light in this darkness. Brant and I and our teammates are not the Hope they need, but we carry the Message of that Hope. God is faithful. He has begun the work here and though it seems agonizingly slow at times - too slow to give this woman a chance to hear - He will complete the work of sending His Word out amongst these people. 

Tonight my clothes smell like smoke and my eyes are puffy from too many tears shed. My heart is heavy, yet at peace. There will be more funerals. There will be more death, but we work and we study verbs with as much strength as God gives so that someday soon those deaths will be marked with Hope.