Finding Faith in the Battle

I gave you all an update on Omara last week, but didn't talk about the rest of us much. Since the internet is actually working and the power is on, I thought I'd let you know how we all are. Anya is thriving, as always, though she has started showing increased impatience with the numerous petty rules their school has. Maybe it's our "baggage" from having attended a petty-rule boarding school ourselves, but Chad and I find it hard to be supportive of dumb rules, too. Especially in a country where basic living is difficult--mandatory meetings 2 hours after school gets out when it's taking 14 hours of waiting in line to get fuel???? Come on!!!! Anyway, we've figured out how to define the teeny-bopper years. It's the stage in which girls have teen-aged attitudes about childish things. Case in point? She said after watching Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, voice dripping with too-coolness, hand on the hip and hair flipped back, "I thought the Chipmunks were ...

I now have a 1 year-old! Funny—1 seemed a lot older on my first child than my fourth. Omara is still very much a baby in some ways. I look forward to no diapers, to her feeding herself, getting herself dressed, not needing to be held all day long. But then again, we’re headed in the right direction! She’s chattering non-stop. Not much is coherent, but at this rate she’ll be talking before we can understand Isaac! She’s taken 4 steps, though she still prefers the crawl. And she’s just as cute as she ca n be. It’s been such an exhausting last month, I spent too many days last week thinking how I should plan a party and then knowing that I didn’t have the energy for it, and then feeling like a terrible mom as I wondered how easy it would be to fake some pictures so she wouldn’t know she never got a 1-year party! But Friday morning a co-worker texted us all that she felt like having a get-together at their house “just for the fun of it.” I know it was God, protecting my heart from more gui...

I can't believe Chad will be home tomorrow! All in all, it's gone better than I expected it would. Yesterday the kids woke up as holy terrors, consistent with it being a Sunday! I had true fear and trembling about taking them all to church, but I had committed in my spirit that I needed to show them how important church is, so off we went. And after a pep-talk in the parking lot, they were amazing during the whole service!!! All 4 of them! Thank you, LORD! I find few things more frustrating than getting us all ready for church and then missing out on the whole service because of bad behavior, so they really blessed me by shaping up. Of course, that's not to say there weren't hard moments in there...top of the list would be Isaac climbing off the potty while I answered the gate and peeing on my bed instead, or maybe the incident where Isaac tried to steal Ethan's lunch, Ethan wouldn't let him, so Ethan ended up with a fork stuck in his scalp, hanging down between...

Chad is off to South Africa for a meeting and then dermatology appointment. Because of the flight limitations, it's going to be a whopping 12 days of me and the 4 kids flying solo! I admit, I cried all the way home from the airport. I wanted to suggest that the IMB should send all of us wives to a spa to recover from this meeting, but since there's hardly enough money to pay for fuel to do our jobs, I doubt that will happen! I comforted myself to sleep last night by planning a get-away to a bed-and-breakfast for just me once he gets back. In a 1600 sq. foot house with no sound-proofing, it's the only way I'll ever get to sleep past 5:30am for YEARS to come! Yesterday I kept myself busy by chasing children from one mess to another. In my 16-hr day, I pulled Omara away from playing in the toilet, confiscated a machete from Isaac, changed 4 poopy diapers, taught Isaac the lesson that "It's not ok to sit on your sister's head," found Ethan after he ran awa...

We mentioned some things in our prayer letter, but let me take a moment to update the rest of you on Ethan's follow up with the endocrinologist. As background info, our kids are all small, but they've all stayed true to their growth patterns. They usually hover between the 3rd-20th percentiles. No problem. Except suddenly, Ethan almost completely stopped growing between Dec 2008 and now, making him fall from the 20th to well below the 3rd. We were seen by a pediatric endocrinologist in July of last year, and it was determined that his Growth Hormone (GH) levels were normal, so we waited and prayed. Despite reassuring growth between last July and November, Ethan's growth velocity (cm/month)for the year as whole was slow enough to have him drop further off the growth chart. After much discussion, the endocrinologist finally convinced me that it's time to start GH treatment. I was really resistant, because it's such a big step. It's expensive, we have to travel to ...

A good friend has impacted our lives forever. We won’t mention any names (Luke Safford!!!) but he introduced my husband to bird-watching. Things will never be the same. Case in point? He’s now documented 150+ species since he started 2 months ago. Granted, this is Malawi, one of the best bird-watching places in the region. But still, I assure you 150 species represents many an hour spent with binoculars out in the fields, or hunched over the “Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa” book which I bought him in a moment of weakness! To his credit, he usually takes at least 1 kid out with him. He’s bound and determined to turn them into bird-watchers too, though it’s yet to take. But this is all just in introduction. See, the real story is that we took a volunteer team to Zambia last month so that they could safari in the game park there. We camped (in tents) at a wonderful site, despite a friend questioning the wisdom of camping near a game preserve in Africa (something about lions and leopards, I ...

The kids are back in school and we’ve all adjusted pretty well. Ethan adores his new teacher, and she has been very sweet and patient with his distractibility. So far so good for grade 1! Now that doesn’t mean homework is any easier—how can a child take over an hour to write out 8 spelling words???? Anya is in grade 4, and it’s been a harder adjustment. I’m not sure why—her teacher is great and she’s with most of her friends again. Her first day of class she came home dancing because the teacher doesn’t assign homework, they just have to finish what they didn’t finish in class. Despite her joy, I had a sense of impending doom. And I was right…she has homework every day, because she never finishes anything during class! When I tried to talk to her about it, she said with pure disgust, “I know mom—it’s teaching me ‘responsibility!’” (insert teeny-bopper attitude here). She has projects to work on over weeks, and she waits until the night before. She has tests to study for, and she can’...