Friday, September 26, 2008

Lately Elijah has been very curious about Jesus dying on the cross. He talks about it several times a day. It's been so encouraging to my mommy heart that especially after he's disobeyed, he talks about Jesus dying for sins. I wonder just how much a 2 1/2 year old can understand spiritual things. I taught him Romans 3:23, and now when I'm talking to him about what he's done wrong, he says (unprompted) "fell short of the glory of God."

The other night, we came home a little after the boys bedtime on the one night we watch a tv show. We flipped it on and were getting the boys jammies on while watching the beginning "hook". Well, of course something scary had to happen... a woman hallucinated that someone was about to hit her in the head, and Elijah stood up, pointed at the screen, and yelled, "NO! Obey God!" That was the most profound statement he's ever made! I pray that all that he is learning will penetrate his heart.


In case you can't understand his toddler accent, he's saying Romans 3:23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Monday, September 22, 2008

This week we spent two days at TEAM headquarters having our "placement consultation" which consisted of nine or so meetings with various ministry area coordinators with TEAM. It was nice to get to know the people there.

We had to take a language acquisition test that determines how well we learn a language and in what way we learn it. I was nervous as I hadn't taken a test since college 6 years ago! Nathan, on the other hand, was very at ease. Well, over the years, he's picked up some German, Pashtun, Swahili, Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew.... so, my competitive self was afraid he'd cream me on the test and that I'd do so poorly that they'd send me to Costa Rica for a year before letting me on the field with Nathan. (Did I mention I must have test anxiety?)

Well, rule #1 is "Get good sleep before a test," right? Well, God apparently had other plans as Levi ended up crying ALL night long. He's never done that before, and he acted like he was on the brink of death. After a 4am drive and hours of rocking, playing, and soothing, he fell asleep at 5am on Nathan's lap. So, at 7am, I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed (NOT!) for our test.

The test covered 5 areas of language: auditory number learning (of the Tajik language), memorization, pronunciation (also Tajik), sentence structuring/parts of speech, and another part I can't describe as it fried too many synapses. It was all timed... and after one brief melt down, a few tears, and a compassionate husband, I finally finished.

Nathan faired better than me in all of the areas, but I managed to score in the 75 percentile (Nathan was in the 97th.) The funny thing is, the test didn't matter that much. It was more of an FYI on how we learn language. It turned out not to be pass or fail. Leave it to me to make a lot out of a little.

Here are a few pictures of the boys enjoying our creek.




Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Tenerife Update

For those of you who are wondering where we're at in the process of actually moving to Tenerife, here is where we're at:

We just learned this week that we are officially "Candidates" with The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM). This means that they've reviewed our applications, references, physicals, psychiatric evaluations, and doctrinal beliefs and decided that they would like to partner with our church in sending us overseas. So, the next step is going to Wheaton next week to have our placement interviews. This will be two days of interviewing with various people at TEAM (including a language aptitude test... so pray for my Spanish!) Since I'm nursing, we'll be taking Levi, though they typically ask that no children come. Pray that he is content and flexible.

As far as our church goes, we had a nice dinner and question and answer time last wednesday with the Belches (missionaries) and our elders about the ministry in Tenerife. Our elders our hoping to decide conclusively in the next 6 weeks whether or not to send us.

TEAM has given us the go ahead to start raising funds, but we've not officially began that endeavor.

We'll keep you posted, and we covet your prayers!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

For some reason I woke up in the middle of the night with a fever, so I'm having a slow day with the kiddos today.

Anyway, here are the boys playing in their new favorite toy... a red storage bin. Well, it was their favorite until Elijah fell over in it yesterday and sent his tooth through his lip :-(