Those of you with kids might be familiar with Laura Numeroff’s books, many of which say “If you give a (fill in blank with several animals) a (something)…” Samuel ended up with “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” from Chick-fil-a at one point and we read it plenty before we moved (it didn’t make the cut when choosing books to ship).  As we’ve figured out how/where to shop here we’ve started our own sort of “If you…” about shopping, so here it goes:

If you have a shopping list, then you have to figure out the best place to go to get as many items as possible in one trip.
If it’s more than groceries, it’s likely that the mall (which has a grocery store in the basement) is the best place.
If you’re going to the mall, you’ll have to park in the car park.
If you park in the car park, then you’ll have to make sure you remember where you parked, how you left that area of the car park, and to take your ticket with you.
If you finally get inside the mall, you have to look at your list and figure out which stores you need to visit.
If it’s electronics, you’re likely going to level 3, if it’s home goods, you’re likely going to level 4.
If you parked in the basement car park (which is much better than the very confusing multi-story car park), you’ll have to take the elevator to one of those floors.
If you’re going to level 4 you have to get off in the really fancy furniture store (some of the furniture actually has Swarovski crystals on it) and tell the kids not to touch a single thing because anything in the store is worth more than everything you own and then some.
Then  you start trying to find the things on your list, going to multiple stores and sometimes having to change levels.
If you have to change levels you have to find one of the seemingly hidden lifts (elevators) to get to the right level.
And then you keep shopping.
If you have groceries to buy, that’s usually best to do at the end.
If the grocery store doesn’t have the brand you’ve figured out you like you’ll have to try a new one.
If they just don’t have the item, you know for sure that you’ll have to go to a different store later.
And once everything you can find has been purchased (sometimes with trips back to the car in between to drop stuff off) you’ll have to pay your parking fee at the autopay station.
If you have to pay at the autopay station you need exact change including bills.
At the autopay station, which is constantly saying “please insert payment, please insert payment” or something along those lines, you put bills in hoping that they’ll be accepted.
If you get your fee paid you have 15 minutes to leave the car park and you hope you can remember how to get back to your car and get the kids in within the time limit.
If you finally leave the car park you drive back to your house and look over what’s left on your list to decide where the best place is to go next.
And if you have to go shopping it’s likely you’ll have to park in a car park…

Shopping is quite the adventure and I seriously had a day when I had about 12 items on my list and ended up having to go to three different grocery stores to get everything on it and I think it took me three days.  Oh, I miss Kroger!!  We have figured out a few things that we like (and finally have 2 brands of milk that we like the taste of and are actually 100% fresh milk from the case-most of the milk here is boxed and on the shelf with a use by date somewhere months into the future) and where to buy those things. A lot of things we’re still trying and deciding what we like, what we don’t, and what we should try next.  Many items we’re used to buying just don’t exist here or are pricey.  And there are shopping options-like fruit stands and wet markets-that we still haven’t tried and will soon.  Most stores don’t have websites, so even trying to research say, where to buy a couch, is difficult because information is not as easily available and large, spacious stores with lots of options are rare.  It’s all part of the never ending ways life is different and the countless adjustments we have to make to live here.  I often wonder if I’ll ever figure it all out and decide I likely won’t, but at least I know that I go to one store to find the bread we like and another to buy cheap bananas and to have them weighed and priced in the produce section.

Last year I wrote a post about the things I was thankful for-one thing for every day of the month of November from the first to Thanksgiving Day.  This year I’ll do a list-one thing for every day of the entire month of November.  And here it is in no particular order…

1. Our gracious, loving God and the amazing, saving grace He extended to me
2. Toffer-I could go on and on about the wonderful man God gave me as a husband
3. My dear children-Samuel, Benjamin, and Tadpole
4. Our families
5. Our Friends, especially the ones who have made an effort to reach out to us since we moved
6. Training-I will always be thankful and grateful for the 3 weeks we spent at MTI and the people we spent that time with.
7. The organization we serve with
8. Our team here in Southeast Asia-they’ve been invaluable during the past month and a half
9. Our house-there’s space for the kids to play including a large patio outside and we even have an oven that fits the 9 x 13 dishes we brought from the US
10. Our car-it’s big enough for our family (most vehicles here aren’t) and is even a manual!
11. Internet-I know opinions differ on the internet and ways of connecting on it, but in our situation we’re very thankful for it because it’s our only connection to people in the US right now
12. A complication-free pregnancy (so far, which is longer than we got with either of the boys)
13. A natural-birthing advocate doctor who will let me have the birth I want
14. My boys wanting to listen to or sing “One True God” by NewSong when we live in a country where most people worship false gods
15. My boys like to pray and Samuel sometimes asks to pray for very sweet or deep things, not just thanking God for toys (though that has come up a couple times (:  )
16. Our faithful prayer warriors
17. Our faithful supporters
18. The import grocery store that carries some tasty treats from home and makes good bread that’s cheap
19. Living in a gated community with guards that is less expensive with a larger home than other places we looked at and it’s a small, safe community
20. Thunderstorms-Samuel is not fond of them, but they bring a much needed cool to the air and some of the lightning is incredible
21. Lots of good good-byes in the US before coming here
22. Our week of family time the first week of October-we NEEDED that time to be together and to shift gears after so many good-byes and leaving everything we’ve ever known
23. Humility and learning more and more how little I deserve God’s love and how much I really need Him
24. “Verses”-memorizing with Samuel and new things God has shown me
25. That friends bought some of our things before we moved and will make their own memories with them
26. All the places in Murfreesboro we loved and miss
27. Our home church in Murfreesboro
28. Seeing all of our siblings within the last few months before we moved and most within the last few weeks and getting to see so much family this year
29. That we invested in our lives in the US up until the moment we got on the plane
30. Being in God’s timing and not our own
Bonus:
31. Good last holidays in the US (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter) over the past year

As we continue through transition (which will take 12-18 months) we’ll probably reference a lot of things we learned in training.  We will be forever grateful for the things we learned at training and the friends we made there. No one understands what you’re going through except someone who has been there before or is doing it themselves.

One of the sessions during training was grief and loss.  We usually think of those topics in relation to losing a person, but there are a lot of other losses we experience in life and grief comes with them.  We experienced a great amount of loss with choosing to go down the path we are on.  I say choose because we could have chosen to say no and not do what we’re doing, but I also want to be clear that not all choices are easy and doing what’s right and following God where He leads does not mean there is not an incredible amount of pain and difficulty in the following.

We left MANY people who we love-our family, dear friends, supporters, church family, etc.  Yes, we can email/call/Skype/etc, but nothing is the same as sitting in a room with someone and being able to physically interact.  One of our very dear friends had a baby less than 24 hours ago and I wish I could be there to give her a hug and hold that sweet baby girl and congratulate the dad and baby girl’s big sisters.  That pain, that loss of interaction, will be much worse when it comes to my sister-in-law having a baby within a week of Tadpole being born and the knowledge that our kids could be over 2 before they ever meet.

And then we go to the loss of the familiar-everything here is different.  Even Sprite tastes different here.  The only thing we’ve found so far that tastes just about the same is Baskin-Robbins ice cream.  And the only thing I’ve found that seems to smell just the same is the Gap store we found last weekend.  Driving here, as we’ve said, is very different. The housing is different. The foliage and critters are different. Even the road kill is different-I never encountered a large lizard as road kill in the US.

And the loss of knowledge of surroundings.  We’ve been quite adventurous, but still don’t know what areas to avoid.  We know that the area we live in is generally safe along with the areas either direction of us, but beyond that we have to just feel things out and watch ourselves.  It’s probably why I find it somewhat unnerving to be watched everywhere I go because I’m the pregnant white girl with two little boys.  I knew it would happen, but we’ve been a few places where we are the ONLY white people in the building (including a couple large shopping centers) and it’s a strange feeling. And that leads into a loss of privacy to an extent, though we are thankful  that we don’t think neighbors will be particularly nosy and invade our privacy like we know happens in some places, but we’ll see. I could be wrong on that count.

We definitely have experienced times of grief over everything we left and have lost.  There’s much, much more than I can recount here.  I’m thankful we knew to anticipate this and to know that it’s healthy to grieve those loses, some that we will likely always grieve.

Right now we’re all missing home, which is normal and expected.  If we didn’t miss home it would be a pretty sad statement on how we felt about where we lived and the people we left.  We’d rather miss people, things, and food and have invested in our lives in the US than to not have invested there and not really miss anything at all.

I don’t say all of this to garner lots of sympathy, though prayers and encouragement are much appreciated.  I’m just trying to give you another glimpse into our lives and what we’re experiencing as we walk this path we’re on.

The last three months of our lives are sort of a blur of activity at this point. We spent the last week of July traveling, most of August in training and traveling, September was spent saying good-byes, tying up everything in the US, and packing and preparing for our move that started on October 2.  We spent the first week of October as a family to give ourselves some time to reset before heading on to Asia and we arrived here just after midnight on October 10, a little over two weeks ago.   We started driving towards the end of our first week and have sort of figured out driving from the right side of the car on the left side of the street, though the rules of the road are different (have you ever seen a green light specifically for u-turns?), so that makes it all the more interesting and difficult.
Our brains are constantly being strained and taxed even by simple things like signage.  One of the things we learned in training was that cross-cultural life comes with a lot of stress, some of which is not even initially obvious. It’s taxing to the brain to see signage in another language.  In a given stretch of road we are likely to see signage is 5-6 different languages that are almost all comprised of different characters/letters.  It’s no wonder we need so much extra sleep right now (another thing we learned in training-cross cultural learning requires extra sleep) and that it’s difficult to make even simple decisions like where to eat a meal because our brains are so stretched.  In addition to that we’re trying to process our new surroundings, having to convert currency in our minds so we know how much we’re spending or convert kilometers into miles so we have a better idea how far it is to get somewhere.  A trip to the store to buy four things is not as simple when all of this gets factored in.
Our favorite restaurants so far are a couple Indian places that are close by.  Benjamin has yet to refuse anything that’s been put in front of him and Samuel has been doing pretty well, too. Samuel is just enough older than Benjamin that the move is hitting him harder and he remembers more and so he misses more people and things.  We think that finding a place we can call home will make a big difference for our whole family.  We’ve pretty much lived out of suitcases for over a month now and that gets old after a while, especially when we’ve had to move those suitcases multiple times in that stretch.  Thankfully the place we’re in now we’ll be able to stay in until we get a house here, which we’re optimistic will be end of next week if things go well tomorrow when we meet with our real estate agent and the owner of a house we’re looking at renting.
All in all we’re doing about as well as could be expected at this stage. We’re eager to get more established here with a house/car/phones/etc., but know that it will all come in time and at least have a place to stay, a car to drive, and temporary phones to use until then.   Feel free to email us, connect with us on Facebook, etc. We want to know how life is with you and always appreciate people taking time to drop us a note.  It makes everything that is familiar seem a little less distant.

Well, there isn’t a lot of time to share everything right now, but since it’s been so long since our last online update I thought I’d share a little about how things are going.

At this point we are getting within hours of the one-week mark for being in our new Asian country. It was about as you would expect with 2 small children and a variety of bags that are supposed to tie us over until our shipment arrives with the rest of our belongings.

Saying goodbye was hard, not only because there were so many but if felt like they kept on going for a long time. We’re now starting to say hello to our new culture, coworkers, and way of life.

Right now we have a temporary place to stay while we are finding a new place to call home. We hope to have that worked out soon and move in as soon as is feasible. The boys have been dragged around to a lot of places and miss somewhere of their own where they can be themselves.

For all of us we’ve been sampling some of the tastes of Asia while occasionally stopping somewhere familiar to eat a meal that seems a little more like we’re used to.

Getting around is a little easier now that we have a car to use while we find something permanent to buy. It’s been interesting/strange/terrifying/confusing to not only learn how to drive in a new area with its own peculiarities and rules but to be doing it while driving on the “other” side of the road. Becky and I have been getting in some practice and are starting to feel a little more confident.

On the work end of things I’m mixing a little bit of training in with settling the family. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to help at home and work as I have the chance to.

There is a lot more to say and we’ll be updating a little more frequently soon. The adjustment continues and the stress of making heads and tails of things when not all of the signs are in English can take it’s toll. Even with the stress we are excited to be here and to see what God is going to be doing with our family as we begin to serve.

We’ve been back in Murfreesboro for about a week after being gone for a month. It feels weird to be back when we know we’re leaving in just over a month.  We have much to do in our time left-things to sort, many good-byes to say, and life to live.  One of the new things about living life for us is the new child God has blessed us with.  We are expecting another baby in early February.  S/he will have the distinct honor of being the first baby born to a family serving with HCJB Global’s Asia-Pacific team while in the mission field.  We are blessed beyond measure and know that this child is perfectly in God’s timing.  In keeping with family tradition we will not find out our baby’s gender before birth, so we have nicknamed him/her “Tadpole” for the meantime.  We covet your prayers as we add the transition of having another child into the mix with transitioning to life in a foreign land.

We have been away from home for almost three weeks now, the past two of which we have spent here in Palmer Lake, Colorado (check out this link to learn more about our training) and the first week, as Toffer mentioned, traveling through the Midwest.  We started with a visit with our regional director and his family a little outside of Chicago and headed west from there.  We got to see some friends/supporters in the quad cities (which included a stop at the John Deere Pavilion in Moline, IL-the boys LOVED this impromptu adventure) and spend a night there, then we headed to Ames, IA, for the bulk of that week.

For those of you who don’t know, I lived in Ames for five years of my life-sixth through tenth grade-and my mom grew up about 30 minutes away from there in a tiny town called McCallsburg.  We realized as we were getting close to Ames that the three previous trips there had been for weddings and were short trips and that the last time we were there for any appreciable amount of time without scheduled activities was almost 10 years ago to the week.  I was a bit giddy about the opportunity to actually spend time in Ames-to see the places that shaped me for five years.

As we drove through the streets I could point out houses where so and so lived (and most of so and so’s parents still live).  We drove by the elementary school where I went to sixth grade (Samuel thought the playground looked cool), the now-closed middle school (a much-needed new one was built close-by), and the high school. It made me feel connected to a part of my life that I think I’d become somewhat disconnected from.

We spent time with my mom’s sister and her family and my mom’s brother, including a visit out to the family farm so the boys could ride on a tractor.  Great Uncle Dan was more than willing to do this, though Samuel insisted that Mama also drive him around in the tractor. I complied and Toffer posted a video on Facebook for those particularly interested.  We also went to Iowa State University’s campus where my grandfather was a botany professor for years and years and my parents, brother, and several other family members attended at various times in the past five decades. It was bittersweet to stand at the office that used to be my grandfather’s office and see someone else’s name on the door.  And it was bittersweet to go to the farm where I used to ride the tractors with my grandfather and then go eat my grandmother’s home cooked meals and know that I will not see them again until we are reunited in heaven.

We crammed a lot into our days in Ames. I loved getting to see so many friends and catch up with supporters there.  I loved showing Toffer places he hadn’t seen in previous trips and especially introducing our boys to a part of my family’s history that they hadn’t seen yet. And what I loved the most is that Ames still had a feeling of home, even after not living there for 14 years. It was nice, it was comforting. What was so great about it was that I felt such freedom to be able to call more than one place home.  Murfreesboro is just as much home as Ames is and I hope that our new place of residence in Asia will also one day feel like home without having to feel like I’m giving up something I left behind.  Ames will always have a feeling of home. Murfreesboro will always have a feeling of home. And I hope one day the city where we will live in Asia will also feel like home.

Greetings from Iowa! We are on our way to training and are spending a few days along the way with friends, supporters, and family. So far, so good travelling with two small boys. Appreciative to the people we have spent time with, those to meet soon and our housesitter back at home. Hopefully we can get some more posted soon but we wanted to at least check in and let you know how things are going. When we get back we will be well into the swing of our preparations to move. Thanks to all those who are prayer and financial supporters.

If you would still like to join with us financially we still are lookig to get the second progress bar to the right to 100% as soon as possible. Click the HCJB Global logo to the right to signup to be part of our financial support team.

Last night we went out for some Chinese and I got an interesting fortune in my fortune cookie:

You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily.

One of my hopes and prayers as we enter this next chapter of our lives is that when all is said and done, when we’ve moved and gotten a little settled, that we’ll feel like we’re in the right place and that somehow it feels like home.  And considering the whirlwind that has been our last two weeks finally getting settled sounds really great right about now.

Just over two weeks ago we still had over $1,400 left to raise to reach our overall goal of $6,558 in monthly support, $600 of which we needed by this coming Monday, July 18.  Well, God apparently wanted to make it ABUNDANTLY clear that we are on the right path because we now have less than $700 total to raise.  In two weeks we’ve had over $700 in monthly support pledged either through new people joining our team or current supporters increasing their support.  We’ve been blown away by God’s provision and the generosity of those who are part of our team.

If all goes as is currently planned we will be on a plane right around the first of October.  It’s sort of surreal considering two and a half weeks ago we had no idea when the rest of our support would come in or where it was coming from.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
-Isaiah 55:8-9

I think Toffer and I have both talked about how we’ve learned a lot over the past couple years and how God had deepened and broadened our faith. One of the things I’ve been pondering a lot recently (in the few moments of less-than-insanity that occasionally creeps into our very hectic lives) is how mysterious God is.  We have scripture to learn about Him and experiences we or other we know have had, but ultimately God is mysterious.  Our finite brains can only wrap themselves around who God is to a point and beyond that we have to just trust in what we do know to make up for what we don’t.

While I very much am a person who likes answers to why and how, I’m learning to just trust and enjoy the mystery of God-how He actually works and moves, what He’s like beyond what my mind can grasp and imagine, how complex He is, and on and on.  I like that God is more than I can imagine, more than I can even begin to think.  If I were able to really understand all of who He is and what He does that would not make Him a very big God nor one who is perfectly holy. I’ll continue to contemplate the mystery, even if it drives me crazy some days, knowing that God is bigger and mightier and greater than I am and that He’s moving and working in ways that I have no way to even begin to comprehend.

Raising support has been one of those ways that God’s movements are mysterious and sometimes (to us) nonsensical and unreasoned. Clearly God always knows what He’s doing and we have trusted in that, but sitting day after day in the unknown can be insane and intense.  Right now a big mystery to us is how God is going to finish out our support team.  We got an email a few minutes ago with a pledge from one more family who has committed to be part of our team. We so enjoy seeing our team grow and develop. And we know the mystery of the rest of our team will be revealed in God’s timing.  The irony of it is that just a few minutes before I checked my email Toffer said he was wondering where the rest of what we needed to reach our July 18 goal was coming from. That email answered a big part of that question. We now have 98.6% of our monthly support for the goal of $5724 on July 18 and 86.1% of our overall goal of $6558. It’s exciting and I’m ready to continue seeing what mysteries God reveals and which ones He choose to leave unanswered.