i'm at it again. my suitcase is packed with a week's worth of clothes and toilet paper, gifts for the new friends i am going to make, and velveeta & rotel for our missionary family (it's the small things, y'all, that make a missionary feel at home again!). i'm getting ready to go to the other side of the world where we will be hugging, hand-stamping, finger-nail painting, preaching the Gospel, feeding, encouraging new mothers, and celebrating birthdays with kids who have never ever had a birthday celebration/gift before! i'm on my way to the Philippines to work with my friends at Lilia's Place, and i couldn't be more excited, and also nervous, at what is to come.
why nervous? because i know that i'm about to be broken. it's a good thing and a hard thing and a necessary thing. it looks different each time it happens, but i know it's gonna rip my heart out while i'm there, and it's gonna be a lasting sting when i get back (after the jet lag has worn off). i couldn't be more honored to go and serve beside such genuine and dedicated people, and i am so grateful for this opportunity and those who have supported me and encouraged me to go. please pray for my team's effectiveness in our time there, that we will be more than our American culture has influenced us to be and that we can circumnavigate the barriers that stand between Christ and these people. let us not be one of those barriers! may we be helpful to the mission efforts that are ongoing there through Lilia's Place.
less of me, more of He!
while i'm away, i've got a fabulous support team who will be taking care of the kiddos and i've got a plan in place for them. they don't get 2 weeks off just because mommy's 1/2 way around the world! seriously, though, they want to come with me, but i told them they need to be a little older (and less picky with their food preferences! lol).
we've been having a great time with our CC homeschool work and have been doing some really fun studies including:
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| Pollution Experiment - It's hard to clean water after it's been polluted! |
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| Another Pollution Experiment - How the Earth cleans water naturally. |
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| The Renaissance Period & Shakespeare. The girls read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and made puppets. |
AND the girls wrote their own PLAY - "The Super Ninja" - and performed it for our church small group.
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| More Renaissance Period & da Vinci. We read about da Vinci's inventions and tried out his parachute design. |
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| Astronomy! We made "telescopes" to view the various constellations. |
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| The girls made their own constellations in their rooms. |
AND this is how far we've come in memorizing our CC history timeline (6 weeks worth):