July 21st

July 21, 1980

The day I was born. :)

There is something of a small girl within me, for I love birthdays. :) Possibly this is mostly due to my amazing husband who makes them very special days! Today is lovely. I was going to allow the girls to sleep until they wake up this morning. I usually get them up at 6:00 for a bottle so that they sleep until around 10:00, and I can coordinate their second nap with Bomani's around 1:00. Well, for some odd reason, they woke up at 5:00. :) So we fed them, and I didn't sleep much after that, and got up early. I spent some lovely quiet time on the deck, with a magnificent mug of lemongrass chai, and then some lovely time with Craig, wherein he presented me with a delightfully wrapped gift. I found some quality dark chocolate, along with the book, Be Your Own Doctor, something I've been wanting for a while! Unfortunately, I had failed to inform him correctly that my friend Rose is giving me an extra one she has, so we are returning it. In it's place, I'm getting a new Bible. I am dreadfully excited! But I am in the throes of indecision because I want Holman's version, and the two things that are very important to me are that it is in single column format and that it is only the Scripture itself, not full of other helps and sermons. I'd like a smaller, lighter Bible without all the distractions. But unfortunately, these three things you cannot find in one Bible! So I need to make some decisions. :) What fun!

Well, then Bomani woke up and I had some fun, quality time with him on the deck. He cuddled on my lap and I sang. He ate eggs. We had some dark chocolate. :)

So now I'm relaxing. The girls are crawling around and being awfully cute. Bomani is running around and being awfully loud. :) Craig is just...awfully awesome.

And this afternoon Craig and I are going out for a good time on the town. :) I am very excited.

This past month has been...an unexpected turn in the path of our life. It has been a month of confusion, light, questions, answers, pain, peace. A month of learning to trust God. I've heard about that all my life, but there are times when you really learn to trust. It's amazing! It's been a month of asking God questions and hearing from Him. Going to Thailand is, at this point, unknown. Unknown as to when and how. How as in how God wants to get us there, how He wants to keep us there, and how He wants us to do ministry there.

Our ultimate dream/vision is to be self supporting missionaries. This, unfortunately, is not easily come by. We don't know if it is an option for us. If not, we will need to trust God to provide as He desires to. What we have figured out so far, is that we should go to Chiang Mai, study Thai full time for a year or two, until we are speaking at least in part. Then we want to move to an area of Thailand where there is little or no Christian witness. You could say that we want to do “church planting”. But we ultimately want the Thai Christians to plant the churches in other areas themselves. Craig wants to have a “platform” this time...something to validate our presence in an area. Something to bring natural contact with people and form friendships. His deepening interest and study of permaculture gives that as a good option. Thailand, especially as you get out of the city, has much agriculture, and very possibly they would welcome new methods and efficient ideas. There is an online university where you can get your certificate in permaculture. This, however, is not an option at the present.

So! There is a bit of catch-up for you friends around the world. Thank you so much for your prayer support and love. I have had more peace and rest this month than I find any logic for. God is so big and powerful! It is but a very small thing for Him to do what He wants to do in our future. And there is such incredible security in that truth!

God has told Craig several times, in the past weeks, to “prepare for rain”. As those who live in Kansas know, you can prepare for rain, but still don't know if it will rain this year or next. Or the next! However, we are quite willing to comply. This includes bits of Thai language learning (I haven't started yet), permaculture study, missiology study, etc.

Otherwise, life has settled into a pleasant routine. As I mentioned earlier, I have found that if I can scratch myself out of bed between 6:00 and 6:30 sometime, and we feed the girls and put them back to bed, they will often sleep until around 10:00. So that morning time is spent with delicious quiet time, hanging out with Bomani, and doing kitchen work. After the girls wake up, it's feeding them breakfast and generally taking care of kids. Then at 1:00 or so the kids all go down for a nap and so do I! I usually sleep a bit, then read and relax and recover. :)

Every now and then we all four pile into our little pool on the deck and splash wildly. The kids do get somewhat houseridden in our small barn, so they love playing outside. But it's been so hot—triple digit stuff, and the yard is full of chiggers so the girls need to stay in their stroller when we go outside.

Monday and Friday afternoons from 3:00 – 5:00 a young lady comes to help me. I often leave the girls with them and take Bomani out and about. I run errands, do the shopping, or we go the library. Before summer arrived, sometimes we would go the park or a playground somewhere. I love getting out of the house and it's so fun doing stuff with my little boy. The girls who come to help me love taking care of the twins so it's a good deal!

At times I do get tired of the constant loop of living. Mothers tend to do the same things over about 400,000,000 times in their lives. You wash the dishes, have a delightful feeling of accomplishment, only to find that you really should do it again that same day! You cook a large pot of soup, and it only lasts 5 days and you are dreadfully tired of it after 3. :) You clean the two high chairs three to four times a day. You sweep the floor at least that often. You make yoghurt once a week. You chop food into tiny bits for babies to eat. You wash clothes that get dirty again. It's a wearisome loop, unless you find the goodness and delight hiding in it. I am working on that!

Finding the goodness and delight in my children themselves, however, is not a chore! So many times I sit down, grin, and feel overwhelmed with happiness. The three kids love playing together. The girls have also started having little fights. I don't know what to do about it, so I am waiting to see if they can find a way to work things out themselves. Daisy often thinks that what Hazel has is the most awesome thing ever, and she yells brokenheartedly when Hazel hangs onto it! Sometimes they grab back and forth and scream and I wonder what to do. Maybe someone has advice for me!

They do go through stages, I've noticed. For a while, we didn't know what to do because Daisy would persecute Hazel when we put them into their bed at night. Hazel wanted to sleep, and Daisy would bother her. We tried putting a pillow between them, but Daisy would just crawl around it. So we would keep one of them up while the other one went to sleep. At times though, Daisy would cry softly until we put Hazel in with her. Then she'd go to sleep. :) They do love sleeping together. And now it's usually not a big problem anymore. Sometimes I need to put Daisy on her side and give her a bit of a lesson to stay there.

Bomani is most definitely taking his big brother thing seriously. :) The other evening the girls had bad diaper rash, and one of them was screaming while I cleaned her. Bomani came over with the Butt Paste for me. :) Or like recently once Daisy was yelling her little teeth out, and Bomani stood there before her and put his finger to his lips and said, “ssss...” (Shh) for a while. :) He did it again when I put them all to bed, and Daisy was yelling. I enjoyed that greatly. He is starting to say more words, especially repeating after me. Sometimes he will put two words together, like “Daisy chair”. And if he wants me to sit beside him, he will say “sit chair”. :) I have so much fun with him. The other day I was planning to take him to town with me, and then left him at pops with Craig instead, and found I was very disappointed!

It's also been a bit intense this past month, in several ways. He is two, and it's a rough stage in the learning to obey and all. And I'm finding my way too. The inward journey of the past month put a strain on me at times and I'd find myself snapping at the children. Then of course, Bomani's behavior would quickly deteriorate. Somehow, when I found I was healthy and happy, I saw it mirrored in them...

One of Bomani's fave things to do is to go out to the garden in the evening and see if we can find any peas to eat out of the pods, or ground cherries to eat out of their little, paper pods. He loves to help carry produce into the house.

Speaking of produce...sigh. Obviously, I am new at gardening in Kansas. When we purchased our heirloom seeds, we were full of high hopes and visions of produce pouring out of our gardens at a high rate of speed. Instead, only a fraction of the seeds came up, and some of those only with extreme coaxing. Then, after they were up and our hopes were soaring, the cutworms moved in and slowly and methodically stripped the plants and killed a good number of them. We were finally able to kill them with a supposedly organic dust. Then the wild rainstorms came through and whipped our poor plants half to death on the north side of our pile bed. After that came the desert weather, scorching everything to within and inch of it's life. The worms kept eating our head crops, but we decided to sacrifice those, if it kept them from the other plants. They now have a lovely, lacy design. :) But my squash and cucumber plants...woe. They took root and grew like a dream. With thick stems and huge leaves, the blooms flowered out. They covered a larger and larger area. We started harvesting yellow crookneck squash, with many, many more growing. And then, suddenly, they were gone. Just like that, they wilted and died. Every last one in our gardens. A few cucumber plants I planted later survived and did well. We started harvesting a few, little cucumbers. Now it looks like at least one of those has been bitten. I have a few squash plants by my front door that don't produce much because they are in pots, but they have escaped the squash bore or whatever it is that does the deed. I could have cried over my squash. I loved them dearly!

We have been blessed with lots of long, Asian purple beans. So good in stir fry, or cooked with bacon and mushrooms. We've had a few snowpeas. And our tomato plants are taking over the garden. So we are grateful, and still have hope! But it has not been quite up to our expectations. :)

What else is new? Have I mentioned that my dad is getting married in October?! I am very grateful for this, and so very excited. God's presence is clear in this, and there is so much peace. There is also some natural awkwardness and pain. And the adjusting and learning to adapt to the new reality. Mary is an amazing woman. She is so sensitive and so understanding, often asking how it's feeling for me, and because of recently enough losing her mother, has an understanding of our pain. I feel very taken care of by her already, and it's filling a hole in my heart. She is more of a friend than a “mother”, and we are all okay with that.

I woke up this morning missing my mom intensely. I sat outside asking Jesus to tell her how much I love her, miss her, admire her, and want to be like her. She is so perfect and so beautiful! I had no idea before, how close the next life can be to a person. But it is. Very close.

Well, I have rambled on for a rather long time. :) There are so many of you I am thinking of...Renita, in my heart, I'm over there cooking you a meal and taking your kids to the park. Rose, I cannot wait to see your new baby, and talk for 8 hours. One of our pastors in Kenya was in a matatu accident where another woman was killed. Sometimes I am so full of homesickness for that country and my friends there! I would do anything to show them my children and cuddle thiers. Recently I was thinking about you, Bruce and Beth, in Colorado, and just wanting to hang out again. Rho, I keep up with your blog and love seeing your life there. Carolyn, I was just thinking about you the other day... Lisl—I watch your blog as well! And can't wait to see you again. Our MTI friends, Jason & Emily are planning on coming to visit us! I am excited, and it made me so wistful that there will probably not be a time on earth when we can have an MTI reunion. When you go train with missionaries, you don't expect to all be in America on this side of heaven, and I'm pretty sure America isn't on the other side. :)

Time to go get ready for the afternoon on the town!!!

Blessings on your Sabaath...

Rachel`