A Little Detour on our way to Christmas

I think one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is what Zechariah prophesies over John.  It talks about John preparing the way for the "sunrise from on high" who is coming to save His people who sit in shadows and darkness.  I just love that.  I love reading Luke as well as Matthew--I think I just love the little bits about Zechariah and Simeon and Anna.  What awesome people with faith and patience.

And their stories just resonate with us.  Patience to see the Saviour come.  Faith that He is coming.  We work among a people that are notoriously hard to the Good News.  But He does promise that they will believe.  And we are thankful that we get to meet them and love them and tell them the stories.  What a gift in and of itself.

For some reason, when I've read the parts of the Word that have to do with the birth of Jesus, I've never really noticed the parts about the difficulty surrounding His birth.  There were so many wondrous things that happened, and I love those parts.  But there were some horrible things and some very difficult circumstances that happened right as He was born that I've overlooked.  But for some reason, that fact has brought me comfort this year.  As we have discomfort or hard moments, I want to remember that He went through much worse.  He can relate.  He is the one who can best relate.

Our Christmas season has looked different this year.  We spent over half the advent season in a tropical country without our stuff that we have.  So we've done little activity to celebrate advent besides reading the story of His birth.  Several times.  But I'm so thankful that He came.  I'm so thankful that He is still coming to us AND to people who haven't heard His name.  I'm so thankful for HIM.

Here are some pictures of the beginning of the month:

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are so thankful for so many things this year, but one of the things that happened yesterday was that we got a text from a friend that's in town from the mountains.  She wants to see us today (it's T-giving morning right now), which isn't the best timing, but we're just so thankful she's asking to hang out, we're going to make sure it happens!!

We're just thankflul that friendships are slowly going deeper.  And I'm thankful that my husband is so go with the flow about her coming, too.  And that we had 3 days of rest earlier this week :).  We are given good gifts...

trying to be creative in November

being creative in November, a set on Flickr.

This year, I asked Luke how he might want to be thankful as we get ready for Thanksgiving. Like, we'd be thankful for something every day. And he said he wanted to make paper dolls and be thankful for people this year.

I thought that was a great idea, so we proceeded to make several different kinds of chains. And decorate them. And we plan to think of names of people (and probably some things, honestly) that we're thankful for. Starting late, I know.

So, in the pictures, you can see Luke coloring a chain of pilgrims. And we made a chain of turkeys, too, using a simple template.

And I woke up to find the boys making masks yesterday. Jace's is a monster mask. Luke's was a wolfman mask (I don't have a picture).

And I saw an idea on pinterest for using a smashbook to make scripture books that can be read at night. So I'm in the middle of writing the scripture, and then I'm going to have to find stickers, pictures, etc to go with the words. I'm excited about giving the book to them and hope they'll want to read it at night and learn the verses that way...

SEVEN part 2

From left to right top to bottom:

Luke got Heelys for his birthday!

tent cake

playing a game at the party

roasting marshmallows

Happy birthday, LUKE!

Jace loving the tent

roasting hot dogs

the gang

blowing out candles (sorta)

same ol' mountains. new stuff happening.

We went to the mountains to see a festival for our people.  It started the 26th of October and lasted 3 days in different places where our people live.  We only went to one day, and we only lasted about 2 hours.  My kids didn't think it was really cool.  I did, but I'm outnumbered.

So we stayed two nights in what's  our favorite town in the mountains and then moved on to the town that is maybe the biggest stretch for me.  But in this town, Dad is at work.  There is a small posse of sisters that live there and have opened a coffee house.  They have more faith than they really have coffee skills, but that's really a perfect fit for this little town in the mountains where people don't have money or high expectations for coffee anyway.

hope we can teach them some English soon!

what we saw as we left town

They want us to come back to teach English the end of Dec/beginning of January.  There's no running water (to get water , everyone walks 5-10 minutes to the end of town and brings back their buckets that they boil or put in other bowls to flush the toilets).  It's intense to me--I think if we spend a while there we'll eat out for every meal.  Is that bad?  If we go back in the summer, I'll cook.  It seems scary to even consider the possibility...

We stayed one night in this beautiful town and then went to a place that is relatively comfortable--other foreigners live here and work and have a hostel and coffee house.  The boys feel like it's heaven here.  Friends to play with and rocks to climb and mountains to hike.  Jace truly didn't want to come back to our home.  He said it about 8 times that day.  I didn't really want to leave either.

Buying fruit.  Don't they make you want to be their friend?

Look what we saw someone taking to market!!

Great friends!

rock climbing in the mountains.  with friends.  what could be better?

SEVEN

Luke turned 7 last Friday.  Our digital camera (our second this year) also broke while we were at a fall picnic earlier this month. :(.  So we are waiting for our pictures to be developed--yep, we pulled out the ol' film camera.

But I took a few pictures with our iPad.  So here they are.  In case it's not clear what his birthday theme was, it was a "night" birthday.  So we did everything we most love about nighttime:  stars, planets, tents, campfires, movies...

I'll put more pictures up once we get our pictures back.

friends

Almost everyone we know is going back to America for a few months this year.  Or having a baby in Thailand.  Even some of our local friends are working in America.  And, truthfully, we have felt a little sad, as well as a little (or a lot) homesick this summer.

But I also feel so thankful.  We have friends here in town that we feel are as close to family as possible without being family.  Our kids get to go downstairs in our apartment complex every day to play with their friends.  There are no cars, lots of playgrounds, basketball courts, and the kids are able to find and "build forts" all over the grounds.

So we'll miss our friends while they're gone.  We'll kind of wish we're in the states.  But we will also feel thankful that we get to live here and have the friends we have.