under a tarp with four kids.

So, a part of our Simple Living class was a four day camping trip.  It was so much fun, even thought parts of it were very challenging!  Here are a ton of pictures from our trip...

We were to hike to our campsite, carrying most of our stuff on our backs.  The first challenge was to find our tarps (which would be used for our shelters).  We were given coordinates and our team had to work together to find them, using a compass.  I was very glad the guys on our team knew what they were doing with that compass, because it was NOT easy!  Teammates are so great :)

So here we are, trying to figure out those coordinates, getting stuff ready to go...

And we are off!  The hike took a total of about 1.5 hours or so.

We were so glad that the team we were on had a ton of kids!  Our kids' really good friends were in our group, for which we were so thankful.  They really had a blast!

Taking a break.  Actually us moms and kids were taking a break, while the guys went into a thick part of the woods to get those tarps.  Oh, and also, another major blessing was the BEAUTIFUL weather!  I remember last fall, the group that went on their camping trip had a very nasty, rainy, freezing cold weekend.  I cannot imagine how hard that would have been--our weather was so gorgeous.

When we finally arrived at our camping site, we had to start building our tarp shelter!  (And by "we" I actually mean "Nathan"...I was so glad he is so good at this stuff!)

He let Kaine use a real saw...which made me a bit nervous.  No injuries though!

My dear friend Emily had her sweet baby Louise to tend to...and Daisy really loved hanging out with them!  Daisy calls Em "Elimy"...which is so stinkin adorable :)

The shelter is coming!

Taking a break to hug his sweet girls...they love their daddy!

The finished product!  It is kind of hard to tell in the picture, but Nathan did an absolutely amazing job on our shelter.  Good job, babe!  He is such a good provider for our family :)

We cooked all of our meals over the fire...

At one point, one of my girls had to go to the bathroom (which was a homemade port-a-potty...really really disgusting!  But at least we had that option, and not just the woods!)  It was a bit of a distance away, and I was having fun talking with friends by the fire :)  So...Halle is now 6 1/2 years old, so I thought, why not?  I sent Halle to take her two sisters to the potty!  But soon we heard bloodcurdling screams.  And they DID. NOT. STOP.  I seriously thought one of my girls fell into the pit.  People took off running to see what happened, and Nathan got there first.  The problem?  A spider :)  Oh, my sweet girls.  How will they survive in the jungle??  Lol.  But to their credit...look at this spider!  It was really big!!  And it was in the little port-a-potty-tarp-enclosure-thingy with them, so I don't blame them for being scared.

We had so much fun hanging out with good friends...

We learned how to make fire starters (vaseline and cotton balls...who knew??)

So the first night, we all slept pretty good!  I layered my kids like crazy (leggings, socks, footie pajamas, and sweatshirts over that...and hats if they needed them!)  It got pretty cold at night.  But we made it through!  Up the next morning to make our breakfast over the fire...

Haha!  I love this picture of Daisy...still pretty out of it early in the morning :)

All throughout that day (on Friday) we had practical classes.  This class was about wiring for batteries, solar power, etc...I will be honest that I still do not understand it all!  Nathan does pretty well, though, so it's all good :)

Some more wiring...the guys had to figure out how to hook up a solar powered water pump, to get water into our camp.

We learned a lot about chainsaws...

I even got to use one!  My first time...I was a little nervous!  But I did it!

There were some staff couples who hung out with us at our campsite, and they helped with the kids sooo much!  Here is Ray, making a bow and arrow for Daisy.  He made them for all the kids!  Thank you Ray!

The kids really had such a blast...

And I really did too! It was really nice to have some good downtime, with nothing to do but talk to people and sit with my kids...I loved it.

So on Saturday morning...sadly, Layla got sick with a stomach bug.  She woke up in the morning feeling sick and then threw up a couple of times.  So we all had a team meeting to discuss our options, and we decided that I should take her home.  So I was pretty bummed to miss all day on Saturday, but it was the best decision.  We took a team pic before I left...we called ourselves "Team Unicorn"...ha!  Kind of a long story :)

While I was gone on Saturday, Nathan got the opportunity to slaughter, pluck and butcher a chicken!  I wasn't too sad to miss that :)  But he was grateful for the chance to learn how to do that!

In the act of killing the chicken...seriously gross!

The camping trip was such an amazing opportunity.  We were stretched in less-than-comfortable situations, but we were so encouraged by our teammates.  What a great time of working with a team.  We are starting to feel the sting of what is coming...having to say goodbye to these people whom we have grown to love so much!  Sigh.  More on that later.  Thanks for sticking with me, through all those camping pictures!  Love ya'll!

"simple living" is not so simple!

So, how was our two weeks of "simple living"?  It was challenging but so much fun!  

Like I described in my last blogpost, our class called Simple Living was to "expose us to living with less than we are used to."  So like, we could only cook from scratch, we couldn't use any appliances, and we had to do lights out from 8pm to 7am every day.  And for those two weeks, our classes were chock full of practical skills.  It was a very fun couple weeks of classes!!  

We learned how to navigate using coordinates and a compass (which is waaaaaay more difficult than it sounds, believe me!!)

We did a supply buying simulation (which is very normal for tribal missionaries--they will order their supplies via a supply buyer, and the supply buyer gets the groceries and supplies for the tribal missionaries.  Then the pilot will fly the supplies into the tribe.  So this is how it works in the tribe, and we just did a simulation here in our classes).

Here is our group, ordering our supplies through a walkie talkie to the other team...

Nathan was one of the supply buyers from our team!  He went to the store with his friend David to buy all the supplies that were ordered by another team.  I think he only made one mistake--one student ordered a trial size hair spray and Nathan accidentally got her some shaving cream instead.  Lol...I guess that's what happens when you send two men ;)

The guys had a lot of classes on building, plumbing, and practical skills like that.  However, it was optional for the ladies to go to those.  We could either go to those building classes, or we could go to electives on cooking and things like that.  I chose the cooking classes :)  We learned things like how to do canning, how to use a pressure cooker, and  how to take care of nasty bugs like cockroaches.

We also had classes on bread baking...

We learned how to make some foods from certain countries...talk about a fun class!  We just cooked food together...and then we ate it!  It doesn't get much more fun than that!

We learned to make tortillas...

One of the days we got to go off campus to a staff couple's house.  They taught us to "bake" over a fire.  So cool!  We made pizza and cinnamon rolls, all in cast iron skillets over a fire.  It was so good, too.

All the ladies who were there that morning :)  I love these ladies so much!

The pizza that Nathan and I made!

Outside of the actual class times, we had "simple living" at home, too.  Our kids enjoyed the lights out after 8:00 :)

We did a LOT of cooking!  Nathan made homemade pizza...

Layla was my little helper :)

I baked homemade bread for the very first time!  I know, that is so crazy considering I am 32 years old.  Pretty sad, right?  But I am happy to report that I tried it and it isn't as hard or scary as I thought it would be!  I will be practicing lots and lots, because in the tribe that is the only way we will be able to have bread--to make it myself (or teach my daughters to make it!).

So Layla and Daisy thought it was the coolest thing ever, to knead that dough!

We could not believe how much it rose!  I think I may have done something wrong...oh well, I will keep practicing!

The finished product!  If you can't tell by this picture, the loaf was MASSIVE.  I was kind of proud of myself :)

We had a 24 hour period that was supposed to simulate "dry season"--in which we could not use any water in our house at all.  If we needed water, it needed to be hauled from the "river" (aka the washhouse down the hill).  Ha!  Needless to say, we were soooo much more thankful for our running water after those 24 hours!

Then we experienced 2 1/2 days of "rainy season"...where we could use NO electricity at all.  The evenings are pretty depressing when it gets dark at suppertime!  But this was to simulate rainy season in which the clouds prevented our solar panels from generating power.

Well, there ya have it...probably more than you wanted to know about our Simple Living class :)  There was also another big part of that class though--which was our 4 day camping trip.  I will blog about that next :)

This Simple Living class made me appreciate modern conveniences, and appreciate and pray for those missionaries around the world who deal with this stuff daily!  It is a bit sobering to realize that our future will hold all of this.  It really makes us realize that we will be daily trusting God to give us joy, no matter what our circumstances are!