14 Adults, 13 Kids, 6 Crawdads, 5 Toads and 2 Lizards...Life in Oklahoma Post #1

Aaaaaand...a bunch of scorpions :)

Yep, that describes our "family" right now!  

We call them our "Ling Family".  At least the humans.  The crawdads, toads, lizards and scorpions don't really count in my book (but they would probably count in my kids' books!  So we will include them!)

We are living a very interesting life right now!  It is a lot of fun, as well as challenging at times.  And it is great preparation for being overseas.  We are living among many other people, adjusting to a new "culture", and just living a very different life than we are used to!  Very good preparation for Papua New Guinea, that's for sure!  I have so many pictures to share with you all, it's hard to know where to start!  So...here we go!

Post #1:  We love our Ling classmates!

What a great group of people we get to live with right now.  We are so thankful for the many ways that our classmates love and serve each other in this phase of training.  We realize that this is God's grace poured out on us, that He would bless us with these fun, godly, like-minded brothers and sisters!

We have gone on walks with them...

Me and my friend Sara :)

The guys and Kaine blow things up with firecrackers...

We go swimming in creeks...(or I should say, we watch our kids swim in the creek!) :)

Some classmates even go on late night walks to hunt for scorpions!  

We have MANY meals together!  We do all of our lunches/suppers as a group, and cook and clean as teams.  Good times :)

 After dinner one night, we spotted our first scorpion since arriving!  

We also cannot say enough how much of a blessing these friends are to our kids.  It is pretty rare for kids to have lots of adults (who aren't their parents or family members)--just pouring into them in a living situation like this.  What a blessing!  So many godly influences!  Such as...

One night after dinner, our kids put on a "gymnastics show" for everyone!  I was super proud of our kids for being brave enough to do something like this in front of everyone--and super thankful to our classmates for being such good spectators!  Our kids loved it!

This is where they performed.  Nathan has made a "gymnastics area" in our room, since the room tour blogpost.  He is one creative daddy!

They also allow our kids to help in the kitchen...

...the dads played "daddy-kid football" the other evening.  It was so fun to watch!

They give our kids so much attention...

Our kids just adore Miss Kaylee!  We have been in training with her for a long time--she was Kaine's preschool teacher when we first moved to Michigan 4 years ago!

We have a very talented friend (Sara!) who has painted the kids' faces many times.  They always look sooo cute!

On top of all that...

• Kaine learned to make paracord bracelets from one dad.
• Another dad taught the kids motions to a praise song, and Kaine and Halle even played the "drums"!
• 4 days a week, our kids are babysat (for 2 hours each morning, while Nathan and I go to our language sessions).  John and Sara switch off days--we are forever grateful to them!
• Kaine and Halle are learning some karate moves from another classmate! (or maybe it's tae kwan do...or judo...something like that!)
• Some of the guys took Kaine out scorpion hunting one night...and Nathan didn't even go!  Kaine loved that!

I could go on and on.  We are feeling blessed by our classmates, if you can't tell :)  And we hope we are blessing them by pouring into their kids' lives as well!

More to come!  Love you all!