for those who are wondering...

We're still doing well:)   And we are still praying and talking with leadership about which tribe God is leading us to!  Hopefully we can share some details in the coming month...but for now?  Thank you for praying!  We NEED your prayers!

In the meantime...here's what we've been up to:

Trips to town!  We absolutely love the town of Wewak!  And when we take family trips to town it's a very hot, sweaty and somewhat tiring event :)  But we love it anyway!  And the people here LOVE our kids--that's an understatement.  Especially Daisy...she melts their hearts!

We are getting involved in a local church!  I usually end up teaching Sunday School, but I'm okay with that because I want to be in the Sunday school class with our kids, anyway.  So it works out well :)   And after church, our kids always have groups of kids surrounding them!  Our girls love it :)  

Daisy sitting by her friend Shekinah in church :) 

I tried my best to make it feel like fall at our house...haha!  It was worth a try!  It still feels like hot and humid summer :) 

Daisy fell off of Halle's back the other day...poor girl face planted on the ground :(  She went to town with Nathan a couple days after it happened--talk about drawing attention!  All the ladies at the market were so worried about her!

Speaking of Daisy...she (and Layla) continue to LOVE playing with this sweet boy!  My girls love Calvin!

Nathan had a tropical ulcer on his ankle.  He's on antibiotics and it's looking much better now :)  Sorry about the picture, lol!

Speaking of Nathan, he continues to make his parents laugh even living on the other side of the world!

Our crate made it here from America!  Yay!  It was so fun to find some of our things that we had almost forgotten about!

We had a small tub of (more) legos--the kids were so excited because we had totally forgotten that it was on the crate!

Also on that crate?  A rug!  It may seem like a small thing, but having a rug makes our home so much more homey!  And...it totally smelled like an American store!  Emily and Halle loved smelling it...haha, we were all sniffing it :)

Speaking of Emily...she's such an amazing aunt to our kids!  We are so thankful for coworkers who love our kids!  

It's pretty pointless to straighten our hair here...it just get frizzy and it is SO hot that we need to put it up anyway!  But Emily did it for my girls anyway :) 

Speaking of some awesome coworkers...we love these guys!

Even though we haven't decided for sure on a tribe yet, we have been working on tribal house plans.  Thankfully we have an architect right here on our base, who has worked hard to help us draw up the blueprints!  Thanks Jay!

Lately we have been so intently talking with our teammates and leadership about future plans...and we realized that we NEED to be intentional to keep our kids in the loop! We have always said we want to have a family ministry and we still feel strongly about that! So we took Kaine and Halle out tonight and had a good, honest heart to heart conversation with them. We were encouraged because they were very open with us...about their excitement but also fears. Our prayer for all of our kids is they they will have an intense burden for the lost and that they will see that Jesus is so worth it and so much MORE beautiful and appealing than all the comforts in life! Like we learned from some wise friends--we are NOT sacrificing our family...we are sacrificing AS a family! I love that and I pray that our kids will always feel a part of this! #makinghimfamousinpng

Last but not least...we took a five day break up to Goroka (in the highlands...land of cool nights and hot-but-not-humid days!)  It was a much needed break, and I think Halle's face in this picture sums it up:  pure joy :) 

 Layla and Daisy got a chance to go to school up there!  We were staying on NTM's main base called Lapilo...there is a school there, and this was Layla's and Daisy's first time getting the "real" school experience!  Kaine and Halle wanted to stay home from school since they were on a "break"...lol.  Such smart kids :)  They had a good point though! So we let them stay home.

Our kids had a great time reconnecting with some friends from missionary training in Missouri!  The girls all had a blast playing with rhinoceros beetles one day...yuck!  Halle doesn't look too sure about sitting beside them :)

Thank you all for praying for us!  We need your prayers, and we will keep you posted on what the Lord is doing with our team here in PNG!