"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!

Simple Living.

Another new class that we just started.  It is called Simple Living, and it will "expose us to living with less than we are used to" in the good old USA.  It lasts about two weeks.

Here are some of what this class will include (starting tomorrow):

• Cooking from scratch only.  Yikes!
• No appliances...yikes again!  
• this includes kitchen appliances (toaster, microwave, blender, electric mixer, coffee maker...etc)
• also other appliances (like hair straighteners, blow dryers, etc etc etc)
• No technology at all--internet, ipads, texting, emailing, movies...nothing.  Phone calls are okay :)
• Lights out between 8pm and 7am every day!  We will use candles...kind of sounds fun!  
• This simulates tribal locations, which rely on solar power.
• A four day camping trip!  We are really excited for this.  This will include:
• hiking to find our campsite using a gps with coordinates they will give us.
• working as a team with some of our classmates to help each other build our "tents".
• Said "tents" are actually shelters made only from tarps.
• we will have many classes during the camping days.  These classes will take place by our campsite, and will be really practical skills.  I will definitely blog about this later!

So...we will be offline for 2 weeks!  I will be excited to update you all later!!

And just for fun...I took this picture the other day :)  Every morning (first thing, before childcare starts for Layla and Daisy) we gather with our classmates to pray for missionaries around the world.  We pray in small groups for about 15 minutes.  When I looked over and saw Layla and Daisy praying like this, I just had to get up and take a picture :)

Have a good two weeks, friends!!

a weekend with twelve kiddos!

We had some more friends visit us last weekend!  

This semester we have really seen  God pour His grace on us as He brings these visitors from IN to encourage us.  We do not deserve it at all, so we really do see it as God being so gracious to us.

This was a special weekend, because these families have so many kids!  If you add in our four, there were twelve kids altogether (minus Bodie, who we all missed!!) --so as you can imagine, our kids were ecstatic, looking forward to it for sooo long!

These four girls...all really close in age, and they are little best friends.  I hope and pray that they will always stay best friends!!

 (Daisy, Adalynn, Layla and Sunny)

We had some fun with glowsticks...

We took advantage of the guesthouse (where our friends stayed)--there is a HUGE kitchen and so much room for the kids to run and play.

The creek area was a hit with the kids...

and the adults!

The boys played "toilet tag"...

Here is Nathan, waiting for someone to "flush" him...haha!  Who thinks up this stuff anyway?  What happened to good ol freeze tag?  Of course, the boys think toilet tag is way more fun :)

The kids had slumber parties...believe me, these girls took a LONG time to go to sleep!  But they hardly ever have a chance to do this, and they had a lot of fun, so it is totally worth it in my opinion :)

We got our "baby fix" with sweet baby Brenna :)

Of course, we had to visit Ha Ha Tonka to see the castle...the kids loved it!

So thankful for these ladies in my life!

The dads did a devotion with all the kids at the castle.  Nick talked about the guy who built the castle, how the man put all of his resources into building this huge structure, just to live in himself...and it ended up in flames as there was a huge fire.  Now it is just in ruins.  There were some great spiritual parallels there!   

Nathan ended the devotion by putting firecrackers inside objects and comparing it to living for temporal things...for example:  "Hey kids living for sports is like putting a firecracker into this piece of banana...lets see what will happen to the banana!"  Of course, the banana is blown to smithereens...and then at the end of the devo, he put a firecracker into a crack in the rocks of the castle...and he said "Hey kids, lets see what it's like to live for Jesus!"  And of course the castle wall stood firm :)  These dads are so creative!!

We ended our weekend with a great game of "Chubby Bunny"...haha!  It was so funny. 

The kids begged us moms to try it...it was pretty funny :)  Amy won!  She is one talented mama :)

Thanks, friends, for visiting us!  We cannot tell you how much we appreciate you driving your families all the way here to see us.  We love you guys!!

putting our training into practice...

We are finishing up a class that makes us say...WOW.

This class is called CLA Practicum.  Here's what that stands for:

CLA= Culture and Language Acquisition

Practicum= putting it into practice!

So these past few months, we have been in lots of classes regarding new cultures, foreign languages, teamwork, worldview of other cultures, how to be intentional, time management, church planting issues...etc etc etc.

Sometimes it is easy to sit through all those classes and think, wow.  This is all such amazing teaching, but how will I ever remember it??

It can be overwhelming, and the truth is, we do forget a lot of what we have been taught.

So this class that we are finishing up right now has been six weeks of putting all of that teaching into practice!

I will try to describe the class in a nutshell.  Basically, a lot of our teachers are involved in recreating a foreign tribal culture.  This culture actually exists in the world, so it is based on real customs, beliefs, etc.  Almost all of the teachers who are involved have been overseas and did just what we are being trained to do.  So they know a lot, and we are so priveliged to learn from them!

Just a few things that we learned from this simulation:

• Language skills
• Learning culture (this one should be all caps, underlined and italics...it is HUGE!!)
• Talking through how this culture will affect Bible teaching and church planting
• Teamwork!
• Humility :)

We would go into the mock "village" and have sessions with our "language helper".  It is so difficult for me to describe this class to you guys, so forgive me...just trust me that we LEARNED.  SO.  MUCH.

Here we are, in one of our culture/language sessions with our helper

One of the many team discussions that we had regarding this tribal culture...a very VERY small taste of what we will someday be doing with our teammates in our "real" tribe.

Thanks for your prayers!  We feel them.

grandpa and grandma came to town!!

I can't believe our weekend with my parents is already over.  We have looked forward to it for weeks!  And now they are back in IN, but it's okay...we enjoyed our weekend with them soooo much.

Our kids were anticipating the arrival of Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jan...and they arrived last Thursday night!  Happy day :)  It was so so so wonderful to see them!

Can you tell that we were happy they visited?  :)

So anyway, the weather was perfect all weekend.  It was warm enough to go down to the lake...

And it was perfect weather for a walk to the creek...

Kaine's highlight of the weekend was spending time in the creek with my dad, catching crawdads and turtles.

My parents took our kids to Ozark Land (an overpriced souvenir store), which they were thrilled about!  They always beg us to go to Ozark Land, and we always tell them: "wait until your grandparents visit."  Haha :)  Sorry, mom and dad!

We went to a very cool restaurant, which we have never been to before.  It was a kids' paradise, complete with a beach, playground and a bouncy house!

We attempted a family picture, which didn't turn out great because of the lighting.  But I thought this one was pretty hilarious of Kaine :)

Here's another of my favorites...haha!  Love the funny faces :)

Mom and Dad, thanks so much for coming to visit.  We had such a great time with you guys--it went way too fast!  Love you and appreciate you!

highlights from the past week...

We did a family picnic at the local state park...so much fun!  I guess that was on Labor Day, so technically that wasn't in the past week.  Nathan and Kaine had the "manly" job of grilling the meat...don't they look manly??

We have been supremely blessed by this amazing young lady...Aubry is a staff kid here at the mtc, and she loooooooves kids!  Which works out really nice for us!  :)  She has been babysitting for our kids, and just loving on them in general.  Thanks Aubry Joy!  We appreciate you!

This was kind of a joke...we went on a "family date" to Buffalo Wild Wings...um NOT the best date place.  We should have known!  Not only were there a bazillion tv's in the place, but they brought EACH of our kids their very own tablet, filled with games!  Ha...as you can see in the picture, there wasn't a lot of family interaction...but don't worry, we didn't let them play them for too long :)

I have recently been asked a few times if Layla and Daisy are twins!  They are really about the same size...I just think they are really cute together :)

Daisy wanted to "cut the grass" for us the other day :)

We had a fun time playing Extreme Croquet the other night with our small group leader, Larry...I will have to blog about our amazing small group sometime :)  And by the way, Extreme Croquet is just basically an awesome croquet course in the middle of the woods.  Larry engineered the whole thing...thanks Larry!

 A classmate of ours, Craig, taught Kaine how to juggle last night.  Craig is a pretty amazing juggler...like, he can juggle three flaming torches!  Wow.

See?  Bad quality picture, but you get the idea.  Our kids were in awe :)

We had our first official "hot chocolate day".  Wow, yesterday fall weather hit us with a vengeance!  Thankfully, it warmed up today.  Phew.  I wasn't quite ready for that yet!

Today, we went to a couple of Mennonite bulk food stores, and had lunch with this amazing family (and our small group leaders, Larry and Carol.  I am so bummed I didn't get a picture with them too!)  But anyway, David and Emily and their sweet kids are such a blessing to us.  Love these guys!

Can't believe how fast these weeks are flying by!  Craziness.  Love ya all!

learning to create an alphabet.

When we think about the ministry we are being trained to do, parts of it seem a bit overwhelming.  Or I should say very overwhelming!

Learning an unwritten language (no one else in the world speaks it) and then figuring out how that language works, creating an alphabet and teaching the people how to read and write it are some of those overwhelming tasks.

Phew.  If I think abour it too much, I start to feel stressed and (you guessed it)...overwhelmed!

The training we are receiving here at the mtc is so good though.

We recently finished a Phonemics class.  In a (very small) nutshell, phonemics is basically creating an alphabet.

However, it isn't as easy as it sounds!  In creating an alphabet, we will have to analyze all the sounds that the tribal people make when they speak, and figure out which sounds are significant to them.  And then, figure out which of those sounds need a letter in the alphabet.  This is kind of confusing to explain, so here is an English example:

Check out the English letter /t/.  Here are some English words that contain the letter /t/:

top

stop

letter

kitten

hit

To the average English speaker, in all of these words we are saying the same letter--/t/.  But in reality, we are actually saying FIVE separate sounds.  Try it!  Say the words out loud to see the differences.  The sounds we are making are actually: aspirated t, unaspirated t, flapped r, glottal, and an unreleased t.  But to our minds, we are saying the letter /t/ and we don't hear or notice the difference!  Therefore, most of these sounds are not significant to English speakers--in the alphabet, we just use the letter /t/ for them all.

Another piece of this Phonemics puzzle is the fact that an alphabet should be consistent.  The English language is a terrible example of this.  I will show you why: check out how many ways the [u] sound (as in too) can be spelled in English:

too

to

two

through

you

shoe

blue

flute

suit

new

flu

How confusing is that???  I pity the poor people who have to learn English as a second language.  It would be brutal.  The principle here is: ONE and ONLY ONE symbol for EACH SOUND!  

Hopefully that all makes some sense!  Nathan and I think it is really fascinating.  We are so thankful to get this training, otherwise we wouldn't know what in the world we are doing someday!

We also had a Literacy class, in which we learned how to develop a literacy program for our tribe.  Nathan and I even created our very own Literacy primer!  It was fun--it was great to prove to ourselves that we are capable of this stuff!

There ya have it.  Just a small glimpse into what we are learning.  Thanks for your prayers and support!