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!

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.