What we are up to.

Forgive me for not updating sooner. Mark pointed out yesterday that we have not posted pictures of any bugs in a while so before I give an update on where we are now I would like to point you to THIS post so you can remember the creepy crawlies we have here in Nam.

 Now I will give you a minute to get over the shock…

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Now what we have been up to!
I have been staying home with Reese. I never thought I would be a stay at home mother, but I am finding that being a mother is something I was born to do. I love spending time with Reese. I feel like I am still in some kind of honeymoon phase with him. Everything he does amazes me. I look at him sleeping next to me right now and I am again overwhelmed with the huge blessing that he is. I get out of the house on Sunday for church, on Tuesday for a YWAM family meeting and Wednesday nights we attend a cell group. We try to have a date night on Thursdays too. I also try to keep up with anything I can do from home to help with what goes on outside of the house 🙂

David spent the first part of January hiring new teachers and staff members for CHS. A big part of that was searching for someone to replace him. He found that person a few weeks ago and he has been spending the last two weeks training her. He also is getting things at school in order so that our transition out of there and into our own ministry will be smooth. So lots of paper work and meetings!

In other news we are busy getting everything together for my visa application so that we can visit the USA in May-July this year. We will have limited time in Colorado and Missouri, but if you would like to visit with us we would love to see you, just let us know! A huge part of our furlough this year will be raising support and spreading the news on our ministry here in Namibia. We will also be looking for potential recruits to join our team out here. Look for more info on here, and in our upcoming newsletter. If you don’t get the newsletter then you can just leave a comment on here and we will get that straightened out!

So there you have it, a vintage bug and news on us. We cannot wait to see you all in the summer!

Wrapping paper and hot fudge!

Last night some ladies from school came over to wrap the children’s Christmas presents. That’s right, ALL 108 students get a book and a gift, and they all have to be wrapped. Last year I did not get to be part of this wrapping party, so I was pretty excited to get to help this year.
Marye, from Holland, Jodie, from Canada, Naleke from Kenya, and myself put on some Christmas music, set up a wrapping station, ordered some pizza and set off! I thought it would take at least 189723 hours to wrap that many presents. But we set up a good system I cut tape, Naleke and Marye wrapped, and Jodie sorted the gifts. There was a great selection, from board games to a couple of bedazzlers.
It was fun to talk about the kids as their gifts were wrapped. And to listen to Jodie and Marye talk about past Chrstmasses. How they used to have to buy a few gifts, to today when it is a whole operation.
We stopped for pizza after a while.The pizza guy took forever to show up though!

We then had home made sundaes, I made some hot fudge. Probably the best part of the whole get together, loads of hot fudge.
So right now there is one week of classes left, and then the last week of school. The last week will be full of Christmas parties, Disney movies, and the Christmas play.
It is crazy that we have been with the school for so long now. Pray for the leadership of the school, David has been interviewing some new people to fill the open teaching spots, and the open spots in the administrative team. It has been a fulfilling and challenging year, and we have seen God do some great things in the lives of the kids, and our own!

Encouragement.

There seems to be a problem at school. The kids like to tease each other all the time.  I think perhaps it used to be fun teasing, but it has gotten to the point where kids are tearing each other down. They are quick to point out flaws and problems. This has left some of the classes in a bad place, especially the older class. It seems the kids have become experts at hurting one another. David decided to focus his discipleship classes on encouragement and love. In the first week he asked the kids what their ideal class would be like, what it would look like to love one another. The kids came up with great answers, but the challenge is to get them to take it to heart and to act out on what they are saying. He challenged them to come up with a few encouraging things to say about their class mates. There were some rules though, they were not allowed to just say “Joe is nice”  “Jane is pretty”  they had to really think about it. This was last week. He said that is went ok, but that it seemed that some kids really were getting it.
Yesterday he came home from school with a great report. When he he walked into class he asked them how their week had been, and EVERY single student in the class gushed about a single boy who had gone out of his way to encourage everyone in the class. This boy is a known trouble maker, he likes to point out thing other kids are doing wrong to get them in trouble. But the kids could not stop saying how this week he had encouraged each and every one of them. He is helping to turn this class around. David said that many of the other kids now feel like they also want to be like Roberto.
I think it is important for us as adults, and especially as Christians to hold each other up, and to go out of our way to encourage one another. It is such a simple and basic principle, but it is easy to get caught up in our own issues and to forget that there are people around us who need to be encouraged.

Not being at school has been difficult for me, but hearing things like this makes my heart happy. It is amazing to see how one child can make a difference just by pointing out the good rather than the bad. David is doing an amazing job with those kids. Please pray for him, and them. There is only four weeks left in this school year. Next year some of the kids in this class will move on to new schools. And David will not be teaching discipleship next year. This is his last few weeks to really make an impact on these boys and girls. Pray that they will catch a hold of the things that he is teaching them, and that this encouragement bug will bite all of them!

Eyes to see.

Remeber my post about Ricardo moving to America for his surgery? Well his surgery was done last week, and it was a great success.
This is an email I received from Suzanne this past week about his surgery:

It is still strange to think of Ricardo living in America for now, but we are in awe of how this all came together. I am excited to see what God has planned for this little boy, pray for him as he is now in recovery and having to adjust to live in a new country.

Today I have been reminded over and over again of the love and sovereignty of God. His plans for us are more than we can hope or imagine. Ricardo now has the eyesight to see what God is doing around him the eyesight to witness the beauty and glory of what God has made. C.S Lewis said that “I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but by it I can see everything else.”

Our prayer for you today is that you will see today, whether by your physical eyes or your heart, that God is good, and that He loves you more than you will ever be able to fathom.

Dr. Jim and his wife Molly. He did the surgery FOR FREE!

Ricardo with Suzanne and Dr. Jim.

Ricardo in America!

One of our students, Ricardo, has left Namibia for the USA. He has needed an eye surgery for the last few years now. He needs a partial eye transplant, as his left eye is slowly losing sight. An American donor had said that he would pay for the surgery to be done in Namibia, but it has taken almost two years of going in circles trying to find a dr. who could do the surgery. Finally it was decided that it would be easier to just take him to America and have it done there. After the surgery he will be staying with the Miller family in Boston, they visited CHS earlier this year, and he will be going to school with their boys.

We had a small farewell party for him at the YWAM base with the rest of his class. The kids seemed happy and excited for him, but also sad. Especially Chris seemed like he did not know how to deal with the fact that his best friend was leaving. Pray for him as he goes on this journey, and for the Miller family, and also for the kids that have been left behind.

Cross Cultural Guesstures :)

Today David played Guesstures in his Discipleship class. It was pretty funny, but also very interesting. It is amazing to see how the kids act out the words on the cards. At first I thought is was going to be a disaster when I saw how the kids were acting out the words. It seemed like “physical gibberish” to me, but the kids were getting it!
It was interesting to see the Namibian culture come through so strong on such a simple game. To my eyes “cat” looked like a dying chicken, “eating” looked like rapid face punching, “monkey” looked like a chicken dance, but “pound” was one of my favorites. The kid acting out “pound” was acting like he was pounding maize with a wooden maize pounder Of course here pound does not mean weight but making dinner. I would have failed if I was trying to mime pound.
David and I did each take a turn. It was not pretty. I mimed “mail box” but the kids stared at me with confused faces. Afterwards I realized it is because they don’t have mail service here, only PO boxes. I bet most of our kids have never even seen a mail box, or received a letter. And I know that they have never sent a letter. It seemed to take the kids much longer to guess words we were miming, if at all.

I learned today how important it is to understand a culture to properly communicate a message. I was not able to communicate mailbox as it is not part of the kids lives. In the same way we are here to communicate the love of a heavenly Father to people who have mostly not even known they fathers, and most of them who have know fathers know them as violent drunks.

I think I am shown to that God’s plan is perfect. If we came blazing into Namibia ready to plant churches without knowing the basic culture of people who live here we would have failed! So even if some days we feel frustrated by not being in a place of planting churches yet, we are in a season of preparation right now. And it is probably some of the most important preparation we will ever have. Please pray for us this week, to learn all we need to in this time, and grow where we need to!

First day of the last term.

Today has been full! We got up early this morning to meet with Brian and Pam Kinghorn, the directors of YWAM Namibia, to discuss our future in Namibia. I know I keep giving hints as to what that will be, but I don’t want to announce anything before we know for sure, so sorry but soon!

We then came over to the school where I have spent the day doing little things that come up on the first day of school, including first aid 🙂 David has been teaching P.E non stop today. From 10 until 2:30 he has back to back P.E classes. I do not envy him! It is so hot outside, and as it is the first day of school the kids have been quite, um, energetic.
 
We will have a staff meeting at the end of the school day, that usually lasts until 4 or 5pm and then we have to make a mad dash to the ministry of education to pick up some paper work. (Apparently all our teachers have to take a state wide English test tomorrow.) And yes, we were only told this today, it is a 3 hour exam, so now we are scrambling to try and find something to do with a 100 kids while their teachers are being tested. All and all a normal day around the school.

Reese has been kicking a lot today, I think he likes me being a little more active. Also a lady in the community when seeing my baby bump jumped up and down, giggled, and then ran over and kissed my belly. She is known to have a drinking problem, but I think she was quite sober today. It has been fun to see how people react to the news of us having a baby. I am already praying for God to use Reese as a way to open doors in the community and in the hearts of the people here.
I left my camera at home today, oops, so no pictures, but at least you have some idea of what we have done today.
As always we need and appreciate your constant prayers!

monday, MONDAY!

We are back in school, this week is teacher training and preparation and the kids will be back next week. This year has just flown by! As we start the last term of the year the weather is warming up, and we are getting ready to graduate the first grade 7 class from CHS.
Be in prayer for the new term, and keep your eyes on this space for more updates about the new term!

Spring break!

School is out! It is spring break for us, finally. We have two weeks off, then a week of teacher training, so it is not a super long break but it is welcomed. David has been working really hard, as has all the staff and teachers at CHS. We are going to the coast for a few days with Marye and her parents who are visiting from Holland, and we plan on working on the nursery too. I will be half way through my pregnancy in about two weeks! HALF WAY! Also I would like some book suggestions, as we are kind of out of the loop on books here.
I have not written much about the school as I have been on bed rest, but next term I will be back to school twice a week! I am very excited about this. David said he would like to write a post about his discipleship class, so keep an eye open for that.

A thousand gift.

It has been a while since I participated in a thousand gifts, but I am still a ways off from reaching a thousand, so I should probably get on it!

#66 X games outreach.

Last weekend out church hosted an outreach with an X-games theme. The church we are attending has quite outreach focused. They had short term trip to Angola earlier this year, and they are planning a trip to Europe! The church feels called to reaching out the youth here in the city. Namibia has a lot of young people, but not much for them to do outside of school. So this leaves a great need and opportunity for the church to fill. The church has a skate park on the premises and I believe they do skating lessons throughout the week. They also run a school.
So David has two kids in his discipleship class who have shown interest in wanting to become Christians. He has been taking time with them to further disciple them, we thought the outreach at church would be a fun opportunity and the boys loved it! They got to try and skate, and the speaker for the weekend was a old-Sprinkbok rugby player. It was a great weekend for us to get to know the people at our church better and for the David to get some more discipleship time with the boys.

Pray for the kids in his discipleship class, one of the boys who is ready is being held back by a hesitant parent. This is giving us the chance to reach out to his parent too!!

#67 People.
As I mentioned above we got to know some amazing people at church. Now that we are having a baby we seem to fit in more with some of the older couples, although I guess David is thirty and I am 28 so maybe we are one of the older couples! Ha! They are a wonderful group of people. They were so excited for us when hearing about our pregnancy and then praying for us on the spot. One lady said we could have her baby seat as she is done with it, and then prayed for us too! It was great to get out of the CHS circle and meet some other people. I also look forward to having the support and input from ladies who have already had babies.

#70 Second trimester
I made it to the second trimester and thought that everything was int he clear! Ha! After the weekend at church I woke up in the middle of the night with severe cramps. The next day I could not straighten up, it felt horrible. I called my dr. and his receptionist just told me to lay down until I felt better. (quality care!)
 Well the cramps continued for a few days and I was terrified that something was wrong. On Thursday they began to subside, probably thanks to the bed rest, and because of David who has been taking the best care of me! On Friday I had an appointment with my dr. he barely even looked up when I mentioned the cramps to him, and he said “maybe it was constipated.”
When he put the wand on my tummy for the ultrasound I was terrified that something would be horribly wrong, but nothing was! In fact baby Echols was jumping around like a springbokkie. The dr. was struggling to get a clear shot of the baby. He did print us a 3d picture but it is just a blurry mess as our baby was doing Zumba. We received our genetic screening results back too. Initially we were told we have a 1:300 chance of Down Syndrome, but after adding the blood results our chance is now 1:13000. He may have said 30 000 but I was smiling too hard to hear properly. The rest of the results were good too!
The best part of the appointment was that my due date was moved up to the 21st of Jan, which was my original due date. This means that I am now 16 weeks along! Since finding out about the pregnancy I have been waiting for week 16. I am not sure what made it the magic number, but now I feel more relaxed and confident. I am ready to shout from the rooftops that I am having a baby! I keep crying thinking about what it will be like to hold our baby for the first time. David is also been getting excited about the nursery. We are quite excited about the nursery theme we have picked!!

After this last appointment we have also decided to switch doctors, we will now be going to one who is in network (this should save us about $7000), and who has time to see patients and talk to them. Dr. V who helped us to get pregnant is a very busy man and will only talk to patients during scheduled appointments. Please pray that we find the right dr. who will know how to deal with the fertility issues that we had, and who is just awesome.

#71 Friends.
We had a birthday party for Marye at our house a few weeks ago. A bunch of people came over, I got to make this peanut butter cake. There was almost a stampede when people all tried to get a piece! A fun day!
And no, there are no peanut butter cups here. I made them from scratch. So if you are thinking about sending a care package make sure to add some peanut butter cups. And a Big mac.

#72 Linda Spilman
Linda Spilman has been sending us letters for months now. It has gotten to the point where I can count of finding a letter from her whenever I go to the mailbox. She tells us of things going on back home and even includes the church bulletin and sometimes newspaper articles. She encourages us with words and with love. I cannot tell you how much it means to us, and missionaries all over the world, to receive things from home. Linda has made us feel loved and remembered, prayed for and cared for! Thank you Linda, we are truly grateful for you, for the time you take to write to us, and for the blessing that you are to us!!