At ten months…

First let me say that the best laid plans sometimes go awry. I really want to do a Sunday post, but the internet issue on the base had really been has really put a damper on my plans! I spend most days at home with the baby while David goes to the office. I desperately miss blogging, and hopefully in the near future it can be part of my life again.

Anyway. I am in the office today, so I am going to try and get some posts up right now. Starting with one on the Reesenator!

Time is passing by much too quickly, Reese is TEN months old now. We are starting to think about his first birthday party, it is just ridiculous how quickly time is passing.
At our last appointment, which was over 5 weeks ago Reese weighed in at 20.9 pounds. He also fits into his 12-18 month clothes! Most people comment on what a big boy he is. He is thriving! Our home is filled with sounds of his giggles.

When he was just over nine months old his first two teeth came out, he still only has those two. His eyes are darkening to a brownish green, I think he has his daddy’s eyes. His hair is growing out to be white blond with red tips. It seems redder is pictures, but it really is more blonde.

Sleep has been awful! I think the furlough really messed us up. Before we left Reese was sleeping up to six hours at night. Now we are lucky to get two hours out of him. At first we thought it was just the jetlag, but it just has not gotten any better. I think he was just too confused by all the traveling around and all the different beds. Now he falls asleep in our bed and stays there for a while, we then move him to the swing when he starts whining. Pray for us, we really would like for him to sleep more. Two night ago he only woke up 8 times, which was a good night for us. I think I would caution other people about traveling with babies before their sleep schedules are set.

Speaking of sleeping, we do have a fairly easy bed time routine. Reese eats at 6:30, bath at 7 and then is nurses himself to sleep by 7:30. He loves to eat. This little boy has never met a food he did not love. He will suck the soft part out of peas and then stick his tongue out with the skin on it. He also still loves bath time. He is getting more squirmy though. Last night he stood up and stepped out of the baby tub. He is so fast these days! He can pull up without an issue and is now taking chances by  letting things go to see if he can stand up by himself. He cruises around the room just fine, and has started to climb stairs.

The best development has been his new best friend. We got a 4 month old puppy from the SPCA a few weeks ago. We named his Sheriff Rick Grimes. Reese and Grimes spend hours together, they pass toys to each other and tickle each other. The other day Reese was cracking up at Grimes. They are just great for each other!

Sunday snapshots!

Watching the first Bronco game of the season!

Alastair’s second birthday party on the base. We have a lot of kids living on the base now.

We picked up a lady hitchhiking to church, this was the picture I got. Did not want to seem like a creeper…

The obligatory Reese picture!

Communion at church on Sunday.

David’s bed side table with all our security stuff.

Fire!

This past week there was fire on the base! Whenever that happens all the men jump in cars, and race off to the scene to put the fire out. They take buckets of water, and some have the little water back pack things. They sometimes have to run up and down hills to get to the fire. The fire brigade was there, but out here in Nam, and in the hills all they had were blankets. So the firemen were slapping at the flames with the blankets while the men from our farm sprayed with the water. In no time they had it taken care of.
From where I was I only saw the smoke plumes.
Pray we don’t have any more fire, and that they rainy season gets started soon!

Sunday Snapshots

I think I am going to try to post some snapshots from our week every Sunday night. That way you can feel like you were right here in the middle of the action 😉
This week is skinny pickings since I only had this bright idea on Friday. So I guess this is a snap shot of the weekend.
In other news, things are going great here. We are slowly getting the office ready and will soon be starting the first discipleship classes.

The first glimpse of spring, and yes, those thorns are on most trees…

David and Marye working on the bathroom overhaul.

Some of the succulents in our garden.

Saturday at the watering hole.

The view from my kitchen.

Reese’s nine month shot.

Our new home.

I thought it might be interesting to show off some pictures of the place we now live. We live on the YWAM farm, or base, 20 km outside of town. The farm has over 11 homes filled with families, and singles, from all over the world. All who are doing ministry in some capacity in Windhoek.
There are cows and goats, and baboons, snakes, eagles, warthogs, leopards, kudus, all sorts of birds, and a scary amount of creepy crawlies!
We love living here, there is such a great sense of community, and now with all the families with kids on the base I have a great resource if I have any questions.

View from out front door.

Road up to our house, past the corral.

Right side of the house, the washing machine stays outside.

Reese checking out the baby goats.

Our house, you can see out awesome porch. (left side)

View to the right of our house. You can see the dorms and dining hall.

Sweet home Namibia!

We made it home. About three weeks ago. So it is high time for me to tend to my lonely little blog. We live out on the YWAM farm, where there is limited net so I am going to have to blog when we are in town. We do have an office at the BK site in Katutura and I plan on going in at least twice a week, so look forward to more blog posts in the coming weeks.
We are finally in a place where things are getting back to normal. Or at least our new normal with a new ministry and living out on the farm. Reese has adjusted to the time changes, but is now teething and he is still not used to the “new” place he is in so we are still having some rough nights. He has never slept through the night yet, but last week we had some nights where he was up at least once every hour.
Things at the base (the ywam farm is called a base) are going great! We have a bunch of new neighbors. The Hunters’ son and daughter in law, along with their three kids, moved onto the base. Christian Hunter is a cardiologist and is teaching in the brand new medical school in Namibia. There is also a South African couple with two kids, they live in the house behind ours. They are a great resource as they have lived in the bush before and Quinton seems to know a little bit about a lot of things!
We have spent the last week furnishing the office, we still have to buy a few things but it should be ready before long. We hope to find a little couch to make it a little more comfortable in here for when we have meetings with people. We have also been dreaming about some new ideas to further the ministry here. I am hoping to be able to teach a cake decorating class. It would be such a great way to teach someone a skill that could take them farther in life. We were at the mall a few days ago and a child’s birthday party was happening at the restaurant we were at. They had two cakes, from bakeries, and they were just awful, think cake wrecks awful. So I know there is a market for it! I will just need to get some cake decorating supplies. Anyone know if Wilton donates?
We were welcomed back with much love and open arms on both the YWAM base and at the church that we attend. It was a great feeling to be back home!
We enjoyed out time in America. Time spent with family is priceless, we got to meet our new sister in law, see our awesome (and totally gorgeous nieces), Reese absolutely fell in love with his aunt Candace, and best of all Reese got to spend lots of time with both sets of his grandparents.
Also meeting with supporters and churches was a huge blessing. After two years on the field getting to see a lot of you face to face was very encouraging, and a huge blessing to us. Now we are waiting for some of you to come on over here!

Meeting Reese

It was a sweet moment when Reese finally got to meet the Reese he was named after. I had to hold back tears. We then had the absolute privilege of spending the afternoon just chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Reese about everything from the ministry in Namibia to their latest family reunion. We were absolutely blessed!

SRCC

Hi! We are still here, out in the hot and dry USA, and we are busy busy busy!
I thought I would put up some quick posts with some details from our travels. We landed in CO on May 9 and we spent a few weeks in Colorado laying low and resting up. Then we went out to MO for four weeks to raise support, meet with people and catch up with as many friends as we could squeeze in. Now we are back in CO getting ready to spent several weeks with the good people from Pikes Peak Christian Church.
During our visit in MO we visited Southern Randolph Christian Chapel. Our old stomping grounds!
It was great to see so many familiar faces, but the kids from church seemed to have grown much more than just two years!
David preached the sermon, he spoke about the Church and how it should impact all aspects of a community. After the main service we both had the opportunity to present on the work we had done in the last two years. It was so much fun to get to share some pictures and stories about our adventures, but more than that it was great to finally share gace to face with out supporters what God has been doing in Namibia.
SRCC feels like a family, probably since everyone knows everyone else, so presenting was very laid back, and we had A LOT of questions, and no one minded when we went over by 20 minutes.

Thank you so much SRCC, you guys are amazing and we are so blessed and lucky to have you supporting us! We love you all and will see you in 2014!

Greetings from MO!

We have been in the USA for almost five weeks now, this furlough is going by much faster than we could ever have anticipated!
We spent the first three weeks in Colorado, we were able to rest and take some time to help Reese adjust to the new time zone, and all the new faces. We did get to go to the church services at PPCC, we were quite impressed with the new building, it is very nice. But more than that, it was great to meet some people face to face. Over the last two years I have had the opportunity to meet people from PPCC on facebook and even though we have been able to pray for each other, see each others pictures and other such things nothing compares to meeting face to face, and being able to share a hug.
Mark invited us out to the Colorado Springs YWAM base for a worship and prayer meeting. Their base is in a re-purposed Hilton hotel. So it is quite different from our Namibian farm base. The first thing that struck me about their base is all the kids and babies. Mark had said that we did not have to worry about Reese ebing noisy as there were a lot of babies there. No kidding! I wanted to take some pictures, but I did not want to seem like a weirdo so sorry no pictures of the mounds of babies and heaps of toddlers!
David was able to share about who we are and what we are doing. It was great to have people surround us and pray for the work in Namibia. We are so excited about the future, but there are some days when we question our sanity. So it was so good to have people who work and have worked around the world come around us to encourage and pray.
We then left for MO, we had an eventful car trip, and we have had some busy days. I will write more about what we have been up to, and add some pictures later this week. Gotta run now, we are off to the CCCB campus to hopefully see some of our professors, and then we have dinner with the Finchers! 🙂

Tears and Joy, the difference in a year.

Picture from that morning.

A year ago today I was getting ready for church with a heavy heart. I was up early in the morning after spending the night making peace with God. The Thursday before we had been told that our medicated cycle had not worked, we were not pregnant, and that we had a long road ahead of us. I had spent the night in tears, praying and surrendering. It was a long painful night at the tail end of two long and very painful years.

Anyway I got up, and on a whim decided to take a home pregnancy test. People who have dealt with infertility know what I am talking about. The hundreds of pregnancy tests, staring at it from all angles, even taking it apart and shining a flash light on it to see if a magical second line shows up.
So this test was different. A second line showed up, after a negative blood test. Without dragging the story out too much, I can say that we were shocked. David tried to look at the test but I kept grabbing it out of his hands. We went to church in a daze, after I took three more tests. They all came up positive.

I remember feeling the black cloud lifting, like I had been waiting to breath, our morning had finally broken.
May 15th will always be a day that I remember as a day God worked a miracle in us. The dr. said we had less than a percent chance, Ha! What did he know?!
This is a day to celebrate!

Can you see the little line that changed our lives?