Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Home...

Well I apologize for taking so long to give an update. It has been very busy and I keep sitting down to do it and get distracted for some reason. We arrived back in the US on May 24th, but spent 3 days at SIM head quarters doing debriefing and then we spent another 5 days with my sister in South Carolina. We arrived back in Grand Rapids on June 2nd.
We have now moved into a house where we will be staying during our time here. One of our supporting churches is letting us use their parsonage. It is nice to have our own place and be able to put clothes away and not live out of a suitcase any longer. The kids have plenty of room to run around and play.
We have enjoyed spending time with family and friends and going to church. The kids are getting spoiled by grandparents, playing with cousins, making new friends, and they love their sunday school classes. So far everyone has transitioned really well. We are getting adjusted the light and late nights here. In Mozambique it is always dark by six and life shuts down. There is no such thing as a night life there. Karis still every night complains she has to go to bed so much earlier here, because even though she truely goes to bed quite a bit later here, it is still "morning time" here to her because of how light it is.
We have a busy summer planned and we found out while at SIM, we need to do some more support raising while we are here. Our residency visas for Mozambique went from $60 a person to $600 a person. So that is $3000 a year for our family just to live there. We need to raise $250 a month more support just to cover this cost. Also, we sold our vehicle before we left Mozambique and plan to buy a new one when we arrive in Maputo and then drive it back up to Lichinga. So we need to raise additional funds for a vehicle. Our goal is somewhere between $15,000-$18,000, since a 4x4 vehicle is required for the roads we need to drive on.
For our upcoming schedule, we will be speaking at a VBS at Northland Baptist Church, July 11-15. We will be speaking at Calvary Church of Muskegon July 23rd and 24th. We will keep you updated when we will be at other churches as the time gets closer and we get them on our calendar.
Here are some pictures of our time here so far. Sorry no pictures with the George family yet. We are going on our vacation with them next week and I will have plenty of pictures to add of them when we get back. These are mostly from our time in South Carolina visiting my sister.
This is Karis and Ethan, my sister's oldest (4yrs)
Kallen and Jamin, my brother's youngest(8 months)
Traeger, Kallen, and Brielle, my brother's oldest (2yrs)
Grandma and Kallen
Grandma and Karis
Papa and Traeger(in matching swimsuits)
We also were able to get together with my cousin Sarah, who lives in Charlotte, NC. It was great to get us all together again, with 9 children ages 6 and under.
Tim and Jason with Noah(Kristi's, middle one 2yrs) and Traeger.
Grandma reading to the kids.
A visit to the zoo in South Carolina

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So neat to see the cousin pictures...for both the kids and for you, Michele! It is great to have you back in the US!