Holloween 2011...

Our kids had a great Holloween. This was their first time trick or treating and they thought it was the greatest thing ever. After trick or treating at Grandma Fishes work, GFS, school parties, then trick or treating Monday night, and Northland's Trunk or Treat, we now have enough candy to last us the next 3 years in Mozambique, so Grandmas, remember no sending candy when we get back to Mozambique!

Here are some pictures from the school parties and trick or treating...

Karis, the black cat.
Karis' kindergarten class

Kallen

Traeger, Obi-won, and friends...

Traeger's 1st grade class.

Trick or Treat.....

Fall...

Hard to believe we are already in the middle of fall. We have had an extremely busy past couple of months. The kids started school at North Oakview Elementary, right down the road from us. They are doing really well and enjoying it. Traeger also started soccer this fall and is doing so well. He loves it and has scored in all but one of his games. It has been fun for us to watch him grow not only in the area of soccer, but also socially. Karis absolutely loves school and cries when I tell her I have no more homework for her to do. She seriously could do school work all day everyday and never get tired of it. Kallen likes having mommy all to herself every morning and then her and Karis get some girl time in the afternoon until Traeger comes home.

Tim and I took a trip with some good friends to Boston to watch a Patriots game(which has been my dream for forever). We had a great time sight seeing in Boston and then watching the Patriots clean up on San Diego!

The next week we were in Arizona for STS(Simply the Story) training. It was training on how to do inductive Bible study orally or telling the story of the Bible orally. It will be so valuable to us, going back to Mozambique where it is a very oral culture.

The first week of October, we were at Rothbury Community Church, participating in their annual missions conference. We had multiple opportunities to share what God is doing in Moz. Michele spoke at a ladies luncheon and Tim presented on two different nights. We always enjoy our time in Rothbury. They have been such an encouraging and supporting church to us. We are so thankful for them.

We also wanted to give our upcoming schedule as many people have asked when we will be speaking in the area. It is as follows:

Oct. 15th-- We will sharing about 10 minutes in the evening service at Blythefield Hills. The service starts as 5:30pm

Oct. 22-26--We will be in Akron Ohio, participating at The Chapel with an annual Missions event

Oct. 30th--We will be Hopevale Church in Saginaw, MI

Nov. 6th--We will be at Northland Baptist Church here in GR and we will have the entire morning service to share. I believe the service starts at 10:30am.

Nov. 13th--We will be at Faith Fellowship in Irons, MI and will be speaking in their morning service, which begins at 10:45am.

Nov. 20th--We will be at First Baptist Church in St. Johns, MI and will be speaking at their 6:00pm evening service.

I believe that is all that is on the schedule for now. We will let you know if other dates or opportunities become available.

Here are some pictures from the fall:

The kids have loved fall. They love playing in the leaves and pumkins and playing sports in the yard.

One thing I wanted to do this fall is go on a "color tour". We used to do that every year when I was little with my cousins and I loved it, so we enjoyed a very warm day, travelled up North, and enjoyed God's creation with my parents.

Karis getting off the bus. She loves riding the bus.

Traeger and daddy carved pumpkins and the girls painted pumkins with mommy.

Traeger scoring a goal at one of his soccer games(he is in the purple shirt).

Just a picture from our trip to Arizona. Neither of us had every been to Arizonia and we enjoyed some beautiful scenery.

Our trip to Boston at Gillett Stadium.

Tom Brady for of those of who don't know #12!!!

Lesley and I.

Boston from the Harbor.

Tim and I with Dan and Lesley in Boston.

Summer Times!

Well it is hard to believe that it is already August. The summer is flying by. We've been home two months now and have fit in about 6 months worth of activities in those two months. We spent 2 weeks on Lake Michigan with Tim's family, we celebrated Traeger's 7th birthday, have been to Fredrick Meijer Gardens, the Children's Museum, and the zoo. We have been camping and spent a day at Michigan's Adventure. Traeger spent a week at Spring Hill Day Camp, Karis has taken horse riding lessons, besides many days spent swimming at the lake and pools. It has been 5 years since we've been home during the summer and we are trying to fit in everything we've been missing into these few months. We also did a VBS at Northland Baptist Church and spoke at Calvary Church of Muskegon. We have visited with supporters from Chicago as well as many others from the area. It has been a full two months! Here are a few pictures of the past months events...

New Easy Donation Link...

We have just added to the blog on the right hand side and easy link to donate now. If you click on either ministry account(for vehicle and ministry needs) or support account(for the additional monthly support we are trying to raise because of visas), it will automatically take you the SIM website where you can enter all the information in to donate immediately or set up montly donations. Please give us feedback if you have trouble with this or it does not work properly.

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

Wrapping up...

Well we leave tomorrow. It is hard to believe. We will fly into Maputo and spend the night and then leave Maputo Monday afternoon and arrive back in the States Tuesday at 6:14pm into Charlotte North Carolina. Yesterday, of course, Kallen and Traeger came down with colds. So please just pray that this trip goes smoothly and we all survive the 3 days of travel!

Before we go, we just wanted to give you an update of a few things that we have been doing the past month. We finished our parenting seminar, sort of. It was really a disaster over all. We only were able to do 2 out of the 4 weeks planned. The 2 we did do, however went well. We had to deal with a lot of sickness and we had a really difficult time arranging transport for everyone. We will try it again next year, after we get back. Tim finished his class on the doctrin of Salvation with the Anglican Church. We've said many goodbyes. We gave our cat to another family to care for while we are gone and the kids have shed many tears over the cat. Our dogs will stay here with Eden's who will be living here the 9 months we are gone.

Overall, I think we are ready to go. We've got everything packed up (almost) and we are looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Traeger teaching Vader a new trick. He is just a little bit too big for Traeger to control.

One of Karis' favorite friends here, Tessa. They had a goodbye sleepover last week.

Tim's class on Salvation. 16 people attended and everything went very well.

Because of the lack of transportation to get people to our parenting seminar, we hired a friend to drive for us. He is one of our guards and he does driving on the side for another friend of his. Well on our way to the seminar, he lost control of the car and got into an accident. Thankfully no one was really hurt, but the car was pretty damaged. We quickly discovered, that without tow trucks, it is really difficult to get a car back to the city for repairs. We stopped a big truck heading to Lichinga and asked if we could put the car on top. The guy agreed (for a very high price and of course being the only people with money we had to pay). It took us all afternoon to get this car on top of the truck. Complete "man-labor" to get it on top. So we didn't end up getting to do our seminar that week and we had to deal with getting our guard out of jail and lost a lot of money on top of it, so needless to say, we won't be hiring another car!

getting a little bit closer...

Finally...all loaded up...

Traeger's friend Merito. He is one of the sons of Michele's language helper, Beatriz.

Karis and Idris, Beatriz' other son.

Michele did a small teaching in Yao at our church last Sunday. Of course, she only read it, but still it was good pratice.