2013 in Books

Books Read:

Raising a Daughter After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George

The Church Planting Wife by Christine Hoover

What if Your Blessings Come Through Raindrops by Laura Story

Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe by Sarah Mae & Sally Clarkson

How to Really Love Your Child by D.Ross Campbell, M.D.

Gospel Wakefulnness by Jared C. Wilson

Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes by Shauna Niequist

Because He Love Me: How Christ Transforms Our Daily Life by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

The Chiveis Trilogy by Bryan M. Litfin

When Jesus Wept by Bodie and Brock Thoene

The Fiddler’s Gun by A.S. Peterson

The Fiddler’s Green by A.S. Peterson

A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily P. Freeman

Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart At A Time by Jeremy Courtney

Currently Reading:

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

Family Reads:

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein

The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr.

Current Family Reads:

The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers

The Story for Kids: Discover the Bible from Beginning to End

The Gospel Story Bible by Marty Machowski

December Happenings

Christmas 2013

We hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Christmas in reflection and renewed awe of the greatest gift--Jesus!  We enjoyed Ann Voskamp's Advent devotional, The Greatest Gift, as we once again hung our Jesse Tree ornaments.  It was a month of high anticipation for us, especially the kids.  Celebrating with them just gets more fun every year. 

Like many of you, our December was full of activities, special events and family holiday traditions.  Upon our return from Madeira on December 1st our feet hit the ground running all the way up until Christmas.  Here is our month at a glance...   

Thanks to IKEA we made a gingerbread house.  Dad and Mamma constructed the house and the kids (mostly Emma) decorated.

On December 16, yours truly celebrated a birthday.  I still like to consider myself in the mid-thirties, but according to my insistent children I am now in my late-thirties, because anything over 5 you round up!  Someone please tell me 36 is still in the mid-range! ;)  It was a fun weekend of special treatment as my precious family both near and far showered their love upon me.  Jonathan made a fabulous cheesecake topped with pomegranate seeds, scoring big on taste and presentation!  Another year full of great blessings from my gracious Father--thank you!

A huge highlight was also our graduation party for our first Percorso Speranza (Journey to Hope) students.  This fall we spent over 50+ hours in the classroom with B&I working through the Jobs for Life material and Bible studies on reconciliation.  It was a great first run and we all received mutual blessing and encouragement through the experience.  We will continue to walk alongside this brother and sister pair as they continue on their journey to seeking employment and pursuing further education. For their graduation we invited several from the local charity we work with along with someone from social services and of course their family.  My colleague and I put together a fun and festive table spread for the event.

We also spent some time delivering food boxes to families in our community that are in need.  And then we made some treats for our neighbors.  There are six other houses in our complex and so we took a weekend to deliver the special packages to them.  We delivered 3 packages in 3 hours last Saturday.  Each house invited us in for a chat and offered us a snack and coffee.  Our gesture was unexpected but warmly received by all, and we were thankful for the time to get to know our neighbors better.

The city had another Christmas street fair and we attended with the purpose of being an encouragement and support to Ivana who was offering face painting.  Even though the boys were not thrilled about the idea of getting their faces painted, they came to understand that their willingness was a great encouragement to Ivana who is new to the whole venture of face painting.  She did a fantastic job and we hope our kids were good publicity for her that day.

Holiday feasting requires several days of preparation and so the kitchen was non-stop busy with sugar cookies, cakes, yeast rolls, egg nog, cider, cinnamon rolls and more...

Christmas morning in our new home...

And then the presents...

That pretty much covers our month of special events.  Throw into the mix a few doctor appointments, a 5th grade Christmas party lasting past 1AM and the usual rhythms of life and one can see how the month flew by as it did.  Now we are enjoying the final days of 2013 with some much needed relaxation!

WE Conference 2013

Every three years our mission has a conference for all of their Western European workers.  It is always a highly anticipated event for our family as it takes us new places and provides a week long experience meant for our encouragement, refreshment and fellowship with our extended family throughout Europe.    This year we traveled to Madeira--an island off the west coast of Africa that belongs to Portugal.  The conference is always held the week of Thanksgiving, which is nice, but honestly our traditional celebrations of the holiday are missed as we are at the mercy of whatever the hotel prepares for our feast day.  Turkey was present at least and the paper pumpkins on the tables were a nice touch.

We had a rough start to our trip as Samuel was so excited about leaving that he could not sleep the night before we left.  He might have slept 2 hours before he woke up at midnight saying he felt hungry and couldn't sleep.  After several calls for Mamma every ten minutes I brought him down to the living room and let him turn on a movie.  Then he got sick repeatedly making me nervous that he contracted a flu bug and we would have to fly with a sick and tired child.  Once dawn arrived he was doing much better and we concluded he was just overly excited.

We left our house early Sunday morning to drive to Milan to catch a noon flight out from there.  When we arrived in Lisbon the passport control workers were on strike which caused us to miss our connecting flight.  We were really confused about having to go through passport control since we were not leaving the EU, but apparently the flight we were booked on was actually going on to Venezuela after a stopover in Madeira.  The next available flight for us to get rebooked on was 7 hours later.  Thus we spent basically the whole day in the airport.  The ONE consolation was that there was a Starbucks!  Samuel actually fell asleep there for maybe an hour.  We finally arrived at the hotel around 11:30pm, which was 12:30am Italy time.  It took us longer to get to Madeira than it would have been to go to the USA.

Thankfully the conference didn't start until Monday night and we had the day to sleep in and relax a bit.  We took a walk to the center of town since we were told it was just 25 minutes on foot.  We are used to walking a lot and rather quickly too, but it turned out to be more like an hour walk. The kids were not all that happy about our long excursion but getting gelato, finding a park along the way and the promise of going swimming in the pool upon our return to the hotel kept them moving.  The island is absolutely beautiful and nothing is more reenergizing than breathing in ocean air!

The conference was a tremendous blessing to us in so many ways through the worship, speakers and interaction with others.  We truly came away refreshed spiritually and emotionally, even though not so much physically.  Our kids were loved upon and treated to a week of hanging out with other MK's and participating in a VBS type program both in the mornings and evenings.  They got in the pool twice in less than ideal weather conditions, but when you're young like that those are just tiny details.  The kids are really excited to be "pen-pal-ing" with the friends they made via email.  Too bad these conferences are only every three years.

I have been wanting to get this post up for two weeks now, but had some technical difficulties with the slideshow.  For those who have been waiting to see pictures, thanks for your patience!

First Snow of the Season

Fall Frolic

We are loving the fact that we have some trees in our yard with some beautiful fall foliage.  Emma and Luca were my big helpers this week in getting the leaves raked and picked up…but first, there was lots of fun and play to be had in the leaves. (Note: Samuel was working hard too, but at school)

:: Emma turns NINE ::

The countdown leading up to Emma's 9th birthday was an intense one.  For the past month, not a day went by that she did not express her excitement about the upcoming day and drop hints and requests about gift ideas.  Then when she found out we were going to have her party a day early, she began to tell others that her birthday was on November 3rd, instead of the 4th.

As mentioned previously, we had a house full of guests over her birthday weekend.  And they came bearing gifts galore that were toted around for the previous 2 weeks during their European travels.  I think their sore backs were soon forgotten seeing and hearing the sheer excitement exude from Emma's mouth all night long.

 …party glasses, balloons, candles, candy…they came ready to party!

 Not shy to being the center of attention all night long, this little girl went over the top with her "oohs" and "aahs" with every gift.  In a seriously genuine, very grateful and decidedly happy response with each gift, it made for a very entertaining night.  Her facial reactions say it all...  

  "WOW!…this is soooo CUTE!"

 "AWESOME!!"

We couldn't be more proud of our one and only daughter.  Emma, you bring so much joy and enthusiasm to our lives, a lot of spunk in the middle of your two brothers, creativity and artful living…because you are so uniquely and wonderfully made by our great God!  We pray God will continue to grow you in every way so that you will reflect His love and glory to all around you.  You are loved always...

HAPPY 9th BIRTHDAY, EMMA PATRYCE!

This note just warms my heart and reminds me just how special these moments of celebrations are in the life of our family…just 346 more days to go!

USA Visitors

November started off with a bang, as we hosted our first group of visitors since our move.  A team from a supporting church in Ohio, Patterson Park Church, was in France for a mission's trip and asked if their presence might be of encouragement to us for a few days.  We have a long standing relationship with PPC as Jonathan did his internship there in 2001, and they were one of the earliest supporters to our work.  The team leaders, Mike and Dawn, have served on the missions committee over the years and know us well, but nothing gives a person a better idea of how to pray for you than by a personal visit.

Mike, Grace, Becca, Dawn, Amy, Darlene, Chip & Karen

The team's visit was brief as they arrived on November 1st and departed on the 4th.  We housed half of the team, while the other half stayed in a rental apartment 15 minutes away.  They braved the public transportation system by using the train each day to get to our house where their meals were served.

They joyfully offered to serve us anyway they could, even when given the monumental task of stripping, sanding and staining our parisian wooden shutters on the backside of the house.  Jonathan has been having neck problems for the past two months, making the most simple of tasks difficult, so this intense manual labor was a huge help to us in completing the much needed restoration prior to the arrival of the harsher winter weather.  The job was nearly completed in two days as many hands make light(er) work.  What is left to be completed, I can now do much more easily.

The kids were off the wall excited for all the attention and company!  Games were played, walks were taken, nails were painted, and Luca's infamous weekend poem memorization was learned with their help while my hands were busy in the kitchen.

We enjoyed a night out for pizza where they were able to take in the cultural experience of tasting what a true Italian pizza is like.  Someone asked Samuel if he knew what Pizza Hut was and his response was "Yea, it's that place with the greasy pizza".  Truly, there is just no comparison to an Italian pizza!

Then to top off the weekend, we celebrated Emma's 9th birthday with our guests.  (Party post to come later).  For us, their visit came at a great time and was such an encouragement.  Our hearts were full come the end of our time together.  We hope that they too gained a valuable insight and perspective on the great difficulty in ministry and need for the gospel here in Italy.

It was an intense and exhausting weekend, not just because of being in "hosting-mode", making a birthday cake and feeding a crowd, but in addition, Samuel got sick the first night of their stay and was up until 3:30AM.  God gave me strength and kept me out of a fog until Monday when I just crashed.  I loved every minute of it and being able to host in our new home was such a gift to see how the Lord is already using this home to be a blessing to others.

Thank you PPC team for ALL that you did for our family!!

Looking back at October

October came and went far too quickly!  We enjoyed the month of moderate temperatures in the 50s and 60s with some rain thrown in the mix.  Walking to and from school with the color changes on the trees and the crunch of leaves underfoot were soul refreshing times of the day for me.  Summer gardens were turned and were replaced with hearty winter vegetables or left to rest for the coming months.  

The past month our house was filled with smells of homemade applesauce, pumpkin bread, coffee with homemade pumpkin creamer and afternoon tea. 

 The garden was turned with some enthusiastic shovel digging kids.

At the supermarket we found a somewhat descent pumpkin to carve, from the choice of four pumpkins.  We missed the experience of going to a pumpkin patch and purposely avoided f*cebook so as not to become jealous of the American traditions we so miss out on this time of year.  But maybe next year we will have a patch of our own.  Fatty batty was the kids' choice this year and Jonathan did his annual carving for them.

We participated in the community "trick-or-treating" where the kids ran from store to store collecting candy or in the case of the bakeries, warm cookies out of the oven.  Free hot chocolate, that is more like pudding it is so thick and delicious, kept us warm while the kids got their faces painted and played games in the piazza.

Then in a blink of the eye, we entered November.