Bitte, Meh Chas (Please, More Cheese)

We've spent the last four days in Switzerland trying to overcome jet lag. We used age old remedies of hiking in the Alps, riding trains, touring the capital city, and eating lots of cheese. And since we still had more time, we milked some cows, fed the pigs, carried kittens around, and jumped on a trampoline. Judah also lost his first tooth in the shadow of the Eiger, Luciana made a Swiss friend, Juli, and Asher slept on the bar of a restaurant next to brown bear enclosure. 

The next leg of the journey will be a 24 hour stay in Nairobi, Kenya and then on to our final destination: Pemba, Mozambique. One last hot shower and then we settle in for life in the red dirt. Go big, or go home - right?

Adios.

Just one last look. See you in March, knees.

This Will Only Pinch a Little

Here is Luci (yes, that is a Minnie Mouse dress she's wearing) at the Travel Clinic waiting for Shot-a-palooza.

Then she reconsidered. "Take a sad face picture."

He-He-Whoooo. He-He-Whoooo.

I have given birth to three children and one of the things I remember most of the actual birthing part is how much it hurt and how much I wanted to quit. Also the miracle of new life, of course! Who could forget that? For instance, my solution to the pain of Judah's delivery was to crab-walk off the back of the labor bed while Shawn and a stout nurse had to help me commit to finishing the job at hand.  I can see that it seems irrational now, but in the moment, I was a genius! And now I find myself in a similar situation. The pain is less physical, but my solutions are just as genius. This is the part of our journey to Mozambique that feels like "transition" in delivery. We are at the no-turning back point; tickets are purchased, good-byes are being said, and someone is setting up bunk beds for us in Pemba. This baby is happening! But all of the last-minute details are piling up and they have become quite the pile and I just found out we won't have a place to cook food when we get there and travel health insurance is not quite the bargain price it used to be and we're told a 6 month visa is a loooooong shot. I'm sure everything would be so much better if I just crawled out of here backwards. Or could get an epidural. But, I know it's time to take a deep breath and bear down. Soon enough all of our clothes will be packed (the latest in missionary wear), all auto-payments will be scheduled, and we get to see what we are made of. It has already been quite a ride and we're just getting to the wild part. Plus, I have learned my own lesson: Giving birth is really hard, but I was rewarded with the 3 most wonderful kids ever. Getting to Mozambique will be just as worth it. And messy.

Must Do List

I have lists laying all over the place. Packing lists, Costco lists, Target lists, To-Do lists.  I noticed an addition to this one while I was taking the pen away from Asher who was making his own addition. I was able to check it off immediately.

Then I turned it over. That boy is thorough.

BTW

So here's what we'll be doing in Pemba for the next two years:

One of our jobs will be to manage and develop the child sponsorship program which serves children in need to provide them with the means to go to school and help support their families. There are about 1,500 children who need to be interviewed as the first step toward sponsorship, nearly 1,000 who need help with writing letters or drawing pictures to send to their sponsors, and more database management than can be blogged about. This will be my main focus while we're there.

Shawn's big project will be overseeing the construction of 400 bush churches in villages across Mozambique. From what I understand, a wealthy guy in Virginia left his fortune to a church with the intent of building churches in Mozambique. That church has partnered with IRIS Ministries and Shawn is tasked with making sure the project is on track. He is the right man for the job, just sayin'.

We will still be doing IRIS Relief work, too. We're writing and tweaking the training manual, we'll be doing some of the training during the Harvest Schools, ever more admin, and we're hoping to develop  disaster preparedness plans for the base.

And, as ever, if you want to send a little sugar our way, you can send tax-deductible donations to:

Zion Christian Fellowship

10405 Old Sawmill Rd

Powell, OH 43065 (please put Mozambique in the memo line)

If you are a Nigerian prince who needs to deposit money directly into our account, I totally get that. Just  email me and I'll get you our information ASAP.

Thrive!

For some reason I can't turn off the closed captioning on my Jillian Michael's Extreme Shed & Shred DVD and I had to pause it (not because I was too fatigued to continue, but because a child needed my immediate attention) in the middle of Jillian's cool-down motivational speech. The words paused on the bottom of the screen that I could barely make out due to the sweat dripping in my eyes were: You lived through it.

That got me to thinking about my mindset for our 1st Mozambique experience versus how I'm preparing this time. Last year, I kept telling myself, "You can do anything for 10 weeks." Harvest School was an incredible experience, but one I had psyched myself up to get through, to endure, to survive. From the beginning I had my eyes on the prize: finishing well. Mostly finishing, but if I could do it well - then I would be bi-winning. For a trivial example, we brought food with us - oatmeal, Jolly Ranchers, life-saving Starbucks Via, etc and we rationed those things trying to make them last the whole time. Hanging on to things like that perpetuated the feeling that we needed them to feel normal and happy. There's no way pack enough comfort food for 6 months (we'll be there for 2 years, but have to leave at least every 6 months to renew or visas/stock back up on trash bags and malaria medicine...) so that pressure is a non-issue this time around. But don't kid yourself, I'm bringing Via again; when I said "life-saving" I wasn't messing around.

This time around is a whole different ball game. First of all, the terror of the unknown has been taken care of and I have a better idea of what to expect. My pep talk this time is, "You're not there to live through it, you're there to LIVE!" We are going to call Pemba home for a while and that's where we are going to thrive not just survive. This is where Judah is going to learn to speak Portuguese, Luciana will learn to read, and Asher will be potty trained (Thanks, Moz.). There's a good chance Shawn will get to be a better pilot and I will see children go from being hopeless to having opportunities and choices.

So, we press on living our lives by faith. This promises to be our biggest adventure to date and I have kissed the word normal goodbye.