March 19, 2013

• Things I Want to Remember……

  1. I left my bag of make-up on the bed at my in-laws. Fail.
  2. There was a man working at the airport with a huge cart who took our 10 tubberware containers from the vehicle, into the airport, and then transferred them one by one onto the scale. Huge relief.
  3. Somehow we missed Camden’s pocketknife in Blake’s backpack and it got taken away. He cried. I had that big battle that all mom’s understand on whether I should hold him and promise him anything he wanted while on the other hand wanting to tell him to suck it up because he hadn’t even looked at that knife in 3 months. I think I chose a good balance. Life went on.
  4. I tried to do homeschool in the airport. Fail.
  5. Hope LOVED the plane ride. We joked that she would have hung her head out of the widow if she could have. Camden not so much. He was pretty nervous. He said he just “wasn’t in the mood” for flying.
  6. In Guatemala City, in the immigration line, the door security alarms that we had in Blake’s backpack decided to go off. It sounded like a bomb alarm and by the time Blake finally got it off, he and I were both sweating and beet red.
  7. There were carts available at the luggage pick up to put our bins and suitcases on. I so wanted to take pictures of the kids each pushing a huge cart of luggage through the customs line, but something about the guards standing around holding automatic rifles caused me to decide otherwise.
  8. Our luggage got flagged, but after asking Blake some questions they let us go without going through everything. Huge relief again!
  9. Our new boss Fernando, a SI missionary Aaron, and one of the semester students were there to pick us up, and we ate lunch at Wendy’s on the way home.
  10. Waiting for us at our new home was the American couple that just moved out of the condo, the sweet girl that cleans the condo with her friend, and the landlady. Everyone was so nice and I felt like I had immediate friends.
  11. Rachel Kelly (Aaron’s wife) brought us enough food to eat for three days plus a box of stuff that we will need in the first couple of weeks. I can’t even tell you how excited I was about that!
  12. I am so grateful for our house. I know it is a miracle to get such a nice house in a safe area, in walking distance to so much, and completely furnished for the price we are renting it. It’s smaller than anything we’ve lived in since Bible college, but I’ll trade size for all the great things about it ANY DAY! I just posted a few pictures of the downstairs on facebook and got a purely innocent comment about “how amazing missionary living that is!” and it immediately gave me a huge knot in my stomach because when you are living on support you have to constantly question how everything appears. But God whispered to my heart, “I provided this miraculous gift. Don’t let the enemy steal the joy out of it!”
  13. I was determined to get completely unpacked and organized before bed. I did too much, worked too hard, and had been up too long for such an eventful day. By 8:30 the peace and excitement that I have had for the past week left in a swift rush and I just wanted to cry. I felt so overwhelmed. Things like not being able to flush the toilet paper, not being able to drink the water, not knowing the language, being so far from my family, and just the unknown of the next several weeks just made me feel emotional. So I went to bed.
  15. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Out of nowhere a moth flew from the wall in front of me to the wall behind and I almost had a heart attack. I would have died on the pot like Elvis. (Is that even true?)
  16. When you hear noises in the night you can usually come up with good guesses for each sound. Not so your first night in a new home in a foreign country. I imagined tribal indian attacks, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the drug cartel from Mexico.
  14. I woke up feeling peaceful and excited again. We had a good morning despite a grumpy Camden when he found out video game time is coming to a near screeching halt after 2.5 months of allowing him waaaayyyyy to much time on it. We took a long walk around the streets of Antigua, and we have dinner plans with some of the single missionary girls tonight.
  15. We have thirteen days until language school starts. We wanted to start this coming Monday but it’s Semana Santa and normal life kind of comes to a halt around here during that. So each day will be a toss up. We have to find a car, sign a lease on this place, buy groceries, attend staff meetings, hopefully visit the ministry sites with the kids and of course homeschool the kids and Spanish homeschool ourselves.
  16. If everyone comes through who have told us that they are planning to support us (and we are believing they will!) then we are completely funded on our monthly support! God is so good and so are His people!

  I have pictures on my camera, but I haven’t uploaded them yet so hopefully I will have a picture blog up soon!

  Thank you everyone for your prayers!

  • 7:07 pm
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