USA, Cuba and Brazil

The year 2017 has already been a hectic year for our family! We started the year with classes in preparation for Audrey and I to go to Cuba and, days before our departure, I participated in a weekend of training and support in preparation and anticipation of a District License (I will not officially know if I was granted the license until sometime in the next week or two, I believe). The weekend flew by as I attended the trainings and the interview, and also as I packed and prepared to leave for Cuba.

I know Cuba is in the title of this entry, but it really has to be its own entry, so I won't say much about it except that it was incredible, I was inspired, and here is a little picture video to give you an idea.

The group of people we traveled with, both through the classes and moreso on the trip itself, became a dear and treasured part of our family. And soon after our return, I depended dearly on that family. I had three days with Cesar before he left for two months in Brazil, and the day after he left, I got the flu (not the generic version, but actually Influenza A). I have never been wiped out so completely as I was during the next few weeks, and thanks to some of our church family, Audrey not only did not wipe out like I did, but our stomachs, our health and our hearts were ministered to during that time. On the climactic day, the very worst day, one might have thought my tears were for my own suffering. They were, however, tears because I realized that while I'd expected to be alone during the time Cesar was gone, I had a family who not only loved us in words, but who also loved us in action. I had a "mom" and "sisters" present and taking care of me and Audrey had "grandparents" who gave her some days that she is still talking about weeks later.

I have been challenged, both through the district license training and the Cuba trip, to not only press on, but to use the gifts I have been given to the best of my abilities. Audrey has had a revamped homeschool experience as we joined a Classical Conversations community. This community has not only propelled her way further than I could have imagined, but has also surrounded us in the challenge of the flu and during moments when Audrey cried in class missing her dad. Whereas in any other school, she might be sent to a counselor while class continued, in her tears for her sick mommy or most recently for her travelling daddy, the class stopped and took the time to gather around her in prayer, and I was able to speak to her immediately about her worries and remind her of all the exciting things we have yet to do while we wait for Papai to come home.

General Board meetings were held and instead of the tradition of dining at my house, our unofficial international get-together was held at our new Portuguese ministry's pastors' house. I still cooked, and thankfully I cooked quite a bit because this year some missionaries were able to join us and we had probably at least 30 people present. These meetings and particularly this dinner, is truly a highlight of every year for our family and even though I was just barely done with the flu, I was thankfully able to be healthy enough to not only cook at the dinner, but to visit the meetings in the days following and attend the missionary sending service where we saw dear friends (whom I would call family) officially "sent" to the missions field. It was even more exciting that many of them are not originally from the United States! They are and will continue to be an inspiration to many called to missions in their regions of the world.

I was recently invited to give a presentation about Third Culture Kids in a seminary class, which had me thinking about researching and writing down my findings. If I get the time to do all the posts in my mind, we may be in for a great year for this website as I begin to delve into the various areas of service-- including multicultural interaction, education, missions, short term missions, missions with kids, third culture kids, relationship building across cultures and much much more. We have restarted our TCK Bible Study and this past Sunday encouraged me to dig deeper and to get excited (thanks to one of our other TCK leaders). The Table (our multi-lingual Bible Studay) is moving to Wednesday nights as soon as we can confirm that we have the space and announce it. I'm really excited and expect there will not only be more people, but also more languages as our church has started ELL classes and this offers a great community building activity and practice during the week.

As I'm sure you can tell, I plan to post several entries in the coming weeks and have yet more to study and do in preparation for other posts. If you're reading this, please ask for your favorite topics and perhaps that will keep me accountable to writing in here, as I haven't been quite as faithful as I would like, which ends up in these super long posts for all of you. More to come!