hello again

It’s been a minute since I’ve written to you all but I do hope that you’ve been following along on our other social media channels so you haven’t been VERY out of the loop. I will do my best to write a thorough update for you and include plenty of pictures.

The last time I wrote, we had been in Arizona for just a month or two and were finally, blessedly finding our routine in the desert.

You all prayed and gave sacrificially – and we were so excited to order and receive his helicopter helmet!

This was a lot of hours and hard work, but God made the way!

Josh was absolutely amazing and dedicated to learning as much as he could from the instructors and other experienced helicopter pilots. He worked so hard and completed the training in only 9 months! This training included: how to fly a helicopter, how to fly a helicopter in the mountains, how to fly a helicopter in all manner of weather, how to instruct in a helicopter, how to fly a helicopter using only the instruments, how to load cargo that doesn’t fit and then fly it, how to carry cargo in a sling underneath the helicopter, and all manner of field-based-scenarios. I am definitely biased, but he did so good!

Since I had already gone through the “ladies class” our first time in AZ (and had no child to take care of), I was exempt this time. However, I still participated in training by flight following during the week. This included tracking airplanes and helicopters, communicating with the pilots and instructors, and eventually running an emergency-type training scenario. All things that I don’t generally do in PNG, but it was good to have something to do. Apart from that my time was… pretty boring. That area of Arizona is pretty much empty desert with no stores, coffee shops, parks, or really much to do at all. When entertaining a 4 year old, going to the one playground on our campus can get a bit dull.

Within a few hours driving distance, we found some fun things to do.

Like picking pumpkins!

And explore the desert campus

I’d say that was a weird season for our family… We went from having classes, childcare, a very structured routine, as well as lots of kids and opportunities for social interaction in Missouri, to… none of that. Apart from that shock to the system, there were some storms of life happening to people around us and I had a particularly hard time finding the balance of how to love people in and through their storms when I have zero power to fix it, and keeping my distance for our own mental and family health. Eventually the storms passed, but it hurts to see people you love hurting.

Special times in Florida before we left

Our second Christmas in a row in America! What a treat!

Once our time in Arizona was finished it was time to pack up, clean house, and head back to PNG to get the R66 program up and running!

If you are on our email update lists, or read it on Facebook, then you know our plans changed several times as we attempted to get back to PNG. Between Covid restrictions making international travel extremely difficult, no housing available for us, and just other unexpected events… we were delayed, fast-tracked, delayed, and fast-tracked a couple of times. It was an emotional time, but it was a time of learning to wait on the Lord and let Him manage the details.

Our big girl turned 4 while we were there! Jungle Safari.

We added and removed many chains during our time!

We eventually made it to PNG after 50+ hours of travel through 6 airports, 4 countries, and lots of prayers right at the end of March. Apart from a few things, it really went as smoothly as one could hope for during covid times. God gave us several sweet blessings leading up that time. We ended up staying with Josh’s parents, and eventually house-sitting their house (while they took a break), until our own housing was available. This was good and hard – it was good that we didn’t have to worry about unpacking and stocking our kitchen; and it freed Josh up to do all the extra things required for starting the helicopter program. It was hard to not be able to unpack our bags (which had been packed for about 12 weeks before we actually got to unpack them!), and make our home ours again. Our people, some of our closest friends and support were not here either so we felt a little bit like we were drifting and needed to find our place again. It was unsettling and just… hard. But God is good, and He made a way.

Super traveler!

SO TIRED. But ready for our final flight HOME!

Since then we have been finding our way – there are new people for us to love and spend time with. It’s not the same as “our people” but we aren’t trying to replace them. We are finding where we fit, how this new helicopter program works, and generally how to fit back into life here when we aren’t the same as when we left. This has been a bumpy start to our second term on the field (much bumpier than I anticipated!), and I still have days that are very hard, but I’m taking steps to focus on one day at a time and thrive once again.

The bags were packed for a long time.

HOME

Lucy Mae loves being here; there are lots of little girls her age to play with, lots of fresh veggies and flowers to pick, and everybody is her friend. If you are present and breathing, she has a story to tell you! She’s quick to make friends and absolutely loves having grandparents here. She has days that are hard, too, but don’t we all – no matter what age we are or country we are in?

Thanks for reading, for praying, and for being partners with us in this Kingdom Building adventure!

deserty things

It’s been a hot minute since I wrote to let you know what we were up to! Let’s just say that I was feeling super overwhelmed with all of the travel and transitions and change – and helping Lucy Mae to get through it all, too. It took us some time – more than I wanted – to get us feeling settled and into a routine. 😅 Let me give you the run down and an update.

• May 9 – come out Simple Living, and jump back into classes
• May 21 – classes finished at the Training Center in Missouri
• Clean. Clean. Clean.
• May 24 – turn 30
• May 25 – leave MTC, go to the zoo, heading for Wisconsin
• May 26 – June 6 – visit with churches, supporters, friends ♡
• June 7 – drive back to Missouri, pick up a trailer with all of our belongings, and keep driving.
• June 10 – arrive in Arizona!
• June 14 – start training!

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Our new Arizona house. Lucy Mae painting while I flight follow.

Woo! That was a lot of driving, a lot of change, a lot of hotels, and a lot of people. Lucy Mae did great for the most part, but towards the end you could definitely tell she needed some more stability (and honestly, so did we!). It felt like we had been running basically since Spring Break back in March.

It’s another proof of concept that you can feel all the things at the same time – so grateful and excited to see and spend time with friends and churches that we hadn’t seen since LM was just a tiny baby; and exhausted and ready to be in our own space.

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Many of these little friends came with us from Missouri – so thankful for knowing and being known. And thankful for new friends!

The last time that we were here in Arizona was when we were here for our initial training in 2014! It feels a little strange to be back after so long. There’s a lot more people, and kids than last time around, which is just so nice! But my thoughts haven’t changed – I’m still not a desert girl; give me trees and the tropics all day every day. Hah. But we actually have a really cute house with grass and several proper trees right around us, and it helps make it feel not quite so desert-y.

As you can see from the timeline above – Josh jumped straight into helicopter training and he is ROCKING it! He should be taking his commercial helicopter check ride in just a couple of weeks already! To say he is excited and loving it would be an understatement, and I am so proud of how hard he is working!

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So proud of Josh – this was from his first helicopter Solo flight! And our first childless date in over a year!

We still don’t know how long we’ll be here exactly, as there are a lot of different factors in play that could change. We’d love to be back in PNG by February or March, but we’re holding it loosely. Until then, Josh is flying, and I’m keeping home and doing some flight following. There’s not much else to do around here, but we’re keeping busy, and trusting the Lord’s timing for all the things.

end chapter

It’s that time, guys. Transitions. Endings. Next steps. Change.

It’s almost a year (!!) since we landed back on USA soil after having only a week to pack up our house. And here we are again, packing up our house to move on to the next thing.

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  Our paper chain countdown to the next adventure!

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  Little friends and hard goodbyes.

We just wrapped up our time at the Ethnos360 Training. There’s definitely mixed feelings about it all – excitement for being one step closer to getting back to Arizona, and sadness for the friends left behind. It was such a sweet time and I’m thankful for the time spent, and the friends and memories that we’ve made.

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Last post, I shared that we were getting ready to go to Simple Living – 17 days off-the-grid in the woods of Missouri, living in plastic houses and cooking over a fire, all while taking classes out there as well. It was an adventure, and while it was hard and sometimes unpleasant (a stomach bug came through the whole 50+ person camp), we’re glad we were able to do it as a family with our team. If you’d like to see some pics of our time out there – click here.

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  Field Medicine class – learning how to give injections and take vitals.

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  I had “good view” ears – so my classmates practiced on me.

Right now we’re in Wisconsin, visiting our friends, and church families that we haven’t seen since Lucy Mae was just 3 months old! On our way up here, we took it kind of easy and stopped at the zoo for the afternoon. It was so nice to do something fun after the hard farewells to home and friends. We haven’t had much down time for the last few months so it was nice to move a little slower.

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  Loved having the wagon at the zoo!

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  Lucy Mae loved the snake house!

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  The dinosaurs were a highlight, too!

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  Our professional navigator.

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  The hippos were very active and swimming. Lucy Mae loved the fish in the tank, too.

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  Worn out! Extra thankful for the wagon now. 🙂

We’ll be here in Wisconsin for a couple of weeks before we start driving down to Arizona to begin helicopter training! We are just so thankful for the opportunity that God has provided for us to do this training. If you’ve followed along for a while, you’ve probably seen the little graph on the side ➡️ showing our fundraising progress for Josh’s helicopter helmet – well thanks to your generous donations and God’s provisions – it’s fully funded! Thank you! When it comes time to actually order it, we’ll make sure you guys are in the know!

Thanks for following along with us, guys! It has been so full and busy and we are so thankful!

jam-slam

Yes, hi, hello – we’re still around and kicking! The last couple of weeks have really kicked my butt, and I only just now feel like I can catch up on life. Just in time for classes to resume tomorrow! 😅

Feeling fancy.

Sweet girl time at the Ladies Retreat.

We’ve finished up the first half of our last semester! We covered materials covering taking a church plant from Evangelism to Phase Out, Literacy, Spiritual Disciplines, and Doctrinal Differences. There was a Ladies Conference in there somewhere that was super fun and also exhausting. I was sick twice. We had spring break, where we took a quick trip to Pennsylvania to see some good friends and speak at their sweet church! It was such a joy, even though I wasn’t feeling 100% – we were definitely loved on well.

Frozen Bingo

Setting up the table.

After dealing with some ear-equalization problems (from flying with a cold – ouch!), I finally am feeling almost normal again and ready for classes to begin again this week. This final half of the semester is jam-slam-packed full of sooooo many things, so we’ll definitely just be taking it one week at a time! But the highlights include: final membership interviews, graduation, simple living, and finishing classes! Just about 2 months left of our time here in Missouri.

Lucy Mae loves flying with Daddy!

So blessed to be able to fly where we need to go!

Pray for us that we will finish well, and not get too caught up in the “next” thing. Pray for me to stay healthy! Josh and Lucy Mae haven’t had as much trouble as I have, thankfully! Pray that we will be faithful with appointments and meetings, trusting the Lord to raise our support level. Pray for us all as we enter this next phase of transitions – we will definitely miss the friends we and Lucy Mae have made here!

doozy

This last week was quite a doozy, but we made it through!

I started the week off with a pretty bad cold, so I was pretty useless for a day or two. Then we had those 2 back-to-back winter storms; thankfully we were prepared and we had plenty of groceries, and we never ran out of power or water like other parts of the US did. Lucy Mae’s classroom was closed for 80% of the week because the roads were so bad her teacher couldn’t get in, so she stayed at home with me for part of the morning and then went to class with us for the rest of the morning.

I’ve been saying that things are going to be relatively normal until we get to spring break, where things really start to get crazy… and then Josh reminded me this week that spring break is less than 2 weeks away. 😅😅😅

We’ve got a whirlwind weekend trip to Pennsylvania planned for the first part of Spring Break, and then hopefully a few days to rest and get ready for the next week. Then we’ve got a week of Safety Seminar, 2 weeks of (normal??) classes, a week of New Member Orientation, graduation for us, a week of classes, then we move out to the woods for almost 3 weeks of off-the-grid Simple Living with our team, another week of classes and then we’re finished!

It’s a lot of things packed into not a lot of time – and not nearly as tidy as it looks listed out like that – but we are really hoping to just jump in and do all the things the best that we can and finish well! Now if we can just stay healthy for the rest of the time, that will help my stress levels immensely. Hah.

pedal to the metal

We’ve already finished up Week 3 of classes! It has felt like the teachers put the pedal to the metal and they aren’t letting up. At times it can feel a bit like a fire-hose of information, homework, reading, meetings, and responsibilities. There are a LOT of things going on all around, and many things to plan for, so in the less busy moments I end up feeling like I’m forgetting or missing something.

wired up a halogen light

This week we really jumped into our Missionary Tech course – this is a fun class, although Josh is enjoying (and understanding) a lot more than I am. I did pass my soldering test, though, so that’s a plus. 😅 We’ve been talking about batteries, solar panels and systems, and how to set up wiring to connect everything together; before this class is over we’ll have “designed” a solar-panel system for our “house.”

using a DC soldering pencil to create some “helping hands”

In addition to our Tech course, we’re taking a class about birthing and raising a baby church — it is essentially taking all of the pieces of things that we learned before and saying: “Okay, you have this info, and now you’re in the tribe and can speak the language and you understand the culture… now what? how do you accomplish that?” It’s been so very good, and man, we have a much greater understanding of just how many moving pieces have to come together to birth a church. With God’s desire to see every tribe, tongue, and nation come to know Him, only He can accomplish this tremendous work.

snow angels!

cold and snowy but fun!

On top of all of that, we also have weekly mentoring, weekly training team, and weekly simple living planning meetings. We’re also still planning a partnership development trip over Spring Break, and setting up our plans after we finish school here in May, before we start helicopter training in June (probably). It’s such a balancing act, trying to think ahead and be organized and prepared, holding it loosely for the Lord to provide, and not getting too caught up in the stress of the details (#guilty).

sweet little friends with a sweet little snowman

just her size

We had a snow day or two in the middle, if you’re on instagram you saw the pics. It was Lucy Mae’s first time seeing that much snow, and playing in it. She loved it, and I learned just how tired playing in the snow makes you (and tiny toddler bodies). We all needed a nap that day. Our forecast for this next week is very unfortunately cold, and there’s more snow in the forecast. I guess I can be grateful that Missouri doesn’t seem to like holding on to any one weather-style (temperature or precipitation) for too long. Just do all of them any old random time.

ready!

We finished up our first week of our second semester here at the Ethnos360 Training! It was good to get back into the swing of routine, but we were definitely glad for the weekend to come.

Walking down to class!

My typical view in the classroom. Mask, coffee, laptop.

I was particularly worried about Lucy Mae moving up to a new classroom for the rest of our time. She has had a more emotional week, needing extra cuddles and attention, and not taking great naps, but none of that is unexpected. Overall, she is enjoying her preschool class and is getting along well with her teachers. She’s the youngest one in this class, and definitely the littlest – it’s kind of funny when we pick her up because she gets hidden behind the other, bigger kids. I’m sure those few transitional side-effects will wear off soon.

Lucy Mae is in the middle there during circle time!

Our classes have been full-steam ahead, and we feel a little bit like we just have to buckle up and hang on. One of our classes is taking all of the little foundational pieces that we learned last semester and putting them all together into one enormous picture. Church planting is hard, y’all! Josh and I both have a much greater appreciation for what our coworkers have to do and think about when in the tribe!

The other class we’re taking is called Literacy, and it is talking about the need for and importance of teaching people to read and write. We have a project where we are writing a basic literacy primer in a “foreign” (made up) language. It’s super interesting and challenging! I’m loving it. #nerd

Some extra snuggles on the couch.

This next week we finish up our primers and will start a new class about Missionary Technology. Josh is super excited about this one; and while I’m not sure how well I’ll do managing a soldering iron, I think it’s going to be interesting and fun. We also have some team meetings, and meals with friends to break up the week.

Taking the bike out on a particularly “nice” (not frigid) day.

Lucy Mae is overjoyed to have her friends to play with again!

We had a little break in the weather for a couple of days – not warm necessarily, but not frigid. Today it looks more like foggy cold soup, so we’re staying bundled up inside. I mean – that doesn’t sound like a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon, don’t you think? Ready for week 2!

back to school

Here we are, halfway through January already… it’s been a very busy month for us, with Christmas break, travel, seeing friends, family, and supporters. On Thursday we did a biiiiiig, loooooong drive of 12 hours and about 800 miles. It was tiring, but I’m so glad we did the extra hours. The last couple of hours before we arrive in Camdenton is on little wiggly country roads… so we made sure to stop before then so we could tackle those during daylight hours. 🙂

Yesterday we made it back to our home in Missouri at the Ethnos360 Training. It was snowing and very very cold, but the roads weren’t bad! We stopped on the way in and got groceries so we didn’t have to go out again before classes start on Monday. We got unloaded, unpacked, laundry started, and Lucy Mae even took a nap at a normal time! Then it was time to play in the snow. If you remember from our time in Wisconsin at the Bible School (8 years ago!) — I am decidedly not a snow bunny, but it was fun to see the snow through Lucy Mae’s eyes. We warmed up with hot chocolate after that! Now we’re on the watch to see if our snowmen will melt.

We’re ready to get back into routine… even if it means homework. This semester we have classes Church Development, Literacy, Missionary Tech, Maturing Church, Practical Spirituality; and then we change gears after Spring Break and do a Safety Seminar, Scratch Cooking, Pre-Evangelism, Field Health, Practical Skills and Teamwork (also called Simple Living), and Missionary Partnership Development. Somewhere in there we’ll also do an orientation for New Members of the Mission, and have our final interviews to make us officially official career missionaries with Ethnos360!

I also wanted to ask you to pray for a big group of missionaries — both new and returning — heading to PNG this Sunday! They’ve had to go through the wringer to get all of their tickets, approvals, Covid tests, finances, and weird luggage allowances set so they can go. The field has gotten special permissions to allow them to quarantine on the home-base, and this time (because there’s 68 of them!) they were able to charter a big commercial plane to get them all to their quarantines safely in one go. Pray for smooth, uneventful travels, health and safety, and peaceful quarantines on the other end.

We want to say a big thank you to you all for all of your prayers and support through these years. We really couldn’t have done it without you being part of our team! If you have any questions about anything, or want to know more about how you could be a part (maybe so you can come too!) please, please just write to us!

Here’s to a new year and a new semester! 😘

happy new year

What a year, y’all! I don’t know a single person that the year 2020 hasn’t been a wild ride for — whether its health, or isolation, or the overall drama of the year. It’s been anxiety-inducing, to say the least. Let’s be intentional to look for ways that the Lord is working and winning in 2021! If we aren’t looking, it’s easy to miss.

New Years Day family cookout at Juniper Springs!

Our Christmas Break is almost over, and in just a few days we’ll be hitting the road to go back up to Missouri and start our second semester of classes. As much as we don’t want to leave and be cold, we’re ready to get back into our routine again.

This has been more of a work “break” than a vacation. In total, I think we’ve had over 22 meetings with different individuals while we’re here! Add into that time spent with family and friends and the in-between out and about times. It’s been full, but good. We even had 3 days in a row over New Years where we had no meetings or plans; we were able to take those days to be quiet and rest as a family. I think if we hadn’t had those days, we would be feeling particularly frazzled by now.

Lucy Mae has been so amazing through all of this! It’s been a lot of transition and new faces and all kinds of “new” (new church every week for speaking, new peoples’ houses for dinner every night, new things to play with, new places to go, no kids her age to see, etc). We’re starting to be able to tell that she’s out of her groove, but overall, she has been super good! We are so proud of her! Don’t forget to pray for the littlest missionaries around the world — this is a whole big job they’re called to and their hearts are tender.

Overall, I think that we are feeling ready to get back to our routine and classes and childcare and making progress to the next thing! ♡

happy christmas!

Hello! Happy Christmas to you all!!

This post was a long-time coming, so I’ll try to make it up and include lots of things. 🥰

This is our training team — a group of students and staff that we get to work closely with and eventually do team activities together with! (We are keeping the identities of some of them safe for the future!)

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook then you already know that we have finished our first semester at the Missionary Training Center (now called Ethnos360 Training) in Roach, Missouri!! It was really busy the last couple of weeks, wrapping up all of the classes, and homework, and then the normal cleaning and packing for Christmas break. I was feeling a little crazy there at the end — but we made it!

We left right after classes on Friday to drive to South Georgia/Florida for Christmas break. It was a couple of very long days in the car, but we spent Saturday evening and Sunday morning with my parents in Georgia and then finished up our drive Sunday afternoon, ending in North Central Florida. It was so nice to spend some time with them, and to get to visit their church – the pastor even surprised us and let us share a little bit at the end of service.

The static is strong with this one.

Jammies and Christmas cookie decorating in school!

Our time in Florida is going to be very busy as well – we’re here for 25 days and currently have 20 different appointments! It’s very needed, though, as our financial support level has significantly dropped over the last year (due to Covid and life changes and less giving overall). We’re praying to bolster the connections we still have, and to make some new connections and hopefully some new financial partners! (Do you want to be a part of our team?! Click here. We’d love to have you join us!)

At the end of our time here in the South, we’ll drive back up to Missouri and start our second and final semester at Training! Lucy Mae is going to be moving up to join the preschool class — she’s just so smart and social and all of her teachers say she’s ready. My mama heart is sad she won’t be with her very favorite Miss Kathy, though. Josh and I are going to be jumping around in classes, too, because we already passed our language evaluations for PNG, so they’re very graciously allowing us to do some other classes to get a more-rounded education — we’re excited! You can pray for us as that’s some more transitions, though.

This is Lucy Mae’s teacher, Miss Kathy! She’s an actual angel here on earth loving on the kiddos!

We’re so thankful for this semester that we’ve had at Training – it’s been a good opportunity to meet some of our (future) coworkers. It’s never too early to start making those connections! One day, Lord willing, we’ll get to serve them in a tribe in PNG. We want to take everyone with us! The classes have been really good to build a great foundation for the what and the why and the how of church planting cross-culturally! If you have more questions about any of that, we’d love to chat!

Merry Christmas, y’all! We’re thankful to be spending time with our family in America this year. ♥️✨🎄

It was sooo cold at the playground one of our last days at school — there was ice at the playground!