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!

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!

missouri

Please excuse the lapse of blogging over the last couple of weeks. We had a few stressful weeks of packing and organizing and changes before moving. One of our close friends tested positive for Covid19, and so we had to isolate a bit more than usual and monitor/temp check ourselves the week before leaving. She’s totally fine, and no one else got it, for which we are thankful!

So last week already we left Florida for Missouri. We broke up the drive over several days so that it wasn’t too long in one day. The first day we drove just up to my parents house in Georgia and spent the day hanging out with them. The second day we drove 6.5 hours, and slept in a hotel; the third day, we drove another 6.5 hours, and slept in another hotel; and the fourth day we only had to drive the last 2 hours to get to our beautiful new home!

Since we don’t own anything here apart from what fits in our suitcases, we sort of had our work cut out for us. Luckily, the school has a housing supply so they already filled our house with the necessary furniture. We unloaded our suitcases, hit the Mission Barrel (like a free second-hand store for students), and Walmart all in one day to fill in things like towels, groceries, and sharp knives. This week, we’ve been trying to enjoy the down time (when really we just want to get busy!) and get adjusted to where everything is around here. Josh has discovered some nice little spots to fish, and most afternoons you can find him at the dock, fishing pole in hand.

A long shopping trip and tired toddler.

Happy husband’s hobby.

We start orientation classes on Monday, so once we’ve figured out what that all looks like I can share more.

Josh has found a fantastic opportunity with SOAR — a mission-oriented aviation training program, located about an hour-ish away from us. He’ll be helping them with their training program, and it helps him to keep up to date with flying. We’re so excited for this opportunity! There are four other aviation families here at MTC with us, they’ll likely be heading to Arizona the same time as us next year, too — so we are also very excited to get to know them better.

A great view of the sunset over the Lake of the Ozarks – right on our campus!

The campus here is just beautiful, and we have been extremely blessed with a gorgeous (new!) home with a stunning view — and my favorite part: 1.5 bathrooms and our own washer/dryer, haha.

Lucy Mae is loving the lake and pretending to “fish like daddy!”

A couple of free hummingbird feeders – free toddler entertainment!

There are a lot of people to meet and new things to figure out, especially with Covid19 complicating every part of every thing for every one. It’s a bit overwhelming at times, but we are glad to be taking the next step towards getting back to serving our church planters in PNG. ♡

it’s been a while

Hi there, remember me? I used to blog in this space. I used to write about our everyday happenings, new recipes I was loving, big things I was feeling. And then I stopped.

I found that I couldn’t really tell you everything I was feeling, or everything that was going on — I could never really be one-hundred-percent honest. So what was the point of writing? And why did I feel like that?

Because I’m a missionary; and I can’t ever share the hard things.

This is a good post by A Life Overseas that explains this feeling a little more in-depth.

Mibu airstrip survey, Jon Leedahl & Josh Verdonck photo by Geoff Husa

There is a certain pressure that comes with being a missionary, that is unique to anything else. It is immediate, immense, and heavy. It is the pressure of having everything you do/buy/say/drink/go/post/wear being put under a microscope; the fear of being judged as frivolous, or wasteful, or somehow lacking, or even of losing support altogether. 

Josh and Lucy Mae in Madang photo by @erinkvdonck

And so like a good missionary, I hid those things from you, because I was afraid. I explained my lack of blogging depth by telling you we were busy, that life was moving quickly, and that there was a lot going on. All of those things were true, I’ve never lied to you here – they just weren’t the whole picture.

I didn’t tell you the hard things; that there were personnel issues going on that were seriously stressing us out. I didn’t tell you that we lost a friend, unexpectedly and traumatically. I didn’t tell you how hard it was to be in America, uncomfortable and out of place. I didn’t tell you about the deep struggle with the baby blues and anxiety. I didn’t tell you that you needed more than we could give. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to sound ungrateful or unfeeling, but mostly, because I was afraid that you would judge me and find me lacking.

Helicopter ride photo by @floraladie

Likewise, I didn’t tell you the good things either. Like that we won three different professional photo shoots. I didn’t tell you that we ate take out a lot, especially after Lucy Mae came along, and it was so good. I didn’t tell you that I went to Target several times a week, just to look at pretty things, drink Starbucks, wearing my baby with my mom bun and leggings, and pretend that I was a normal American mom. I didn’t tell you, because I was afraid that you would judge me and find me frivolous or wasteful.

I hope you can understand, and I hope that you can forgive me for hiding my heart from you. And I hope that you stick around to keep reading, because I’m ready to come back and share about our lives again. I want my daughter to grow up to be brave, and I can only teach her that by being brave myself. So I’m ready to share; the big and the small; the good and the bad.

Rainbow Springs State Park photo by Tara McGovern

furlough

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I’ve managed to get out a grand total of TWO blog posts during our home assignment, and it was May before that, so let me try and get some of these thoughts out.

This is our very first home assignment, a sixth month leave from Papua New Guinea to have our daughter Lucy Mae; it’s also for learning how to be a family of three, raising some more support, and to hopefully get some rest before jumping back into ministry.

A Christmas-y walk through Disney Springs.

It has been amazing to grow into a family of three… our “mom and dad shoes” so to speak. At first, it was terrifying and overwhelming. This little person invaded every aspect of our lives. Honestly, there was a certain amount of mourning our 7-year-long-pre-baby-life… But then, fueled by the grace of God and cups of coffee, we started growing. The nights weren’t quite so long and anxiety-inducing; we didn’t cry quite as often; and we found that with some intentional “normal” we can still just be us. Suddenly, she became a part of us, and not an intruder. We’re so thankful for our little coconut!

We’ve reached the point in our furlough where we are homesick for PNG, for our ministries, for our friends, and our home. It’s been good being in America — there are people we love, not to mention fast internet, fast food, shopping, and anonymity — but now we feel ready to get back to the everyday life God called us to.

Can you pray for us? We have a few prayer requests weighing on us right now. 

Travel costs: we need about $4500 for tickets and baggage back to PNG.

Partners: our cost-of-living has increased with the birth of Lucy Mae; we’re looking for more partners.

Phones: we both need new phones, since ours each have one foot in the technological grave; it’s required to have working phones for our ministries.

Medical Bills: obviously, having a baby is costly.

We are continuing to make our travel arrangements in faith, knowing that the Lord provides what we need when we need it (and not a moment sooner), but it is heavy on us, and rather discouraging at times. BUT GOD. He is good and faithful. As our friend used to say: “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills; but He only feeds us one hamburger at a time.”

bad blogger

Wow, it’s been since MAY that I blogged last. They say it’s bad blogging etiquette to say “It’s been SO LONG. I’m sorry I’m a bad blogger. It’s been super busy.”

But you know what?
It has. 

Ministry:
There have been more medevacs, which means both Josh and I work extra. From July 2016 to July 2017 we had 36; both in country and out. That’s a record for our center/clinic/program.

left to right: Jon Leedahl, Dr. Kevin Ludwig holding baby Jensen, Josh Verdonck after flying a medevac to Cairns, Australia photo via: @j_verdonck

Besides the medevacs (not all of which Josh flew, obviously), there has been lots of other flying to keep him busy. You’ve probably heard about the newest tribal work open in Maliyali. They are first delivered to a staging area in the Kodiak, then shuttled in to their village of Maliyali in the helicopter. Josh was one of the main pilots helping with their allocation, as well as delivering them to their new home.

Josh doing one of the Maliyali allocation runs with the guys, Nathan (back), and David. photo via: @j_verdonck

As is always the case with ministry work, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” You probably remember that in January, one of our pilots had to leave for an early furlough. Unfortunately, in the last two weeks before we left, one more pilot had to stop flying as well. That leaves the program at 3 Kodiak pilots and 1 helicopter pilot for the next 6 months at least. This is a heavy load for the team there, as it doesn’t take long to burn out.

While we can’t exactly change our plans, this is something that weighs on Josh and I. Will you pray with us that God would send some more pilots to help carry the program in PNG?

Family:
Apart from the ministry side of life there in PNG, is the personal side. The doing life side. For us, that has meant getting excited as Baby GIRL Verdonck keeps growing right on schedule and is doing very well, and so are we.

View from our new porch! 🙂

We also got the opportunity to move into a different house on the center, one that needed a little work before we could move. Luckily Josh had lots of help, so it didn’t take too long before it was ready for us to move in. We now have a beautiful home that we absolutely love, and a wonderful front porch that we make regular use of. This is the first time that we actually feel settled.

It was election season in PNG this summer, which brings on a whole host of drama in the country, as emotions run high and strong about their candidates.

Maternity Leave:
So now we are in America, on our maternity leave. We’re living in our hometown of Florida, in a little house in a great location. Just a few days after we arrived in Florida, Hurricane Irma came right through our town. Being inland, we did not need to evacuate as mostly hurricanes are just wind and rain for us; it’s the post-storm clean up that causes all the difficulty. Luckily there was no major damage to any of our friend’s or family’s homes, and apart from the annoying clean up, and no power for several days, all is well.

Josh and I at our baby shower this weekend. So many blessings, and so fun!

We’ve seen the OB/GYN, pre-registered at the hospital, and signed up for all the parenting classes we can. There’s an overwhelming pile of baby clothes and supplies in our living room, and a car seat in “our” minivan. But at 33 weeks, it won’t be long before we have to put that stuff to use!
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