March...More than just throwing Whipped Cream...

Lest you think we are just throwing around said whipped cream concoctions...here is a run-down of what we've been doing lately...(settle in, it's a longer read than usual)







On Monday nights this month Howard and I spent the evenings with the kids from Brainerd High School here in Chattanooga as part of the CRU ministry led by our friend Jill Finley who is on staff with them.
We are getting to know these high-schoolers who are like teenagers everywhere and hoping to SHOW THEM JESUS.







We spent Thursday the 5th with our Sweetwater Small Group friends - catching up on what we were all up to and hearing how we have survived the winter so far. We shared a meal and great discussion and much prayer.  (more about that here.)

We took our photo for the official church directory of Covenant Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga on Monday the 19th - there was too much double chin stuff going on for our liking...so no photo for you - but it will be in the directory.

On Tuesdays the 3rd and the 17th, Sandy spent the morning watching kids at Covenant PCA while their mothers attended a Mother's Encouragement Group held at the church.  My mother always taught me that it was important to give younger mother's a break when my kids were grown.  It has been good to meet new people, kids and adults!

          

Howard has had the opportunity to help at the church we are attending after their custodian retired at the end of last year. He has been fixing toilets, building shelves, and cleaning as needed until the new person starts.  This past Sunday's crisis was a sewer back-up which caused all the bathrooms on the main floor to flood - right before 2 wedding showers...guess how he spent his afternoon.

On Thursday the 12th we took a short road-trip down to MTW offices and met with Rohan Crown and Jack Beall at Starbucks - where Sandy completely embarressed herself by answering the Barista's question of what kind of milk in her iced coffee with a puzzled "cow milk?"....sigh....it was only the 2nd time I have been to Starbucks. Steep learning curve.

We spent that afternoon visiting with new missionaries at the offices - there are two more families who will be working with the Native America/First Nations people in the US and in Canada.  We look forward to getting to know them and their work.

In the evening we joined Rohan at Chestnut Mountain Presbyterian Church and visited with friends there, David &Bethany and Dee & Katie.  We got to see Rohan in action as he shared with the folks there who support him and his family in their work at Amazing Grace Community Church, and we met Emily's parents!

Saturday the 14th found us traveling down to Atlanta again - this time to share memories and catch up with long-time friends and fellow missionaries from Nigeria Dan & Lois Verhoef. We had a great time and they took us for lunch to the city of Senoia - which, for those who don't know ( and we didn't either), is the city where they shoot the Walking Dead TV series.

The evening of Saturday the 14th we were again at Chestnut Mountain to visit with Rohan and hear the mission speaker at the churches Mission Conference. We were challenged by Dee Hammond to take a Kool Whip pie to raise support for the Amazing Kids ministry in Lethbridge.

Kool Whip for Kool Kids


Then back home to Chattanooga for the BIG BIRTHDAY PARTY!

Sunday afternoon it was a beautiful day and we washed our filthy vehicles before heading over to our daughter Becky's house for Julie's birthday.


We haven't spent a birthday with our daughter Julie in over 5 years because she has been in Honduras teaching - so we through a big bash with lots of cake on Sunday, March 15th.

The week of the 16th found us:
- buying a new TV because our free one finally gave up the ghost after 3 years (yes, Howard and Julie were having fun with the box - once a kids always a kid...

- volunteering at church quite a bit and bringing meals to friends who had babies
-attending Bible studies
- attending CRU
 - GOING TO SEE THE CINDERELLA MOVIE!! with all of the Vander Griend girls!

- finished up the week with a Ladies Spring retreat on Saturday - we were challenged to
Be Intentional in our living of the Christian life.  It was very good and it was great to spend time with just the girls. (Thanks Howard for watching some of the grands).
- Howard and I completed our Kool Whip for Kool Kids challenge (see previous post for the highlights)


Sunday the 22nd Howard and I helped serve lunch to the Covenant College choir who sang at our worship service that morning and then had some friends over for dinner to share more about our work with the Blackfoot people.

We will end this week with a trip to Cherokee, N.C. for training to be associate staff this summer for a week in with people who volunteer for a week with MTW's short-term ministry among the Cherokee Native Americans.

We will end the month up with having more people over for dinner who have recently become monthly supporters and then looking forward to celebrating the Resurrection of our Savior! in the month of April.

Hope you had a busy month too!

Timeline Tuesday!! Selling another Home (subtitle: Where is My Home?)

(Timeline Tuesday – some of the back-story leading up to our moving back into missions)

Summer 2013 - As we prepared for our next adventure of moving into missions we put up another FOR SALE sign on our home and small farm in Tennessee. Over the years we have bought and sold several homes. Here is just a quick overview for those who are new to our family.

 We purchased our first home in 1989 – Machesney Park, Illinois.  We lived there for 7 years as our children moved through elementary school and did lots of remodeling and upgrades. 

In 1996 (the year the pipes froze in some apartments we owned in Illinois) we moved back “home” to Florida and purchased a home in Lakeland.  We lived there and upgraded it also.

*disclaimer: some of these photos are scanned photos of non-digital film pictures

In 2001 we had the opportunity to live in a fly-in community (Howard's 1st through 5th careers being in aviation) – where there is an airfield adjacent to many of the homes and everyone had an aircraft hangar bigger than their house. We actually built this home ourselves - and while we were building we lived for about 5 months in a trailer - 5 people and 2 cats in a 13 x 65 single-wide that leaked when it rained. 

 It was an experience. 

We lived in the Southwind neighborhood for 3 years.  Becky graduated from High School while we were there, and as the college years began we realized the need for less mortgage and more college cash.

We sold that home in 2003 and moved to Whispering Pines – my favorite street name – and lived there for 2 years – Mike graduated from High-school and Becky got married. We remodeled of course and built a large detached garage.

We then had an opportunity to downsize and we moved back into the Southwind fly-in community where we had purchased an investment lot and built our “hangar-home”.

While living in the hangar-home everyone graduated: Becky from college, Mike from trade school, and Julie from High school.  In 2006 we went on a 25^th anniversary vacation and stayed at our good friend’s cabin in eastern Tennessee – it was beautiful – and we were ready for a change.  An opportunity came for us to purchase some land in the area and Howard and Mike took a couple of trips to look at different acreages.  We purchased our Athens, Tennessee 18 acres in 2007 and Howard built us our “barn home”. 

While in Tennessee, Howard went back to school for his Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling -  he had been discussing going back to school for over a decade – at Lee University. He graduated in 2011 and began working at a crisis stabilization hospital. Mike gets married to his beautiful wife at the barn.

  

Which brings us to the summer of 2013, getting ready to go into missions again, and putting another home up for sale. 

The home sold in a month which we had not thought about so we moved into an apartment - as we discussed this move later, we realized that in our married life we had never lived in an apartment complex.  It was an interesting 4 months.  

We only lived there for a short while. The process of getting to the mission field takes longer than we had anticipated and we realized it was more expensive to live in an apartment than to just purchase another small home. We decided to move to Chattanooga and be closer to our children for the year or so that it would take us to raise our support. That takes us to our little bungalow on Julian Drive.  We are, of course, fixing it up and Julie will live in it when we head to Lethbridge.

What will our home in Lethbridge look like?  

Stay tuned...

And while you are waiting...
Where is our home truly at?

                                 ...not on this earth!

Hebrews 13: 14 - For here we do not have an enduring city but we are looking for the city that is to come.

What comfort in knowing that no matter where I may hang my hat here on earth - I have a forever hat-rack in heaven!

Time line Tuesday!

New information for you!

So just how did we end up getting called to Lethbridge, Alberta?

    How did we end up getting to Nigeria, West Africa 29 years ago?

        How did we meet?

              How did we end up living in 17 different houses through the 33 years of our marriage?


These and other "timely" questions will be answered and revealed to inquiring minds - On Tuesdays!

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  Spring of 2013 - it's time to acquire a new group of calves for the farm - they are so cute when you first get them - but to keep a calf alive when it has been separated from it's mother and bottle feed them grow them to grass-fed beef status is quite a job.  Last spring we lost 5 of the 9 we purchased. It was a hard time for Howard.  You expend a lot of time and effort and yes, love, into raising them.  After a rough couple of months, Howard started wondering if the part-time farmer might not be where God wanted him.

  March of 2013 - Sandy puts in her resignation to the law firm she worked at - she and Howard had been working opposite schedules and missed spending time with each other - we really do like to spend time together and there had not been enough days off at the same time to go for motorcycle rides. In addition - and Uncle Sam had taken too much of their money that year.  We did not need to have 2 incomes at this time in our lives.  Sandy had also started wondering what else to do  -  a nagging sensation that there was more to life than sewing, reading, enjoying the grandkids (which we do very much), and working in our local church.



  June 2013 - Howard starts exploring other Counseling jobs available with different mission organizations and finds that there are many places in many parts of the world that need 50+ year old people with our skills.  We feel that God is giving us a restlessness about staying in Tennessee at this time. We had always kept in our future plans the possibility of returning to mission work after we returned to the states 26 years ago from a term of service in Nigeria and see this as a good time to explore that opportunity.

  We started praying and put the farm up for sale!  



The next Time Line Tuesday post will give you more information -                                                             Stay tuned!