Until We Meet Again

One of the joys of our ministry here at the training center is to meet so many great people.  We greatly enjoy investing in people and building a relationships with them.  Although we are so happy and excited to see our graduates moving on into the next phase of ministry the good-byes are always hard as you never know if and when we will see them again.   A few days ago we said good-bye to our good friends, Megan and Christian and their three boys. We had the priveldge to spending a lot of quality time together.  Our lives have been enriched by their friendship.  After their 20 months here in Canada we made a lot of fun memories and we will really MISS these dear dear people.  Now we will be cheering them on from afar.

Building Blocks for Strengthening Families

Last week I had the privilege of attending an  MK Summit.  This group of people heavily invests in the lives of MK's and the missionary families.  The MK Care Team, the Educational Resource Team, someone representing one of our Bible schools, and overseas consultants attended (some via skype) were in attendance.  Our theme was "Building Blocks for Strengthening Familes".  We heard reports from all the different departments and there was a lot of brainstorming and sharing of ideas.  We also talked about how we can help families who live in isolated situations.  We also had a guest presenter who skyped in to give us a seesion on Building Stronger Emotional Health through art therapy.  She has many years of experience as an art therapist. For the past ten years she has invested her time in helping the missionary family with all the transitions and extra stesses they live under.  Through art therapy she has seen God bring healing, seen relationships restored, seen children's stress level decrease and a host of other things.  I appreciated all her creative ideas to help the missionary family thrive.  It is always an encouragement to hang out with coworkers who are spread out all over the world, but who have the same focus in helping our missionary families.  I have come back with some new resources and ideas that I hope will enhance my ministry.

Chef Vernon

Vern is in the middle of teaching a curriculum development class.  He tries to pull in all sorts of examples while he is teaching.  As is talks about all the prep that goes into writing up lessons he talked about cooking and all the prep you go through.  So as a fun out of class event, he cooks a Chicken Curry meal for the student body.  I help in cutting things up and making naan bread but he is definitely the main cook.  It is always so much fun to hang and connect with out students especially over yummy food.

On the Road to Learning

One thing I am passionate about is helping to equip families to be as prepared as possible so that they can thrive on the mission field and not just survive.  For missionaries, eductaing their children overseas is a major issue with many choices and decisions that they will be making through the course of their children's eduactional journey.  There are factors like: What is their child's learning style?  How many children do they have?  What kind of ministry are they invovled in?  Do any of their children have learning challenges?  These factors can greatly affect what curriculum is chosen.  Sometimes a parent might be doing two or three different curriculums because of all of these factors.  As many of you know I home schooled our children in a remote area for many years.  During that time period in missions, MK schools was what most missionaries were using.  I recieved very little help and encouargement and we did not have all the help there is today on the internet.  That was just the reality of homeschooling in a remote location in the eary 90's.  I am so very thankful how much more is available now for our missionaries.  As a mission we have home school consultants on almost all of our fields.  Some fields even have a resource room with home school curriculums and other books for missionaries to borrow.  Since I know it can be challenging to live in a remote area and home school at the same time I want to do everything possible for our missionary families to help them on this journey.  For the past couple of springs I have been putting together a home school workshop for our students.  It is a tremedous amount of work to put the whole thing together.  However, it has been neat to see how God helps me each step of the way to find ladies to present on relevant topics that will be useful for our moms.  I am thankful for those of you who have prayed for me through my health challenges to be able to put this together for our students.  YEA God for a great time together as ladies encouraged each other for the road ahead.  If you know of a missionary mom with children still in their home, pray for her, pray for her kids.  Ask her how it is going.  And maybe even ask her if you can buy a book she has been wanting but doesn't have money in the budget for it. It will make her day! Be her cheerleader.

My Off Balanced Life

I want to thankyou for your prayers for me.  Yesterday was a pretty rough day.  I have gone through these balance tests once before.  It ends up leaving me dizzy, with a head ache, and like I will throw up.  I am thankful that after all the tests and seeing the doctor I was able to chill for an hour before we drove home as I knew the stop and go traffic downtown Toronto would have made me even sicker.  

I was hoping that all the tests would turn out normal but unfortunately they didn't.  You might be wondering what kinds of tests I went through.  I had another hearing and ear pressure test.  Then I went through a series of five different tests.  In several of the tests I wore different types of goggles so they could record what my eye movement was doing.  One test I would look straight ahead and focus on a red dot while the lady running the tests had her hands on my head and would jerk it back and forth and up and down.  Each time it recorded what was happening with my eye movement.  Another test I had a different type of goggles on and I would watch red dots move all over the place and my eyes were supposed to follow all the dots.  In another test they put little electrodes down my ears.  Then they hooked me up to a wood pecker noise in my ear and they monitored what the nerves in my ears were doing.  The worst test was when they had some dark goggles on and I was laying down while they poured water in my ears.

Since it was such an ordeal for me to make it there for all the testing it worked out for me to see the doctor right afterwards to go over the results.  On one test my left ear and nerves were not functioning like it should.  On anothr test my right ear and nerves were not functioning like they should.  And in another test both of my ear nerves were not functioning like they should.  I am very thankful that despite everything I have not lost my hearing yet. (This is something that they think will happen yet.). Although they don't know fully know what is happening everything is pointing back to Meniere's disease.  But no matter how knowledgable doctors are they still can not say for sure what is going on.  

So what does the path forward look like?  The doctor is going to have me see a physical therapist who specializes in balance issues.  We have no insurance for this but I am thankful that two sessions are covered since I went through all of these tests and they didn't come out normal.  I will have to go back down town Toronto for this as there are very few hospitals where there are specialists that work with patients.  I will be checking in with my specialist again in six months.  However, if I have another bad bout like I had in August they will work me in sooner so the doctor can see exactly what is going on.  Unfortunately, they do expect I will have more bouts of terribe dizziness that will wipe me out for days.  They just don't know when.  I am so thankful for everyone who has been praying for me, and have sent me notes.  It has been a HUGE encouragment to me on this journey.

A Free Date!

Growing up in Chicago our school took yearly trips to the zoo.  Although I always enjoyed it I never realized how nice it was to have a zoo so close.  You never really appreciate something until you are far away from it.

We were in the city for a couple of days and wanted to do something special with Aurora.  We also wanted to do something that was economical.  So many of the things we were looking into were too costly to afford.  Then my one of my sisters told me that the Lincoln Park Zoo was still free. We planned on having to pay at least $20 for parking but we were very fortunate to actually find a parking spot that was free.  YEAH!!! 

Since it has been quite a few years since I had gone to the zoo I felt like a kid again as we went around seeing all of the animals.  Although we only had a couple of hours between thunderstorms, it turned out to be a gorgeous day in the 60's.  It was a Win Win for a free date that was filled with making a lot of fun memories together.

All in the Family

We made a quick trip down to Lynchburg over the weekend.  It just so happened that there was a family get together in Charlotte on Saturday.  It was fun for us to pop in over there and spend the day with almost all of our children.  We were just missing Caleb & Kristina and their children.   Camille is soon having a birthday so the ladies had a little ladies event planned for the afternoon in honor of her.  God has blessed me with amazing daughters and it is always so fun to hang out with them.  Zachary and Elisha did a great job of hosting us all.