2 Year Anniversary

Two years ago we stumbled off a plane at Heathrow airport. We had flown overnight from Newark, New Jersey and we were tired, hungry, scared and excited. We were finally here, after all the prayer, worry, packing, talking, and support raising. After a three hour drive to Dudley borough, Birmingham, we entered the small upstairs flat that we had only seen for ten minutes back in January 2006. It had been cleaned and the kitchen painted; but it still looked very dreary to me. I was stressed out at all we had to do to make it livable. We were provided a box of some food staples, but I needed to feed three hungry, tired boys. I also needed to stay cheerful and upbeat about this new strange place, even though I was scared. We bought a few things from the Aldi's just down the street and I made dinner. That night we went to sleep with no pillows and very few covers on our beds. We had only brought what we thought would get us by, until our other things would be shipped over in two months. It was much cooler here - shockingly cold at night for August. Somewhere in the middle of the night Paul and I woke up. We sat in shock and talked for a while about how different everything was. The next morning we woke and started sorting things out.
I soon realized that all my props were very far away - my family, my friends, my home culture.
Just because I stepped off a plane as a missionary did not mean that I was accepted by those we had come to serve. Our directors were out of the country for the next month (in the US!) and the other workers were very busy. I was lonely, disoriented, scared of the people all around us, and worried that I maybe had gotten it all horribly wrong - that God never called us to this place, it was just my ego talking. That God would not provide for our needs - we were idiots to have sold all we had to come here.........

Now we are living very close to the main center, in a wonderful house. We have friends, our sons have friends, we feel very accepted and knit into the Betel community and church. God is always faithful and provides not only our needs but our wants. We lack nothing. It has been very hard, this moving across the ocean. Very amazing and humbling to see God's hand working in our hearts, individually and as a family. Scott and I have argued and talked about everything from money to our spiritual life, and we are now closer than we have ever been. It has been worth it.
Now, the question is - do we get to stay? Will our visa extension go through? Or will we be denied? We are about half way through the normal waiting time, we have three more weeks to go. We shall see.............................

Summertime, and the living is easy....

Yep, if it looks like summer, smells like summer and feels like summer, well, hey --- it must be summer. The boys got out of school a week ago and on the first Monday of their summer holiday, the weather turned nice. Inconceivable! Warm and sunny. Mid-seventies. Most lovely.
So we have been riding our bicycles to the park, where I nap and read on a blanket, while they meet friends and run around like the monkeys that they are. Pete, our housemate, pulled out three tents that they had saved in donated items to Betel, and he, Scott and the boys put up two.
The next two nights were spent sleeping in the back garden in said tents. They have been delighted to have them up and have been spending time there, playing and reading. Yes, when the weather gets sorted out here and it actually feels somewhat summer-like, this is an idyllic place to be.
We have this rickety grill, with the grilling area about the size of a big pizza pan. And we just got charcoal bricketts and pork ribs in food donations, together on the same day. Must be a sign from God that grilling BBQ ribs must commence. We got tons of tins of baked beans - as beans are truly an English comfort food. Sounds like a meal!! Paul is praying for a chicken (or two) so I can make one of his favorite foods - homemade chicken turnovers. I make a whole bunch and put them in the freezer, and they are just there, like gold, waiting to be eaten. For those who do not know, we get a whole lot of our groceries from donated food from a huge grocery chain store called Sainsbury's. The fruit and veg is usually wonderful. And it makes planning a meal very exciting at times - you never know what you are going to get. For the past couple of weeks, meat has been scarce, so we have been going vegetarian, except for fish. Scott and I like fish, but the kids are more wary and will not eat most of it. All this to say, the pork ribs are a big treat- and some chicken would be too. God is great, He will provide.

As I know, many of you are dying from the heat and humidity in Alabama, and I am so sorry. This respite from the usual gloom and rain feels very hard won and precious. And don't feel envious.......it won't last. I will be back to moaning soon enough!!!

Critters

Last week end we found lice in Peter's and Christopher's hair. I promise you, I have never found or dealt with lice in my long life, but this explains all the scratching. Ick, big Ick, ick ick ick!!
So Scott got the poison shampoo and I slathered it on their monkey heads, all the while itching myself. Even though I read that you don't have to wash everything, I did.

So it seems to have worked. We go through each other's hair like a bunch of hungry primates. Every time they scratch we have another little look. I just know that the lice are lurking in our couches and carpet, waiting for an unsuspecting head (or hairy toe / leg) to jump on and start a new colony.

The cat has fleas.
Sigh.

Birthday gifts.

Here are my three favorite birthday gifts - Peter gave me a "Hello Kitty" charm, to match my other "Hello Kitty" pirate-y school girl charm. Christopher gave me two, count 'em, two shiny rocks, and the guys in the furniture restoration shed made me a card out of wood.

Some photos -

Here are some pics that I have been wanting to share of people that I work with here at Betel.


This is Phil and Fleur. They were married this
past April. Both came into the program as drug addicts and worked their way up to leaders in their houses. Fleur is my current office mate.
They live on site in a flat at Windmill House.

This is Angela, Anthony and Angela's daughter Bethany. They married in May and now live in Derby ( about an hour north of us) and Anthony is a house leader at the Betel center there.

Angela worked with me in the reception office for about six months before her wedding. I really miss her now that she has moved to Derby, but she is very happy up there, so I shouldn't moan.

This is Beth and Dave. They were married in Betel a year and half ago. Beth is a missionary from Virginia and Dave was a drug addict here at Betel. They live in a flat on site at Windmill and Beth is one of the director's assistants. She is one of my accountability partners and listens to me moan and groan more than she should. She is also a very devoted mom to one of our kittens.

Some things are worst than getting wet...

Yep, it's still raining and they are forecasting rain through the rest of the week. So normally I just rush through the rain and spend my time indoors reading, sewing, emailing. But now I have been building up my strength riding my bicycle to Windmill house and back and I don't want to lose any ground in my campaign to fitness. It is 2.2 miles one way and it was getting easier every time I did it. But I am not so zealous that I want to ride in the pouring rain, but I do want to ride! I am not trying to lose weight, but am exercising to reduce stress, sleep well and feel happier. I also am losing the lovely cottage-cheese cellulite on my nether regions. At my age, (and I plan to start using that phrase - ALOT!) (Jonny says that 51 is the new 40) losing cellulite off of any part of the body is a great achievement! So if it keeps raining I am going to be irritable, sleep deprived and doughy. Not really a good missionary combination - but really good for a legalistic, unbending, religious attitude. Yep, pray for a little break in the rain.

5th of July

Yeah, we celebrated and made a spectacle of ourselves and it was good. The weather : it rained.
No surprise there. Rained and rained and rained. But Scott grilled those burgers and hot dogs and I baked those beans and it was good.
We could not find any fireworks anywhere. Not even a pack of sparklers for the kids. Everyone said that they do not start selling them until October. Sigh. But we has a bag of poppers left over from New Years Eve and we popped them all - in the dining room.
Then we tried really hard to shove all the mentos into the diet colas, but I did not realize that you had to have a test tube or similar object to really get them in fast and all at once. The guys did their best, bless 'em, and we did acheive a height of about 10 ten, once.

We had three American guys - all volunteering for various amounts of time. One guy, Andy, is a WEC missionary kid, and really has only lived in the US for the past two years. He was raised in Turkey and South east Asia. We also had Chelsea, an young American women, who has been with Betel for six months and flies home to Pennslyvania on Tuesday. The rest of our group was made up of four rowdy Scots and two Brits and Beth. I work with Beth, she is from Virginia and is married to one of the Brits. She brought her cat over - Festus - who is the brother to my cat - Lulubelle, and we also celebrated their birthdays. The cats. Not Beths or anyone else. We had a cat birthday cake and presents: Salmon treats, yummmmmm.

The kids played Apples to Apples with the guests which ended in a shouting match, but it usually does. Because of the rain, we did not make too much noise and no police were called to the scene. Darn. But we had fun and that was good.

We

The 4th

So today is the actual 4th of July and I am truly annoying my office mate - Fleur - and anyone who walks in - by playing patriotic music. Unashamed. I have tears in my eyes. I will miss the fireworks mostly - sycronized to Lee Greenwood. I will miss the smell of ribs on the grill and the heat. Yes, even the heat.
Well, I need to go have a cup of tea.

Turning 50, then 51

Last year I turned fifty, and I cried for three days. Not all of it is because of the age thing, part was because my eldest - Josh - left England on my birthday on his way to a new adventure in Seoul, Korea. I hate it when family leaves. When Josh left at 18, to go to Minnesota to college, I wept like a baby at the airport and then truly mourned for about two months. He was the first to leave home, and it devastated me.
So part of my crying was because Josh left - and it got all hectic toward the end. We were planning on going out to lunch, just him and I and having one last long conversation. But it didn't happen like that and the next thing I know is that he is out the door going to Heathrow.
The other part why I cried - I am not so sure. I felt alone, abandoned and worthless. I felt like everyone in the world had a place but me. No one could console me, not the kids nor Scott. I cried through the night in my favorite place to cry - the bathtub. I did not sleep and called in sick on Monday. Finally, I knew I had to go to work on Tuesday, but could not stop crying in the car - poor Scott. I could not put words to my sorrow, but everything that I had held in for the last couple of years came out. When we got to work, I went and found our director - Mary Alice. I was going to tell her that I didn't think I could work that day either, but she sat me down to talk. It all came out and probably did not make much sense, but her first comment was - "we have been wondering when you would crack" or something to that effect. She said that her first couple of years as a missionary in Spain were very hard and that she would go on crying jags for days also. She talked me through it and out the other end and I was much better.
Anyway, I turn 51 next week. I think I will do better because Josh is not leaving, he is coming in September. I have just had a wonderful time in Alabama and my luv tank is fairly full. I just want you wonderful girlfriends out there to know I love you, I love your children and even your pets ( Kathi Millsaps dog: Smokey). You give so much more than you know. I think I am going to start crying..... but it's good this time.