Tricycle Trailer

My parents sent a little tricycle for Aden on a container we got a few months ago.  I decided to save it for his birthday for him to have something fun to open.

It's still a tad big, so he's mostly been enjoying Fred Flinstone-ing it :)

Dad hooking up a trailer with Aden's red wagon.  He's stylish and functional!

 

Still walking his tricycle-trailer... 

Danny's Future Meal

Our Chilean teammate Danny bought (or perhaps was given?) a Duiker yesterday.  They call them freetombo in the Themne language but whatever you call them... they are DELICIOUS!!!

Definitely one of my more favorite "bush meat." We usually only eat them when we stay in a village but it definitely fulfills that "I want red meat now!" craving.

This one is still in it's youth so Danny will have to fatten him up!

Aden kept calling it a "deer" but that is what it looks like, a little miniature deer with a smooshed nose.

Better Late than Never!

 I'm sure there are very few people who read my blog that haven't seen my pictures on Facebook or in our ministry update... but if any didn't already know... Aden's going to be a big brother!

4th of July in Sierra Leone

You can move of us out of the USA Lord, but at our roots we will celebrate our Independence Day 'Merica Style! Ironically, there was a girl from England at our little get together.  While she insisted that today represents the day England graciously gave us our independence, she did try to dress in the most American thing she had, white and blue clothes with a Colorado Rockies hat lol! Here are some pictures from our fun day: 

Our great (nay I say best?) friends Sada and Gabe returned to Sierra Leone a few weeks ago with their son Isaiah and their now 3 month old Lucas:

Gabe/Isaiah, John/Aden.  Two top notch Father's doing what they do best!

All three kids confused about this photo op that we tried to create :) 

Let's just say this outfit makes me want to be a better American :)

Aden with his friend Bo.

Not pictured: hamburgers, 4th of July cupcakes, 7-layer bean dip, fruit salad, no-bake cookies, and french fries all of which we overate in the typical American fashion :) as well as a super-competitive boys v girls game of catch phrase. 

Eating Honey

WARNING: If you are a member of PETA or otherwise don't like seeing or thinking about the butchering of animals, read at your own risk.

So our team leader Chad left to visit Chile for a few weeks.  He had some business to take care of and hopefully recruiting some more Chilean team members for the work here.  As his return date was approaching, John and I decided to butcher one of our goats as a kind of "welcome home" dinner.

John hired a few guys to help him dig a pit in our yard.  He bought a 50 gallon metal drum and buried it within our yard.  They did cement work around the drum to help insulate the heat.  In the wee hours of the morning on the day we were going to eat the goat, John woke up at (actually just stayed awake until) 1 am.  John did the quick and hopefully painless deed of a quick slit of the throat of our beloved goat Honey.  We chose her because she was the weakest of all the goats and bore kids that were also runts or stillborn at birth. With some help of some of our African friends that John enlisted to help him... they skinned and gutted the goat.  And unfortunately in that order. 

Usually Africans have a different order of operations as far as preparing meat for consumption.  With a goat, they singe the fur on a far to make it easy to remove, and then gut the animal, and don't actually ever skin it (because the skin actually is edible ya know!) But in enlisting their help with the butchering of the goat, John ended up making concessions to the "American Way."  But in retrospect he wishes he would have done it "our way." :)

Because we skinned it first before we hung it up, there were tiny microscopic hairs on a lot of the goat's body.  John and I spent probably a good hour trying to remove them, because... uhhh gross! We then wrapped it in tin foil followed by banana leaves.  John had started a wood fire in the metal drum and we waited till it had burned down to coals.  The only problem was that only the top part of the wood turned to coals because the bottom section didn't receive enough oxygen.  We were a little worried as we lowered the goat into the barrel at about 4:30 am.  The theory behind the pit method is that it cooks low and slow much like a slow cooker... making it nearly impossible to overcook the goat.  But is it possible to undercook it? Stay tuned to find out.... :)

Here's the goat with a little garlic, salt, and parsley seasoning sprinkled on it before we wrapped it up.

Aden Borrows a Baseball Bat

Not yet with the coordination to actually play a game with the kiddos, Aden has fun being outside and using his friends' baseball bat. :)

Aden in Ronurie

Here is Aden and Mari while we camped out in Ronurie with the medical team.  They loved reading this Dora Explorer 'sound' book together.  As you can see... I decided to try the African method of potty training while we were outside most of the time.  The African method is "no diapers".  It was within a week of this trip that he really caught on and is now mostly potty trained! yay!

Plethora of Kids... and I'm talking about Goat Babies

Before we left for our last furlough, we took all of our goats (including a new billy goat) out to the property that we are now living on.  A goat's gestation period is about 5 months.  Lo and behold, 5 months after we moved them out, the goats started birthing kids in fairly rapid succession.  Here's some pictures of Lisa and her two kids moments after their birth.  Lisa gave birth a few weeks early because she had been living with the billy goat prior to all the others.

These pictures were just moments after the birth.  Its so cute watching them trying to walk and find their mama's teat for the first time The white and black one in the picture above was sadly trampled to death by one of our other billy goats.  Four other of our goats (Winne, Sargie, Lucy, and Honey) all gave birth within the next month or so although Honey's was born still-born.  Honey is kind of a weaker goat, although the sweetest so it wasn't a huge surprise.  Because of this, we may or may not be having a goat cookout real soon :)

Yoga Time

Mari is the newly adopted daughter of one of teammates Emily.  She has gone through quite a transformation from when Emily first met her when she was severely malnourished in terms of protein deficiencies.  She is now a just-turned-5, bright, spunky, sassy little girl.

Aden LOVES playing with her. 

Here they are having some fun on my yoga mat:

Kitchen Update

So, here it is... April is almost over.  We've been in our house for over 3 months now and haven't made too many improvements to the house since we've gotten here.  When we arrived, we still needed kitchen cabinets, cupboards, and tile.  Since then, we've only added cupboards about a month ago.  BUT IT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD!!!!

And they still aren't done yet.  John bought the hinges for them last fall on my special request.  I had requested doors on my cupboards that shut close on the outside (like most cupboards in the states).  Most of the cupboards made locally fit within the cupboard.  I'm not sure if I'm explaining it right to make sense, but I don't like them as much because wood warps so easily here due to the humidity... or maybe its because the hinges aren't good quality so eventually they become ill-fitting and difficult to close.  He also made a nice smooth finish but rubbing many layers of vegetable into it instead of using varnish.  I think it makes for a nice satiny finish which I really like.

These are the tubs that my dishes lived out of for the first two months that we lived here.  It made me very thankful to have cupboards! Now I store my big pots and pans in there until I can get lower cabinets made in that area.

Side note(s): You can see I took this picture right after taking my pineapple spiralizer photos.  Anyhoo- this photo has a better look at the tool if you're interested. Also, you can see the big bag of peanut M&Ms that John's mom brought for John us and we are going through them way too quickly!

Pineapple Spiralizer

Hello my name is Kaysie... and I sometimes write a blog.  Today is one of those times. :)

I just wanted to share a little kitchen tool my mom sent with John's mom when she came to visit.  As the title of the blog gives away, it cores and makes one long pineapple spiral or ringlet.  It works really good as long as you haven't let your pineapple go too long and get to that fizzy, fermented stage.  But who does that? Ok, yes, I do... and all too often! I LOVE pineapple but often forget about it sitting on my kitchen counter until I see a swarm of fruit flies taking over my kitchen.

 

You can barely see the pineapple spiralizer in the last picture far to the right. It works really well and I think I will use it often unless I have a ginormous pineapple.  In the above picture I cut open the pineapple after removing the innards and scraped any excess flesh as to not waste any.  There really wasn't too much wasted, but if I ever by a real big one, I think I'll cut it open by hand.  Also when I usually eat a pineapple, I just cut off the outer skin and cut the pineapple into discs without removing the core.  John and I both eat the core so if you're core eaters like us, maybe this isn't the utensil for you... or you can just cut off that core and eat it like a very fibrous, but pineapple-y popsicle.   :)

Two Pictures

Taken on the same day

Hours apart

Both show the love of his parents for him

(and also show how few clothes the boys in this family wear during dry season!)

How Priceless is His Unfailing Love... a lesson (to me) in experiencing God's love.

When I went back to the states... I saw a few friends and family members that had vinyl stickers on their walls that were bible verses.  I immediately fell in love with them and planned to bring some back to Sierra Leone with me to help 'decorate' our new place.  This is quite a big step for me, because I do NOT consider myself a decorator at all, nor do I even think about decorating when I think of a home.  That's why I will someday need someone (ahem... Robin... Megan) to do it for me.  And then I will keep it that way until somebody (ahem... you know who you are) tells me that its been outdated for nearly a decade and its about time to make some changes.

So its had been over a month since we've been back that I decided to finally put up one of the stickers in our living room.  I chose 1 Cor 13: 4-7 because I thought it would be a good idea to have a constant reminder of perfect, agape love for me to refer to as needed :)  I told John that morning I was going to try to put it up and he acted surprised that I hadn't done it earlier.

That morning I started my spiritual exercises for the day but didn't get that far because Aden woke up earlier than usual. The exercise was on experiencing God's love in a more tangible way and the bible reading for reflection was Psalm 36:5-10:

Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. Continue your love to those who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.

Later that afternoon I decided to pick it back up again and meditate on the Psalm searching and praying to feel the way the psalmist described his experience of God's love.  The author of The Exercises Volume II critiques present day evangelicals because we often have such a head knowledge of God's love but stop at that and fail to seek a real life experience of that love for fear of being too "feeling based" in our relationship.  In that fear, our relationship is emotionless and we find our Christianity lacking any enjoyment other than feeling good about ourselves for doing our devotional in the morning.  "Check! Now I can get on with my day."

So back to the story... In my afternoon study... I felt a little deflated because I know I have not been experiencing God's love in a tangible way, knowing that he was intimately involved in my life and willing to show it through his love.  I even wrote in my journal "I'm having a hard time thinking of a time that I have experienced God's love in the last week, particularly the unfailing aspect of it."  So I prayed that God would show me, in a tangible way how his love never fails.

I decided to take a break to put up my vinyl sticker.  I was careful to follow the directions to a T but I had problems with the paint.  As I was peeling off the front leaving the stickers behind, the paint was coming off with it.  At first I kind of laughed to myself thinking that maybe God was trying to speak to me about love but decided I liked some of the paint peeling because it made it look like a restored newspaper on the wall. By the time I got to the end of the sticker, the last part of the verse that says "love never fails" comes off and so does the paint around it. "Never fails" are the only words that I can't get to stick onto the wall.  I took a picture of it because I always want to remember how God showed me that everything in this world will fail me, including my bible stickers, but God WILL NOT.  And this all happened within 20 minutes of me praying to him to show me about his unfailing love! I then call John to tell him about it and he in a slightly disgruntled way 'shut me down' in my excitement because he was driving, didn't want to talk, and so hung up on me.  But I was even more overjoyed because I could again see that my earthly love (John) would also fail me, but still God never would.  

I pray that this next season of life that I would seek after God in a more tangible way and not get stuck into ruts of being content with knowing about Him rather than knowing Him.  

Perpetual Re-Choosing

"... the free choice to give up the self produces, as it were, the true self, the authentic person.  But it is a choice that must constantly be remade in every subsequent choice... this perpetual re-choosing of Christ is the great paradox and challenge of the Christian faith."

 -Robert Inchausti, Subversive Orthodoxy
   
I'm coming to terms with the idea/process that there are so many decisions and attitudes that we can make and have throughout the day that I have to continually re-choose Christ in each of them.  When a day goes by and I have not had to do that, its not because my day was easy, it was because I missed out on many opportunities to choose Christ over choosing self.  Sometimes I can even make a decision to honor Christ in one way or another, but it becomes a daily battle to remember that which I promised and why I promised it. 

Ignatius Indifference

Throughout the spiritual exercises that we've been going through, I discussed briefly the idea that we are not to prefer health to sickness, wealth to poverty, etc.  This idea has been coined Ignatius Indifference.  I had a hard time (and to an extent still do) seeing how we cannot have preferences in how our lives play out.  Here is a quote from Brian Rice that has really helped me:

"not that we don't care for the world or that we think only of the afterlife in heaven, but that the glory and grace of Christ are so supreme for us that all other things pale in their influence upon us.  The things that were once attractive, alluring, beckoning, and to which we devoted so much energy to possess, have waned in their power.  We have been weaned off their influence."

 

At the beach with Sandi

No I have no pride... did not miss out on my opportunity to photograph with the multiple Dove award winner and Grammy winner Sandi Patty. 

My two loves taking a little nap together!

Sandi Patty in Ronurie

Back to Ronurie we went with the team and family of Sandi Patty... (as well as the renown singer herself... duh!)

 This girl with a bun is her daughter, and the boy playing high 5's is her son.

Here Sandi is holding a very newly born baby in the village

A typical picture of the village when we first arrive.  Many come gather to see what the hustle and bustle is about and eventually the crowd dies down.  Sandi's husband is in the blue shirt and glasses.

The two girls with big beautiful curly mops are 2 more of Sandi's daughters and the girl in the right is her future daughter-in-law.

And here is the true stars (of my life!) and also a very typical reaction to little Aden when he first arrives in a village.

Spiritual Exercises

We were really blessed that right when we came back to Sierra Leone (and after we scurried to unpack our entire house), we hosted a team from Chile.  Mr. P led our entire team (consisting of 14 people right now including children) and some local ministry partners through a spiritual retreat.  We started going through a book called The Exercises Volume II: Invitations by Brian Rice.  It is based off the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola… a Jesuit priest.  All the Jesuit priest wanna-be’s had to go through Ignatius’ spiritual exercises before being accepted into the priesthood.  While Jesuits are a Catholic group, the exercises are great for any Believer to go through as they seek to know and love God more intimately and to do His will and Kingdom Work more entirely. 

Our team has really seen the fruits in the past month of these exercises.  Small accountability/sharing groups have sprung up within our team where there was none.  Personally, my relationship with God has grown toward more of an experiential knowledge of Christ and his love while I admit that prior to this, my relationship with God consisted as more of a “head” knowledge.  

According to Ignatius, the purpose of his Spiritual Exercises is “conquest of self and the regulation of one’s life in such a way that no decision is made under the influence of any inordinate attachment.”  I had to look up the definition for inordinate and found that to mean “excessive.”  When I first started these exercises, I did find I had some ‘inordinate attachments’ in my life.  Things I wanted and that I planned for that may be against the will of God for me but I wanted anyways or would push to get whether He said okay or not.  

Here are some more principles of Ignatius that we have been working through in order that we might be free from such attachments:

1.     Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

2.     The other things on the face of the earth are created for man, to help in attaining the end for which he is created.

3.     Hence man is to make use of them in as far as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he mus rid himself of them in as far as they prove a hindrance to him.

4.     Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things as far as we are allowed free choice are not under any prohibition

5.     Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life.  The same goes for all other things.

6.     Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created

Ummm… can we say these things are hard and seem utterly impossible?  These were the first thoughts that ran through my mind… “How could I ever not prefer health over sickness, and if not for me, for my family?” It has been really good to go through these exercises and work through these questions with God and most likely will be something I will have to go through many times in my walk with God.  

I would truly recommend this book to anyone who feels slightly distant in their relationship with God and would like to go deeper.  It is a little painful as you let go of your wants and desires, but oh so freeing and rewarding as you live a life in closer communion with God.  John and I did read another book (The Exercises Volume I) that prepares you to go through the 2^nd book but it’s not entirely necessary.

And here is a picture of Aden from this morning before breakfast when he brought me my camera to take a picture!

New House Part I

So here is some pics of the new place and I think you'll see why it will take 6 months before our house is ready...

So here's the kitchen:  Right now we have no cabinets (below the counter or on the wall) We are, therefore, having to store a lot of stuff on the counters or below in boxes and totes.  In the lower left corner you can see our stove, and the in the lower right corner you can barely see our chest solar fridge.  To the left of the sink you can see our water filter.  I really like the counters because they are deep so Aden can't sit up there while I am doing food prep.  I also really like the tile on the floor and the counters.  The kitchen and the bathrooms are the only rooms with tile.

Here's the view sitting on our couch.  Through that hole in the wall is our kitchen that we just looked at.  You can see our computer station and our dining table (as well as a still unpacked suitcase and my beloved starbucks cup)



Here is the opposite view of the living room taken from inside the kitchen through that hole.  We have a screen door that I love for breeze but keeps the skeeters out.  You can see a brief view into Aden's room.  Our bedroom door is in the far right of the photo.  Aden is playing at our little coffee table/foot rest.  You can see the cement floor in the picture.

Here is our guest "shower room."  You're not supposed to need a shower curtain for these "shower rooms" but I'm thinking we should probably do one anyways.  Right now, we keep Rhya's food and water bowl in here.  In the back of the shower, the original building had these weird slates... not sure for what? But we knocked them out of each of three rooms and will eventually make them into shelves.  But through that window you can see John and I's bathroom.

Here is our guest "toilet room" Apparently it is not uncommon to have separate rooms for toilets and showers.  You can see John and I's shower threw the 'window.'  On the ground you can see our trashcan, a blue bag that we put a lot of John's tools (not sure why it is in the bathroom during this picture?), and that paint tub is where we put Aden's dirty cloth diapers that we usually clean in the toilet for #2's and in the sink for #1's.  Don't worry if you come to stay at our house as a guest, I will take those out of there and clean the sink for you :)

Here is our pantry.  LOVE LOVE LOVE this room.  I can close it to keep the dog and Aden out but it is quite spacious.  I still have some organizing to do but we have been very busy since we landed so this will do for now.  Also the lighting in this room is due to the sky lighting that John put in when he designed the ceiling.  I love how bright it is... I was a little scared of our old pantry because it was super dark in there and I didn't know what kind of bugs were lurking around.