Update: The Latest Newsletter Is Out

Hey everybody,

Our latest newsletter is out. You can view it here.

Thanks!

Tim

Update On Our Work in Africa

This is just a quick update about the latest on our involvement with life and ministry in Africa. I have taken a permanent, full-time, position with African Bible Colleges which will have our family spending 4-5 months each year in Uganda teaching and training students at African Bible University in Kampala. The rest of the time each year, we will spend in the U.S. living in the Athens/Atlanta, GA area telling the story of the work that God is doing in Africa through ABC to anyone who will listen, particularly building and maintaining relationships with church partners all over the US.

Andrea and the girls and I also remain involved with the work of Sixty Feet (Children Justice Initiative - CJI - as it is known in Uganda) serving imprisoned children in Uganda. The time each year in Uganda will allow Andrea and the girls to stay involved serving with Sixty Feet, and all of us cannot wait to re-connect with our beloved brothers and sisters at Gateway Bible Church in Bwerenga (20-30 mins outside of Kampala).

In the weeks, months, years ahead we will be using this blog mainly to keep our family, friends, ministry partners, etc. up to date on our work in Africa. So check back often.

We'll be in touch!

Tim

Here we go again!

I just received the official call.  Tim and Hannah are on Ugandan soil.  This is the fifth time in a two year span that some or all of our family has been in Africa.  What began as an poorly formed idea and morphed into a poorly formed prayer in August 2011, has led to a life-changing experience in a country with people we love deeply.  To say that our family has "Africa in our blood" would not be overstating it.  That being said, yes, there are three members of our family jealous that we weren't in Uganda calling someone here.  Yes, jealous, full-fledged," we want what you have" jealous.  No one gets to know how many times Hannah heard said with a not-so-polite tone, "well, YOU are getting to go to Africa...".  Like the fact that we were so jealous should make her more grateful.  Handy that I am realizing that I was parenting so poorly AFTER she is gone.  Apologies will be needed to be said when she returns.

ANYWAY, to say that our lives have been turned upside down by Uganda and her people, is saying it lightly.  It is also true that with all the blessings, there have been difficulties.  So as I lay here still in the last bit of recovery from a bad episode of pancreatitis, waiting on the call to hear that my husband, daughter and all with them had arrived safely, I pondered the question "why are we doing this again?"

Since many of you are supporting Hannah, praying for her and Tim, and others of you have supported us and our "Adventures in Africa" in the past, I thought you might be interested in hearing a very un-eloquent explanation on why we keep doing this.

When we began, it was really selfishly motivated.  I was thinking that our family needed fresh perspective on how "good" we had it, as we were all grumbling a lot about our life circumstances at the time.  I was not thinking about anyone else.  I was thinking that we had a family-wide need of "getting our priorities in order".  Thankfully, God is kind to use even our selfish motives to do something good.  After I went, then Tim, then our entire family, God changed us.  Not to say that we have our priorities straight now, but the motivation is different.

For now, Uganda isn't a place on a map.  It is the names and faces of people that we love: Christine, Charles, Faith, Josh.   The stories of the country now have real people who have really been impacted by these events in tangible ways that we saw, touched and smelled.  The concept of a "third world country" is no longer an idea and statistics:  it is real poverty, hard work, dirty conditions,  the preciousness of water and a struggle for hope.  Imprisoned children doesn't just sound terrible.  It is worse than it sounds, and each child there soaks up every hug, every kindness that you can give them, and we've seen how the ministry of 60 feet makes that possible. Upper level Christian education for Ugandans can transform an entire family's future for good for generations.  We know that the ministry of African Bible University has done this.

So what is the bottom line?  We are in love.  And love can do crazy things.  We love our friends, family and co workers in Uganda.  We are in love with Jesus.  When you have two people you love, its natural you want them to be connected.  This is why we do what we are doing.  We want whatever tiny cupfuls of Jesus' love that we can share in Uganda, to share it.  We do this knowing that it is God's love that is what transforms everything.  We just have the privilege of being the ones who get to carry this good message.

So thanks for supporting our family.  Thank you for supporting our ministry.  Here's to falling in love more and more with each passing day, no matter how much it turns our world upside down.

The Grand Finale

It has been 5 months since I last posted.  I just reread my last two posts.  After reading them, I found myself thinking two things:  first, "I REALLY chose to share all of those things with others???", and second, I thought "well things have not changed much, I am still such a mess."

If I were the reader of this blog series, I might be wondering "when is she going to get to the 'what He has done for my soul' part of the story?"  I will say hang on, and let me tell you all so that you can fully appreciate what God has done.

David Wilcox, a great songwriter put it this way, "if someone wrote a play just to glorify what is stronger than Hate, would he not arrange the stage, to look as if the hero came too late?  He is almost in defeat, looking like the evil side will win, so on the edge of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins.  It is Love that makes the mortar, it is Love that cracks these stones, it is Love that made the stage here, though sometimes it looks like we are alone, in this scene set with shadows, as if the night were here to stay, there is evil all around us, but it is Love who wrote the play."  So let me finish setting the stage, so we can fully appreciate our Hero's arrival.

We arrived in Africa, and despite my attitude, God did a good work in our lives.  It was an unbelievably mind and spirit altering trip. Our entire family is now committed to a life-time of supporting the ministries we worked with in Uganda as well as to the friends we made while we were there.  The spiritual vitality of the Ugandans was truly palpable and contagious.  The fact that God used us in ministry there is another example of how God uses our weakness to show his strength.  It was a special time, but very hard within our family unit.  Life in Uganda, has very clear purpose.  Everything takes much more time and energy, so in addition to ministering, living life in basic ways was much more laborious (and we had it easy, because we had help!).  Due to life being so full, we had little to no time to deal with the painful issues that were simmering in our family.  So on they simmered all the way through our time there and were never discussed.  The blessing of this is that we got to spend most of every day serving others in Jesus' name, with little time for ourselves.  Being focused on other's needs is so good for the soul.  The other side of it though, is that words that needed to be spoken between us were not, which was not glorifying to God and is not living the Gospel in the deepest matters.  So when the girls and I arrived back in the States a month later, our lives were turned upside down in every way except that we were still in the same rotten place relationally.

There was 6 weeks between when we arrived home and when Tim would be back in the States.  In that time, the girls had finals, I had two girl's birthdays including Hannah's 16th, Hannah sick from something she got in Africa, swim team beginning and then the usual craziness that goes with May.  The two weeks in June before Tim arrived, I AGAIN (i obviously don't learn well) was on a mission to "get everything done" so we could have "summer".  It was not a pleasant two weeks.

So when we welcome home Tim, I think all of us were hoping that we could just forget all the ugliness and move forward, start a new page, a fresh slate.  Well, we failed.  We had about 24 hours of "peace" and then the facade came crashing down.  This is when I wrote my first posts, God had been kind and showed me the many mistakes and sins I had made while Tim was gone.  I saw in a fresh way that I wanted to control my life so much because of the terrible FEAR I had of the many "what ifs" that would result if I were out of control.   I needed my husband and children to give me a sense of value, because my sense of value, my identity was wrapped up in them and what they represented about me NOT in my amazing value because I had been made a child of God through Jesus.  I not only did not "prove myself" in the ways I had dreamed, but I actually saw the opposite of this happen and again this was painful, because I had to face truths about myself that I did not want to face.  But in facing them, I saw freshly the mercy of God to forgive this arrogant, self centered, insecure, demanding, yelling and screaming mess of a person and to then also call me His sister and to promise me that I will one day enjoy the privileges of being one of the members of God's family.  

So in July I was relishing this fresh dose of grace and wanting to share it with you, as you had prayed for us and loved us. Because God did a good work in our family while Tim was in Africa (including in Tim), we were reminded again that we need a Savior.  The layers of sin that were pulled back during those months were incredible painful.  It is so hard to be hurt and hurt others.  But if we don't realize how deeply ingrown our sins are, the Beauty, Kindness and Generosity of God in Jesus seems of little importance.  But thankfully God pulled back the curtain and showed us what we really were and how much He loves us.  This was good news, answered prayers that we needed to share.

So why then, have I waited until 5 months later, on Christmas day no less, to finish this post?

I waited because within days of writing the July post, having the fresh vision of Jesus' love for us, God started peeling NEW layers of our sin back, and we have struggled.  We did not reach that moment of triumph over our sin and march into the sunset and live happily ever after.  I honestly could not believe that after all we went through, we were having this happen again.  I was ashamed.  I felt like a failure more than ever.  Therefore I could not write another post.  I have not known what to say.  It seems like so many around me always had the "cherry on top" ending, and we did not.   

After all these months, I have had the realization today that I have wanted to enjoy a life that Jesus never lived.  His life was filled with shame, hurt, broken friendships, rejection, being taken advantage of, poverty, hunger, homelessness, people thinking He was crazy, hardship, physical weakness and pain, humiliation, loneliness, having His Father remove (even for a short time) his love and favor from Him, being lied to, denied, mocked and finally painful torture and death.  He started this life in a stinky, manure filled, cave-stable in the Middle East and on that night, was only praised by animals and the lowest people in their culture of that time, the Shepherds.   Even before He was born, his mother was likely scorned for her pregnancy prior to marriage and Joseph likely mocked for his "pregnant bride".  

In dreaming up my life story, I would have never written the above paragraph as the hopes and aspirations for my future.  I still don't.  I want a pretty life.  The problem is, that my life (and our families') is messy.  We get glimpses of what some would call the "victorious Christian life"-we all get along, our finances are sound, our identities are rooted in the right place, we have our devotions, we pray, everyone does their homework and no one yells.  We smile, serve others, don't get offended and drive the speed limit, we might even share.  But these glimpses are short.  Very short.  Most of the time, we are just trudging through the day to day grind, living with the difficulty of a world desecrated by sin.  Therefore, we are rarely a pretty picture.

But today, even if it is just for today, I realize that Jesus' life was also a mess.  There was nothing pretty about it.  It was full of hard work, sleepless nights, misunderstanding and pain.  What makes his life different is that when he encountered all of these things, he did not pitch fits, he did not make sarcastic remarks, he did not passively seek to control the people around him, he did not lie, he did not complain, he did not have a pity party, he just faced the sinful mess of our world and His response was to Love.  His attitude was joyful.  When faced with a problem that needed a solution (our sin), he chose to deny himself and die on our behalf, so that those of us who put our trust in Him, have our sin paid for and then gave us Holy Spirit to help us until we reach home.

What I have been waiting to hope to be able to say to you all is really not what needs to be said at all. What I need to say is thank you Lord, for loving sinners.  Thank you for being weak. Thank you that had you lived right now, we would all be looking at you wondering why you couldn't get your life together, and wishing that you would be sensible, go back to carpentry and quit bothering good people with talk about "the Kingdom of God".  Thank you for not condemning the adulterous woman or isolating the tax collectors and for the ridicule that brought on you.  Thank you for not demonstrating a put-together life, but for perfectly living in an imperfect, messy one.  

This tells me that though my life will vary in its levels of chaos, it will probably always be this way, but the difference is, am I going to live the life I am given in the Spirit of Jesus?  When I don't, will I repent and seek change by the Holy Spirit?  Do I love, serve, repent, forgive, have joy?   If not, I am going to just try to come up with another "plan" to get my life "in order".   Do I want a hero or do I want to be the hero of this story?

I pray that this Christmas will be another unforgettable chapter in my life.  The profundity of Jesus' mess, yet the beauty He made of it. The Hero has arrived.

Merry Christmas.

Andrea

Homeless?

The following is an interruption of the two previous blog posts.  The delay in posting the next in that series is representative of what God is doing in my life.  Reminding me that "when Jesus Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die" (to my plans, purposes, etc) and that includes dying to when I want to post my blog.  So I will post the third in that series soon but today was a day that God needed to be celebrated and admired as He has been busy this week in our lives.

This has been an adventerous week.  If God had asked me Monday morning what I thought we needed this week as a family,  'adventurous' would not have been the word I would have selected.  Relaxing, maybe; productive, likely; calm, certainly.  For though I remain thankful for our Africa experience, the thrill of adventure is not what I am really searching for right now.  I just want decisions made, lists checked off, friends seen, and to prepare to move WITHOUT INCIDENT.  But the Lord wanted an adventure for us instead.

Monday evening we were in the front room of our apartment for a couple of hours.  When we rose to go to bed around 10:15, Hannah went to her room.  Tim and I heard her scream.  Now screaming is not unusual in our house of four girls and one man, but this was an unusual scream, that made us want to run and see.  We entered the bedroom (which she shares with her sisters) and to our dismay, water was pouring out of the ceiling.  The carpet was saturated with water and effects were spreading across the ceiling.  Within 30 minutes, the ceiling began to fall out, soaked pieces of sheet rock.  The water spread across most of the ceiling. This was the second water leak in the apartment in a week.  We have significant allergies to mold.  We could see mold growing on the exposed ceiling beams.  No wonder our upper respiratory systems have been a mess this spring.

So the short end to this story is that Wednesday morning we had to have movers come and pack our apartment up and put everything in storage to protect our belongings from the moisture.  We completed the process Thursday and are fully moved out.  Rachel and Maggie went out of town on Sunday.  They were expecting to come home to our apartment.  Instead of that, they are coming home to us being completely gone from their home, all of their belongings in storage and us living in a friend's home.  That is quite an adjustment.  so it has been an adjustment, a shock to our systems, as we had different plans for our week.  We were not planning to be without a home, otherwise known as homeless.

We are not feeling the full weight of that reality because we have generous friends who have welcomed us into their home, insurance that is offsetting costs of a sudden move, and salary coming into the bank.  Even so,  it is a little weird to not have a "home" of our own.

Yesterday morning I read in Matthew 8 about Jesus saying "foxes have holes, the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of man has no where to rest his head," and I thought about his understanding of being without a home.  I felt a small, almost imperceptible amount of comfort, a warm moment that lasted a millisecond, Jesus understood our feelings.

A little while later, while Hannah and I were running errands, we met some new friends.  Mom Zambia with her 4 children were put by God into our path.  We got to spend some time with them for a few hours - delightful, polite, well mannered and loving as a family, humble, and on a mission to find mom a job.  Guess what?  It turned out, as we got to know each other, that this family (dad too, who was at work) was in transitional housing (i.e. was in a homeless shelter and is transitioning, seeking to move into independent life). As she told her story, I learned a few important things I thought I'd share.

First, Jesus is the friend to the homeless.  Though I had experienced some displacement this week with my family, he cared enough for me to show me true homelessness and to teach me that I really have no idea all the hardships that go with the life that brings.  I only have Jesus to share.

Second, my entire day was turned upside down by this encounter.  Our plan for the day went out the window, and open hands to God's plan had to be given to the Lord.  Hannah had to adjust and engage strangers in a loving way, but it was a joyful, wonderful afternoon.

Third, though our apartment had some pretty significant issues, it was OUR home.  I drove to the apartment in OUR car, and it was full of our things.  This family's car is impounded because they can't afford the tow fee after it broke down on the side of the road. After hours of hard job search, at 4 p.m. this family got on the train in Sandy Springs (in the north part of Atlanta) to go down to South Atlanta.  (this is a very long, long ride) to apply for another job.  All of this with 4 kids in tow to return home at the end of the day to transistional housing. This housing, very appreciated by them, I noticed had created for all their children, including the 7 month old, "barking" coughing that is surely from living in close proximity to so many people.  Hannah said "I never realized what a blessing it is to have a car" and I would add, to have a home.

So I want to magnify God. Because for many reasons that would take pages to write, He has made it plain that this was the best plan for our family this week.  Many, many prayers were answered, and it is honestly one of the best weeks in the last 6 months. I have heard the Spirit of God saying, "you FELT homeless, I WAS homeless".  He said "I am going to give to this woman today, who is REALLY homeless and you are going to be the 'cup of cold water in my name'".  I did not think I had time.

Yet, if my week had been any different, we would not have experienced the incredible generosity of friends opeing their home to us, we would not have seen the multitude of instantaneous prayers answered, we had what turned out to be a very unifiying a good experience for our family and finally, we likely would never had seen or meet our new friends.  All the order, calm and productivity in the world that could have been given to us this week and we would have been the losers.

So what is the take away from this?  For us, it has been the halting of self pity, the joy of seeing how God is at work and worship for Jesus.  It has made me pray and think of all the people I don't know who are in this same place in so many American cities.  Then I think of the poverty and homelessness of the people in Uganda and how the poorest person in America would be rich in comparison to them.

So I am thankful and hopeful I won't forget all I have learned.  Here's to another day with hands open to God's plan for us.  I wonder what adventure is next.

Andrea

The Other Side, Part 2 of 2

First, if you did not read Part 1 of this 2 part series, you might be a little lost on the context of what I am about to say.  If you have time, I would encourage you to read the first part of this blog before this post.

Second, not long after becoming a Christian, I was reading the Bible in the Psalms.  As I read, this verse stood out to me "Come and listen, all who love and honor God, and I will tell you all that He has done in my life and heart." (Ps. 66:16 paraphrase).  In that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and has confirmed it again and again, that this verse is my life verse.  I have a very clear sense that the Lord wants me to share with willing listeners, all the amazing things He does in my life.  These amazing things most often happen through very difficult experiences and through the many ugly parts of who I am.  So before you think that I am blithely running exposed in front of everyone just for the fun of it, please know that I am not.  It is NOT fun to feel like "The Emperor with No Clothes" before all who read this.  It is just that I love Jesus so much that if doing this shines light on His love and kindness, then I do it gladly despite the painfulness of it.

So off we go.  We return to where we left off.  I, the control-freak, know-it-all, super-woman home-schooling ninja sending Tim off to Uganda. I previously mentioned that we moved and where we moved was tiny.  Well, tiny and full of moving boxes is not a great combination. But I, having moved 21 times in my life, felt no fear.  I had this under control.  I would get the girls to help me unpack, I would direct and our house would be set up and even cute in no time.  Mistake Number one:  trying to turn your children into unpaid labor (uncovering the fact that they were never trained to just be helpful).  I could not understand why the kids weren't motivated.  Couldn't they just SEE in their mind's eye the order that was just oh, I don't know, a hundred steps away??  Why was it that they got tired after working just a couple of hours?  I wasn't asking them to do heavy labor, just reorganize our entire life and its contents, in a week's time and happily, what was the problem with them?  So there I began the downward spiral.  I think it took 2, maybe 3 days for me to begin stressing, being "frustrated" and the lecturing.  Not that I had never done this before, it just took on a new intensity.

Then after busting our gills to unpack, well, we needed to continue the girl's education.  Due to all that had occurred between Nov. 1st and Jan. 1st, everyone was slightly behind in their work.  But I would fix that.  We would be on a schedule, all listed boldly on posters on the wall, and we would catch up.  Why, after having our children all of these years, did I make ANOTHER schedule?  It is because I keep thinking if I create the perfect schedule, all of my imaginative, opinionated, thoughtful, active and talkative children will magically sit down at a desk and  work, for as long as needed to get their work done.  I rearranged rooms, bought new furniture, got new alarms set on my phone, so that what had not been accomplished in 15 years would happen overnight.  Mistake Number Two:  trying to make your children into something they aren't.  Now, if you asked me if I wanted different children, to trade with someone who had compliant, quiet, and un- opinionated children, I would have been offended.  But when I am yelling at them about "why won't you just sit still???  why can't you get ANYTHING done?"  I was really saying, "I want a child who sits still, you are not right."  Now who can blame me?  I certainly thought that they were being very difficult.  Schoolwork went from getting a small amount done to almost non-existent.  Finally, Maggie just had to quit going to her home school "class" because she had no idea what they were talking about each week.  This is all at the hands of the homeschooling-mom-ninja who was going to make school run like a clock.  You may wonder how education fit into this picture.  Well, it worked liked this, if they got any work done, then I was happy and felt productive.  If they did not get work done, then I felt unhappy and unproductive.  Since very little work was done, I was constantly unhappy and unproductive.  These feelings made me mad.  I got "overwhelmed" by their "lack of schoolwork" but looking back now, I was really much more worried about how what they did made me feel about me.  Therefore I did not feel good about me and it resulted in more stress, being "really frustrated" and lecturing more, but not in them being better educated.

Enter in the phone calls and blog posts from my husband, recounting vividly his incredible encounters with people in Africa, his energy, his happiness (without ME?!?!?!?), and general passion for what he was doing.  People were growing in Christ, and Tim was having constant confirmations that he was doing what God wanted him to do.Though I was convinced about that he was supposed to be in Uganda, I was not so convinced that it was fair that my calling was to be in a 5 room house with 3 girls, and homeschooling.  There was no glory.  As my journal says "I was struggling with jealousy" that he was superman saving the day in Uganda and I was his Lois Lane, at home trying to force my children to do "what they were supposed to do".  So what did I do?  Well, I did what any kind, loving wife would do in those moments.  I wrote him and email, and what an email it was.  Basically, I berated him for not being "thankful enough" for "all I was doing" at home that "made his work possible".  It is amazing how deceived I was.  But I pitched a fit.  Really.  A fit.  When he called me to talk about "the" email, my jealous anger only simmered for a moment, then it burst into full flame.  I yelled, I cried, I groaned, poor pitiful me; enough to send the kids into a frenzy and make Tim feel like a full on jerk.  Thus began a break between us.  I just couldn't believe him when he said he loved me and the kids as much as he loved what he was doing.  He was just so impassioned in Africa.  So I said "you never act this passionately about what is going on at home".  Mistake number 4:  trying to make my husband give me a sense of worth and value.  I gave him an impossible job and correspondingly he failed.  In my eyes though, he just wasn't "doing enough" to show us that we were so valuable.  

By this time, we are two weeks away from going to see Tim in Africa.  All that is really happening in our apartment is arguments and criticism.  I am in a constant state of feeling overwhelmed and my insides feel charred from all the churning I was doing.  So what did I do?  GET MORE ORGANIZED.  MORE CONTROL.  I had a family meeting, set down new rules, new plans and began let's call it, Operation Calm, Quiet, Contained and Happy.  I knew that things were not going well, I knew that I was furious all the time, screaming at the kids and then telling them not to scream at me. I was a mess.  I never "had time" to go to the grocery, exercise, help Maggie with school, talk to family, talk to friends, do our finances because things were out of control and it was really the" kids fault" for not being "cooperative".  I was a victim. Thus Mistake number 5:  trying to control my life instead of facing the painfulness of it.

Well, bottom line, more control did not work.  By this time it was time for us to leave for Africa.  I departed stressed to the brim, reeking of chaos, biting and distant with my family and dreading to go.  I did not want to go there and live with Superman.  But I had to go, dragging my feet all the way.

This story is much bigger than I realized and so I think that it will be a four part piece.  Otherwise this blog will take much longer to read than you want to take reading it AND I will get no sleep.  So sorry to leave you hanging again.  But until next time...

Valentines from Africa did not say enough to satisfy me.

The other side

The last 5 months of Tim's time in Africa has been quite an experience.  Admittedly, I really had no idea what I was signing up for, I just knew this was the path I was to follow.  Actually, Tim going without our family was my idea, a solution that rid us of the few obstacles that stood in the path of doing what we felt led to do.  Now those of you that know our story in any detail over the last 20 years, know that our marriage has been characterized by me being sick and Tim taking care of me and in general, lots of chaos.  Until January, the longest I had been left on my own was 2 weeks. I had two young children then and thought I was drowning.  Little did I know...but then ignorance is bliss.

So unless you all get the false picture that we are something that we are not, I thought I would tell you some of the stories that have happened since Tim has been in Africa.  This way you can see that pastor's families and missionaries are (well, THIS family/missionaries, I shouldn't say for all) are not somehow especially on track with God, only different in job title/calling. One may feel called to be a plumber by his skill set, circumstances, and training.  Others may be led to law, medicine, or construction. We were led to ministry.  This just means we're equipped and called to something different. The result is that though many feel that ministers and missionaries have some corner on the market of knowing God, and very often think or even expect that we have something to give you that other Christians cannot, this is a centuries' old assumption.  I am here to debunk that theory. So just sit back and enjoy the stateside Kay family review of the Spring. 

Well,  here is the reality from inside the fish bowl (the common metaphor for how ministry families feel, the idea being that everyone is watching every move we make).  This is it:  we are all a mess.  When I told a good friend that my daughter said that, after many years of spending time in their home, that their family apparently operated similarly to ours, she said "well, then, your family must be wacky".  So there is the truth, we are wacky, often more so than the average family.  So, though you have heard all the amazing things that God has done through Tim's ( and some ours) ministry, you need to hear what has been going on here at home.  

When Tim first left, I was honestly pretty excited.  Yes, I know, some of you can't identify, but those of you who like control like me, can speak this language.  See, I thought that since almost all of the problems created in this house were Tim's fault and since things always went "more smoothly" when he was gone, that this would just be five months of well, freedom.  I could do things the way I wanted, the biggest eater in the house would be gone, making cereal for dinner a very viable option, and the chaos of our lives would be dispelled because of my wonderful organization and great parenting skills.  In addition, we moved into a VERY small apartment to make life simpler.   So in addition to control and order of the family, I would be able to control order in my home ( yes, that was purposeful repetition of the same key word, CONTROL).  Finally, we homeschool, and just like

all parts of our lives, I had the humble idea that it was going to be much easier to get things done 

because Tim would not be here to interfere or to need me.  We were going to rock, be homeschooling ninjas, and be done with school BEFORE we even left for Africa.  I hope now that you have a clear picture  of my attitude as Tim left, but in case you don't , it went something like this "well, Tim is supposed to go to Africa and then I get to stay here and finally do things in the way that they have needed to be done for a long time".  Obviously, this wasn't off to a good start.

You may wonder if I told him my thoughts.  Oh, maybe not clearly, but I think he had some idea, since I seem to have a billboard flashing across my forehead every feeling that I am having at any given moment. So off we headed into this " adventure".  I had people calling me brave, telling me I was so good for being faithful to follow God, so sacrificial to give up my husband, and how exciting to see God work in such an amazing way.  I will say that my toe was dipped in those waters of truth, but just DIPPED. 

I was on a mission, but it was "Mission Prove Myself".  Looking back, I really thought I was going to pull this off, come out with glowing satisfaction on the other side regarding my own sense of self AND in the process our friends in Africa were going to be helped. I was pumped.  I sent Tim off with a tinge of sadness and returned home.  Little did I know what was ahead of me. I am glad that I did not.

Stayed tuned for the next post and learn the "rest of the story"...

Passports arrived.