So Much Life!

As usual, things are hopping around here. I"m not sure if anyone is still reading my blog,so if you are please leave me a comment and say hi. So many of my friends have stopped blogging, and I'm trying to get back to my diligence of reading blogs again. I love hearing about your families.

First of all, if you haven't been by lately, you can hop over to see pictures of Ashley's 4 weeks in Kenya HERE and HERE. And, Briana is in the midst of the production of Camelot, and you can see those pictures HERE.

The younger girls are plugging away at learning and loving life.....except when I make them clean up their messes. We have been working on a lapbook on the Fruit of the Spirit, but have taken the last few weeks off.
In early October, the 4 of us went to North KY to the Creation Museum. They liked it pretty well, although, we didn't find it to be extremely kid friendly. They are adding a hands-on kids area soon, though. They did enjoy parts of it, though.

We also got to meet a blog friend while we were there!

Jennifer and I had a great time visiting, the kids had a great time together, and the time just flew by. We talked for almost 3 hours.
We also visited an old high school friend the day before while we were there. We had not seen her since graduation, but we have become much more acquainted as friends on Facebook.
After our visit with Jennifer, we went into Cincinnati, and had a great time walking over the big purple pedestrian bridge in the rain. We crossed the Ohio River, and walked from OH to KY and back again. : )

Let's see, also in this past month, we've celebrated 2 birthdays. Ashley, our oldest~which most seems to surprise most people....that she's the oldest~ turned 23. Seven days later, Briana turned 20. The day after Ashley's birthday, we went over to Briana's to celebrate their birthdays together. We had a fun night of bowling.
(Briana is on the bottom; Ashley on top!)
We were supposed to be going camping this past week, but unseasonably cold temps made us have to postpone it. We're hoping to go next week, but are watching the weather. God worked out the timing anyway, because as it turns out Briana had an emergency, and I was back over to her house for 3 nights. Her 6 month old kitten, who is her baby to the core, started having seizures. He was already anemic, which turns out is probably related to this. He was in the hospital for 4 nights, and they thought he was better, but the day after he came home, they started again, and were often and very violent. He was diagnosed with something called FIP, which is basically encephalitis ~ swelling around his brain. Friday, the vet told her she needed to consider putting him to sleep. She was so heartbroken. I went over to help her through the weekend. In the meantime, the vet called and told her to put him back on the steroids. Long story short, it helped, and 11:15 pm Sat. night was his last seizure. The iron is getting into his system, and he is getting his energy and life back. Two problems, still. One, he is not drinking water, and we don't know why. She is having to mix as much water as possible into canned food, and she's giving him some a couple of times a day in a syringe. It is keeping him hydrated. They're still working on what is causing that. Second, the FIP is incurable. He will always have to take steroids, at hopefully a much lower dose eventually, and needs to avoid as much stress as possible. When she comes for a visit, they will have to increase his steroids for the time to try to prevent the seizures. Due to all of this, he may not live a full life expectancy, but he might. God has blessed us with answers to heartfelt prayers so far.
Briana and I spent a painful, but sweet time earlier in the evening Sat. night (when things looked grim), sitting in the floor while she held Snickers. We cried together, and she began to think and talk about the funny things he did all the time. Before long, she was laughing so hard. I just thank you Lord for answering those prayers!!!
While I was gone, the rest of my family surprised me, and chipped in on the work of buying apples, making applesauce, and canning it. All 3 of the girls helped, and James did the actual canning. Those times of asking him to, "please do this while I run and do this, " paid off! : ) He was paying attention to what he was doing! They did a great job, and got it all finished. Such a HUGE relief to me!
So, here I am, back at home, as of last night. I took the day off today, and took a nap, too! I am incredibly thankful to see the sun these last 3 days, after day after day after day of dreary skies and rain. Hope the Lord is blessing your families and days!

Camelot

On Sept. 10th, Briana opened in Camelot. Since a large portion of the musical is focused on Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, and Pelenore, the rest of the cast doesn't get a lot of stage time, but she's enjoying it anyway. Camelot will be a 2 month run, and closing on Nov. 8. So far, I've seen it twice, and will see it again at closing. (Unless, I manage to sneak in anymore shows between now and then!)

Ladies' processional~ Briana is in the kind of coral colored dress, 5th from the left

Stopping her little brother from going after the knights~

May Day

Watching the jousts


Knighting of Sir Lancelot

Ashley in Kenya Part 2

I seemed to have taken an unintentional blogging hiatus. Life is still really hectic for us at this time, and I just don't seem to think about it, or if I do, don't have enough energy! I still hope to get back to it regularly. I miss check in on you all and sharing our life.

Ashley had a very tremendous trip to Kenya! She was so blessed, and it has taken her weeks to emotionally settle back in. Physically, she did great (except for one exception I'll share at the end!) Everyone on the team got sick, but her (love God's herbs and vitamins!),, and she did great with jet lag. I don't know exactly what helped, but I had read in a magazine earlier this summer to take Pine Bark extract to help reduce the severity and length of jet lag. She took that 3 days prior to flying and 5 days afterward both ways. Plus, she was taking Vitamin C, garlic, and Silver almost daily. Even after such a long flight, 4 weeks there, including a campout and a 3 day safari, a 28 hour trip home (18 hours of flight and 11 hours of layovers, and about 40 hours of being awake, except for a couple of hour long naps on the plane), she came in completely exhausted, slept about 10 hours, and felt good and pretty rested. She would tire out by the end of the day for a few days, but we were all in amazement at how rested and good she felt.

I thought that instead of me trying to explain her experience, I'd copy and excerpt of her words here. Part way through there is a video of the kids practicing one of the praise dances she taught them. It always brings tears to my eyes listening to these children, who are all orphans, sing Shout to the Lord.

"To put it simply, the 4 weeks I spent in Kenya were, overall, amazing!! I was challenged and blessed, and I learned so much. Definitely left a chunk of my heart over there. :-)
I shared before that one of our goals was to have a camp for the orphans to teach them praise and worship dance. That went very well -- we had about 4 days of camp, in which the orphans (ages 3 through 22) learned several songs and dances, plus a skit for the boys. After the camp, they got to take what they learned and use it to lead worship at an evangelistic crusade at a big slum in Nairobi. What a great experience for them!

Being put in the position of leading the camp was a big, challenging experience for me. It definitely worked on my boldness and leadership skills!

Another aspect of the trip that was at some times challenging and at other times a great blessing was living with the mission team for 4 weeks. There were six of us there the whole time, with four others who were each there for parts of the 4 weeks. We all had very different personalities, different tastes, different backgrounds. It was a great group to be a part of, and definitely a group that God put together. It was a good experience living together, learning from and loving one another.

In reality, I met so many wonderful people in Kenya. Just the people in the village we worked in were great people, especially the kids! I'll get to that in a minute. But in addition to them... We met a beautiful, sweet lady who had been suffering with cancer for 3 months -- she has since passed away, but it was an honor to have the opportunity to meet her and pray with her before she died. We also met the members of a new Kenyan Christian band called "Broken Acoustic." They are a brother-sister team. We got to meet their family, as well, and let me tell you, they all are some of the sweetest people I've met, and love the Lord like crazy! :-) Check out Broken Acoustic here.

I have to say probably one of the best parts of the trip, for me -- although it was all GREAT -- was hanging out with the kids in the orphanage, especially the girls. What a great group of kids! Like I said, they range from 3 to 22 years old. We (the other girl on the trip and myself) spent quite a bit of time just hanging out with them at their dorm, talking, playing games, having Bible study, taking pictures (they loved to use our cameras), and letting them fix our hair. They just need some attention and love... and they were very curious about our lives in America. :-) I was very blessed and changed by the time I spent with the girls. I really fell in love with one particular little one -- the youngest in the orphanage at 3 years old. Wish I could bring her home with me! :-)

We got to go on a 3-day safari while we were in Kenya. We went to Ol Pejeta Conservancy -- what an experience!! We saw too many animals to list, including all of the "Big Five" except the lion. It was so neat to be out in the midst of God's creation in wild Africa, seeing all the animals in their natural habitat.

God is good -- He really took care of us throughout our trip. There were times we were in dangerous or potentially-dangerous situations, but He kept us safe. I didn't even get sick the whole time, even after coming home, which is a big deal for me, because I always get sick coming home from international trips. Jet lag wasn't even too bad. God gave me an amazing opportunity, and I'm SO thankful for it.
I do hope to go back someday. Many people have asked me that, and I say, "Yep - I'd go tomorrow!" "

The Great Rift Valley

HIPPOS!

A church here in our county donated ice cream for 600 kids and teachers! Many of them had never tasted it before. I love the looks on these faces as the patiently wait.

The girls braided and fixed her hair all month! : )


Toward the end of the month they got to go on a 3 day safari. This is the tent they stayed in.

Inside the tent~

Ashley with Mt. Kenya in the background

mama and baby elephant

baboons

YES! This is my daughter petting a wild rhino! There is a guard that stands there with them.

Cape Buffalo~ the group was out of the car at another spot where a guard was supposed to be (but wasn't). As they were looking at something else, one of these precious things started charging the group, and chased them back to the van. In the process Ashley fell and hurt her shoulder pretty badly. She's still dealing with pain from it. I'm just very thankful he didn't get to her!!

This watering hole could be seen from their tent~








For lots more pictures of Ashley with the kids, see Kenya 1.

Doing the praise dances she taught them with them one last time.

At a giraffe center with our 3 sponsor children~a real treat for all of them.

At the equator!

Some views from the plane~

The Mediterranean Sea

The Sahara Desert

The Swiss Alps

Greenland~

Ashley's in Kenya

Ashley is at 2 1/2 weeks of her 4 week trip to Kenya. She is having an amazing time so far. She has worn several hats during this 2 1/2 weeks, but her main job on this trip was to teach praise dance as a form of worship to the young people. They had a week long camp where she taught them dances, then they shared what they learned at a crusade in a nearby refuge village this past weekend. She was excited because she said there were several of the girls that she could see in their eyes that they "got it". She could really tell that they saw how to use the dance to worship the Lord.

An unexpected and delightful opportunity Ashley has had while she was there was to spend a great deal of time with young teen and preteen girls (her calling), sharing with them, teaching them, and laughing and bonding with them. She spent 2 hours alone with some of them at the girls orphanage one afternoon, and she had THE best time. They fixed her hair.....lol.....I can't wait to see the pictures of that......asked her questions about America, asked her to sing and teach them worship songs, sang the ones they know to her, and shared. She is supposed to be teaching them a 6 day Bible study in the remaining time, and I hope that is worked out.

I've been blessed to be able to hear from her often enough to keep me from worrying (who me??) and to keep me from missing her so badly!, although, because of the drought, they now do not have electricity from 7-7 each day. We communicate on Facebook every few days, and I've been able to talk to her on the phone 3 times. I've also been able to get a few pictures, although, not as many lately. The internet access they have at the missionary's house is vvvveeeerrrryyyyyy slllllloooooowwwww.

For those of you who haven't seen them on FB, here are a few of the pictures.

At the Amsterdam airport~

Orbit School of the Cross

I've tried to rotate this next picture 3 times, so it's anyone's guess as to whether you'll see it right side up or not! This is a class at the school singing a welcome song.
Hey! It's right side up for now!

If you remember me posting a couple of months ago about our sponsor child and her tragic story, this is Ashley meeting Mokoi......her "Kenyan sister."

The medical clinic at Orbit. They are trying to raise funds to keep it open more. Right now it's just one day a week, since Mokoi's baby, Ashley, died. If the clinic had been able to be open, they probably could have saved baby Ashley's life.

Orbit Baptist Church

Ashley was able to attend with the missionary an American Women's Conference in Nairobi. There were women there from several countries, and their goal is to find ways to improve the lives of women in Kenya.

Esther, in the blue in the center, is our youngest sponsor child~ 12 years old. She and Ashley have had great bonding time this trip. So far, I haven't been able to get a photo of our 3rd sponsor child, Faith. Isn't Esther, and her smile, beautiful?

Ashley and Mokoi

I love this next picture~

One of the newer youngest residents of the little children's orphanage~

Ashley and Mokoi

Ashley's hand is on the bottom....so sweet.

Ashley teaching praise dance. The girl next to her is the missionary's daughter learning also. This is also a photo of the inside of the little Orbit Baptist Church.

Teaching Shout to the Lord

Teaching the little ones sign language to Jesus Loves Me~

The group sharing Shout to the Lord at the crusade

Ashley and Esther singing Shine Jesus Shine at the Crusade. Wow! Ashley has a gorgeous voice, but I can't believe *anyone* got her on stage to sing in public! : ) I am so proud of her!

Girls at "The Well", orphanage for young girls

Please pray for rain for Kenya. They are desperate for it.