A Story

Once there was a family. Daddy, Mommy, Spider, Rose Bud, Daisy, Pepper, Banana Boy and Sunshine. They decided to go to Hawaii.

Grandma and Papa came. They had to take care of the chickens.
And Spider. And Sunshine.
Everybody else went to the airport.

They parked their van there

And flew away to Hawaii. (domestic flight seating isn't the luxury it once was)Here they are in Hawaii. (not as lush as we expected)

Every day, Grandma and Papa took Sunshine to school

Miss Cindy, Miss Kathy and Miss 'Nette can't wait to see Sunshine!
Every day Grandma and Papa brought Sunshine home from school again.

At night, Sunshine came out of his own bed and slept by Grandma.

One day, Grandma and Papa had to go back to their own home. Miss Janna picked Sunshine up instead
and took him to her house to stay with her family: Mr. Lilo, Miss Janna, Joey, Peter, Map, Momo, Mikayla and Maddie.
At night, Sunshine slept by Miss Janna. (Sorry, Mr. Lilo, looks like the floor for you!!!)


In the morning, Miss Janna took Sunshine to school and then picked him up again when it was done.

Meanwhile, everyone else flew home from Hawaii.

And when Miss Janna and Sunshine got home, there was a surprise!


Everyone hugged Sunshine.
And they all were home together again.

Just Filing This Away in a Place Where I Can Find It

Since it relates to my trip...

Bible Verse of the Day
“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.” (Hebrews 6:10)

AWANA Awards Night

Banana Boy, Pepper and Daisy attend AWANA every week. They are all excellent memorizers (read: they can memorize long passages with very little effort). Daisy and Pepper are also extremely self-motivated. Every school morning, they get up and read their Bibles and practice their AWANA verses first thing, without being told.

Banana Boy--well, lucky for him, he is an even better memorizer than they are because most of the time I didn't remember to work with him on his verses until Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

Did I mention they go to AWANA every Wed. night?

So by working hard, both girls finished their book for the year and Pepper also finished her review book. She was the only one in her grade to do so.

Banana Boy not only finished his book, he also finished the review section and the review book! And let me tell you, we, I mean HE, earned that ribbon because the last two weeks, he had to learn 5 verses. Each week. And they weren't short.

Anyway, I'm a little proud of them. Here are the pictures from awards night.

(actually, now that' I'm looking through the pictures for the first time, there aren't any actual pictures of their awards. Banana Boy IS receiving his award in the picture.)

More About Sarah's Covenant Homes

You saw the video.

I urge you to go here to get an excellent synopsis of what this place is all about. This post from Sarah's blog is an interview of Sarah done by her daughter Simona. Simona did a terrific job with the questions and Sarah explains very well what is is that she does and why.

Of course, it is just like me to sign on to something I know nothing about. Today I've been reading about Sarah and her husband's ministry and all I can say is, "Wow."

This is way more than an American lady with an orphanage. It's not even an orphanage. This is God working in a big way.

You can check out their website on your own, but I'll be featuring bits of it in future blog posts.

Guess Who's Going to India??

I have always wanted to go on a missions trip.

I have always wanted to go on a missions trip to India.

I have always wanted to go on a missions trip to India and work with children.

The thing is, you have to be hooked up. I mean, you can't just fly to India and start wandering around looking for an orphanage to help in.

India's a big place, after all.

So when Leslie posted this morning that she was going to India to help out Sarah, I was really jealous.

And I wished it were me.

And a part of me wanted to go.

So I emailed Leslie, telling her how excited I was for her and asking about all the details. What are they doing? How long? How much? Can I come? (ha ha ha)

And she emailed back, saying, of course I could come: this is when, this is how long, this is how much. It's a bunch of people from her church and most of them are bringing their teenage daughters.

What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was when the God things started to happen. Well, that was a God thing. Because my second thought after "I wish I could go to India" was, "I wish I could bring Rose Bud, too." I just assumed the group from her church was adults. It is India, after all.

But no. Almost every family is bringing a 13 or 14 yo.

Wow.

So I showed RoseBud the video and asked her if she'd like to go. "Sure. Maybe." She's so low-key.

Then I went to talk to Mr. GT. I breathlessly explained the whole story. I looked at him. He looked at me. "Well??? Could I go?"

"Can you raise the money?"

"Well, no, but God can."

And then he said something that blew me away (because he's a think-about-it kind of guy). "If it weren't for this job thing being so up in the air, I wouldn't hesitate to say 'yes.'"

Which essentially meant, "Yes."

Thank you, God, for my faithful and missions-minded husband.

I went back into the house and emailed Leslie to say I could go. I could hear the screams all the way from Texas.

Next up, fundraising.

Leslie estimates the cost at $2000 each. I've been putting away $150 from my tips every week for the last 10 weeks or so, for Hawaii. Just for kicks, I put $4000 into the calculator and divided by $150.

Guess how long it takes?

26 weeks.

Half a year.

Six months.

June to January.

Guess when we leave? January 10.

Now that's a God-Thing.

Here is the video Leslie put together so you can see the beautiful kids we'll be meeting.

My Wild Thing

Tell me you don't see the resemblance!

Track Meet 5

100 m 3rd in heat, 15.2 seconds, FIVE heats (we didn't hear official places for this meet)

4oo m 4th in heat, 1:13, 2 heats

Long Jump 11'5" Probably 4th place