After weeks of itching and allergic reactions, two weekends ago we decided to rule out one more thing by flipping this house…. well, parts of this house.

No, it wasn’t some cool Fixer Upper interior design show, it was real life Africa:

Flea control.

Yep, you read it right, two weekends ago we fumigated our sleeping quarters.

After isolating our continued “hives” to our bedrooms and thanks to a few google searches and the trusty advice of the medical people’s dermatologist in South Africa after digitally checking out Hannah’s spots, we determined the cause to be bugs and we got to work.

God gave us just enough sunshine and heat on Saturday to remove all the mattresses, spray them down with bug killers, remove all the bed frames and pieces, spray them down with bug killers, leave the frames and mattresses outside in the sun to bake for hours, spray the baseboards in the rooms and pepper the remaining parts of the rooms and wash pillows/sheets/etc., drying them on the clothes line in the sun.

Saturday night we made the best of it with a “slumber party” downstairs while the rooms upstairs rocked their fumigating ways. We kept things light and enjoyed the time together despite the extra work.

Sunday it rained but there were pockets of “sun” in order to finish drying our bedding. We also reassembled the rooms and had our sweet guard treat our “yard”, windowsills, door frames and the back guard’s house with an effective and yet safe for animals/kids pesticide.

Monday, Eden started having bites so she got a one-way ticket to the refuge cot in out room and then has joined Rachael’s full sized bed while her trundle bed was happily wrapped in plastic for a week. Go, go gadget bug starvation! 😉

Our skin is clearing up and I’m happy to announce that we have no new bites. =) God has also blessed us with pretty good sleep despite the challenges and changes. And one of the sweetest fruits from all this is watching Rachael and Eden sleep forehead to forehead. I’m not sure if I’ll even get Eden back out of Rachael’s bed once we unwrap her bed because she sure loves snuggling her sister.

That sister love is strong!

– Thankful, grateful and blessed even in the thick of it.

We got the chance to explore some of beautiful Africa.

We trekked out to a village 2 hours away, dancing in the puddles along the way.

Oh my goodness, I absolutely LOVED it and the girls did wonderfully! Everyone was left begging to go out again.

The kids had a blast playing with the village children who wove a ball out of leaves and then played games together.

I’m so crazy proud of how wonderfully well my little ladies took courageous steps to reach out to children whom stood across a language divide and really had a great time playing together.

Yep, it was a wonderful day-long trip spending time with some brothers and sisters a few hours away literally right in the middle of no-where.

It left us desiring more off-roading delights. =)

-Thankful, grateful and blessed.

With the help of 10 empty milk liters, security bars for our doors and a coconut, we enjoyed ourselves some Saturday night bowling: African Edition. 😉

And when Thor broke the coconut on her “all-in” strike attempt, we subbed in a playground ball.

We all had a great time.

-Keeping things fun.

-The perfect end to our Sabbath rest day.

-Thankful, grateful and blessed.

I find myself caught between a social worker’s earth-shattering empathy and a Father’s deeply enriching love.

Love is such a hard thing. It’s that delicate balance between predicted scraped knees and the refuge reflex arm. It’s that dance between extending friendship and discerned appropriate reservation. That fence straddle between opening yourself fully and anticipated self-defense.

Love is so vulnerable.

Lord, teach me how to love well.

Suddenly you find yourself in the melting pot of life, surrounded by endless opportunities. Which one’s next? How to extend your arms more fully without knocking someone from their feet? It’s all so big. It is all so beyond you.

“Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”

Lord, teach me how to love well.

Teach me how to bite my lip when she falls and let Emilia comfort her first. Because Your love is not found solely in my arms.

Teach me how to open my arms to embrace Your family, even if they were strangers just weeks ago. You are the Orchestrater of kindred spirits.

Teach me to rely on You for discernment of when to speak love and when to merely feel it, that Your voice would be heard over my own.

Teach me how to love like You love.

For all in all, at the end of the day,

Your love remains.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from our family (plus Emilia and Marlne – pronounced Marhlaynee) to yours!!!

(This is a picture of our car full as we traveled to John and Wanne Dina’s house to co-host the festivities)

We celebrated with a big American style feast with area pastors, brothers and sisters in the faith and their families. It was a wonderful day full of laughing and smiles and thankfulness for all God has given us. We’re all beat after such an amazing day surrounded by friends and Our Christian family, even as we think about and have share many stories around the table with our African family about you, our American family. 

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving while we wrap this thanksgiving up here on the other side of the world.

WE LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!

And thanks be to God, the source of all our gratitude!!!!!

“How’s language going?” you wonderful people have been asking. First off, thank you for asking! Thank you for caring.

Language learning is best described by this picture:

I am the determined toddler reaching out for Portuguese and each sentence is either going to be very rewarding or a complete disaster. 😉

Logistically, Matt and I have class together with our teacher, Suzanna, Monday through Fridays upstairs in our happy little air conditioned guest bedroom. We have pulled a patio table in there and three chairs. From about 9am until noon we learn and practice new Portuguese (European) vocabulary and sentences about that vocabulary. The hardest for me is conjugating the verbs with the right pronouns… oh right and remembering the vocab words too. 😉 We usually take 2 breaks during that 3 hour period which are mostly dependent on the girl’s needs. We’ve gotten into a good rhythm where one of the breaks happens around snack time and the other one is more dependent on my brain exploding or evading a kid tantrum that’s escalating downstairs.

In the afternoon, Matt and I split up (no, don’t fear for our marriage. hehe) with two different conversants. Matt’s conversant is Paisano (I’m sure I just butchered spelling his name, but it is pronounced py-zon-noe) and my conversant is Laura. We spend 2 hours reviewing the vocab from the morning and heading out into the community to learn new vocab/sentences on the go.

Matt came out of the gate strong with some Spanish background to build his Portuguese foundation and I have been building my Portuguese foundation new stone by new stone. Sometimes I sit in a lesson time with Suzanna and I literally can feel my head spin. Hehe. And sometimes things just click by the grace of God. I love that before each morning and afternoon session we pray (rotating the prayer person for that day). I am also beginning to memorize the Roman’s road Bible verses in Portuguese.

Rachael and Abi also get the privilege of learning Portuguese while they await their Portuguese school to begin sometime in January (on the African school schedule). Rachael and Abi are learning the same way Matt and I are in regards to the GPA approach of exposure to the language through pictures instead of through the medium of translating words from English (which takes longer for your brain to engage since it’s an extra step to translate in your head and then  produce the Portuguese equivalent). Rachael and Abi initially studied together for 2 hours in the afternoon, but now are each having an hour of one-on-one with their teacher, Elsa (yes, she’s royal). It is exciting to watch the light in their eyes as they understand and form Portuguese sentences.

Hannah and Eden are learning Portuguese informally through Emilia, our Portuguese-speaking house helper, who wonderfully and patiently identifies objects and actions for us all as well as gently corrects our pronunciations. It’s so cool to see in a handful of week the difference in the little ones’ understanding of Portuguese as Emilia’s words become more familiar. Hannah has begun speaking the Mozambican greetings to our guard, our language teachers and Emilia. And Eden has been repeating Portuguese words and utilizing a few Portuguese words to communicate to Emilia (i.e. “thank you”, “cookie type crackers”, etc.).

I’m really proud of my girls for their hard work to communicate with others here. We’ve been hanging up pictures around the house, forming Portuguese sentences as a family and doing a lot of team work to try to do our best to understand and communicate in Portuguese with those around us.

Some days it’s really slow and up-hill and some days it feels a lot more natural.

But each day is one step closer to fluency. =)