Just wanted to share this with our sending church:
You’re on our minds.
Thank you, Miamisburg FBC for continuing to journey with us.
The Library is Open!
When given the opportunity to crate our belongings from the United States to Mozambique, we were certain to bring many, many books. Thanks to my sister’s research and hard work coupled with homeschool funding through the IMB, my girls are given the gift of English reading in our Portuguese world!
Since access to English books is quite challenging in a non-English speaking country and access to any literature at all is also quite challenging, we came up with a fun idea:
🎉Stauffer Library! 🎉
Stauffer library began with measuring the kid books, measuring the wall space, doing a little math and hand drawing the blueprints to three happy bookshelves. Proce negotiations, logistics for retrieval and three weeks later, the local carpenter produced some happy (and heavy!) book shelves. The girls and I then alphabetized all our chapter books by title and shelved them. Picture books were organized into topics and shelved. Sections were divided and labeled (yay, happy laminator machine). We also filed a section for magazines and a handful of newspaper articles (again hard to find in English so we picked a paper up after waiting for a few months for our trip to South Africa) which was also laminated for durability.
The girls each have their own small basket for the books they are reading each week. Once per week the girls get to rotate being the librarian, serving their library patrons who come in to switch out their books, and reshelving each book alphabetically (for chapter books) or according to topic (for picture books). While waiting for another patron to borrow their books, the girls have enjoyed reading magazine and newspaper articles.
My librarians have been ECSTATIC to get the chance to recommend books that they have read to their sisters and have been perfecting their alphabetizing skills (the littles with adult help).
At the end of library hours everyone has enjoyed returning to the homeschool shelves with their small basket of new books for the week as the library is closed up.
The library has also proven lovely in selecting books to share with English-learning friends and English-speaking teammates as well as making it easier to pull books for homeschool use.
And we even have a library cat! 😉
(This library is cat approved, for sure.)
It’s fun to see my girls still get to “go to the library” while living at least a day’s drive from any potential English library (though we’ve never yet found one).
My bookworms are VERY happy. ❤️
From our Home to Yours
We just wanted to share some more pictures of our homeschool days.
What a blessing it is to learn and grow together.
We’ve had many great hands-on discoveries – and some were even quite tasty!
It may be listening to Vivaldi’s Winter movement in Four Seasons and painting a winter scene (even if I had to explain what Northern Hemisphere winter means – hah!), writing and drawing without hands, learning the most tasty chemistry around, enjoying classical music on headphones during some reading time, learning about blood analysis at a local clinic, planting herbs, reading endless books (especially to cats), exfoliating with mud creations, playing ancient civilization games, celebrating Biblical feasts (not pictured but in previous posts), science experiments with Daddy, computer reading lessons, learning the ukelele, Portuguese classes with a youth from the Maxixe church, but we just wanted to share the joy of discovery with you all.
What a privilege it is to discover!
Thank you for journeying with us.
Yom Kippur
We got the opportunity to enjoy another Biblical celebration that we observed as a part of our homeschooling.
It was a wonderful opportunity to discuss our need for atonement and redemption as well as forgiveness from God and for each other.
We enjoyed pouring over these topics in God’s Word and sharing in encouraging and praying for each other.
My older girls even tried their first go at fasting while we filled our normal meal time praying and reading the Word.
It was a meaningful observance of Yom Kippur for all.
Re-Entering Well
Upon returning from Johannesburg in January, we set to settling back in. My garden had become a real jungle while we were away. So as soon as my strength returned, we set to work taming the beast.
We even found some hiding produce! Yay! (Nevermind the scratch on the table in the picture. We do real life here.)
The “Garden of Eden” quickly came back together and became my favorite spot to enjoy a morning cup of tea again.
Routine vet trips for cat vaccinations commenced, complete with the good ole “hang a cat in a bag to weigh it” developing world fun.
Homeschool preparations happened faster than I had hoped since we needed to get the school year going and I had donated my prep time elsewhere this year. 😉 And as proved true this year again, a cat is ALWAYS available to help.
We also celebrated Christmas
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and two birthdays
Look at my beautiful birthday present!!!
And then three quarters of the way through January, we were finally caught up and able to start the new school year which can be read about over here.
Finally Home
The adventure home was a two day trek from Joburg to our doorstep with much rain and many different terrains.
I wouldn’t describe the ride as comfortable (it never really is because it’s so draining), but it was a THOUSAND times more enjoyable than the ride to Joburg.
We had some good rain come along with us for a good majority of the time.
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And our street was a river. (Never mind the kid music to keep the natives from being restless 😉).
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But for real, do ask the guard to open up the gate. 😉
And when the sky opened up on our drive home, taking a temporary dry spell, it felt even more magnificent than usual.
Oh how we are so small, and yet the Lord lavishes His love on us and meets us right where we are – in the frailty of our broken offerings.
~
Selah.
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And then of course there was love for our furry friends … maybe a little too much love… 😻🙀😂
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Our internet was down from the storm/time away, there was an immediate need to mop the tons of dirt, ants to clean out and buckets to set out for leaks from the roof in various rooms, BUT we were beyond happy to sleep in our own beds for the first time in over 4 weeks.
Soli Deo Gloria! All glory be to God for being Jehovah Jirah – God our Provider yet again.
Home sweet home.