"God is Good at Any Time"

for my birthday our language teacher gave me a copy of her husband's book/31 day devotional. i was already in a planned reading in novemeber so i waited until jan 1 to start reading. it worked out to be perfect timing.

friday morning, dan, who always gets up much earlier than i do these days, came into our room at 7, sat down on the side of the bed and gently woke me up. i was fearing that it was time to finally get up since we had a packed day of leaving our house at 7:45 to go to immigration to check on paperwork for our friends, picking up other friends who needed a ride the the airport, language class, a trip to the grocery store and then possibly back to immigration because the one guy who could help us may not have been there at 8 am when they open. (i plan but with contingency plans now- i'm SLOWLY starting to get life here.) but that is not what he said. he said this:

the battery in our truck was stolen last night.

now waking up is hard when you are pregnant. and this is not what i wanted to wake up to. but the grace of God was hovering over me at the moment so instead of getting mad i rolled over, sat up, and grabbed my devotion book. day 13 is titled: "God is Good at Any Time!". the author talked about how we like to say that God is good all the time but he would rather change it to at any time to help move us to a specific focus- like right now! he also included this quote:

"His goodness shines through in times when we are uncomfortable, when all of life seems to have gone crazy" Gracia Burnham

and this prayer:

"O my God, however perplexed I may be, let me never think ill of You. If I cannot understand thee, let me never cease to believe in You. It must be so, it cannot be otherwise, You are good to those whom You have made good; and where You have renewed the heart You will not leave it to its enemies" Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

and God was good at that time. not just to me in the moment but for the whole day. we didn't get much of what we had planned accomplished but our friend shelton, who is also a mechanic, came over and helped us, we made it to language class only 20 minutes late, and we now know how to file a police report. and of course we praised God that it was only our battery that was gone and not anything else. possibly the easiest fix besides stolen gas.

-m

joy givers

when we were in language acquisition training we were told that while we were learning Shona we would be "joy givers"- as in we would make attempts and it would give joy to the people we were talking with. if we say it right or wrong we can have opportunity to spread joy.

yesterday in class i provided a large amount of laughter in my first huge language blunder. we had to translate the following sentence: chokudya chaibva, asi tafura haisati yagadzirwa. it means: the food is ready, but the table has not yet been prepared. i however translated it as: the food was stolen, but we died before it was prepared. opps!

laughs all around!

-m

i'm glad i'm not an elephant

i really like elephants. they are amazing creatures. but for now i am glad i am not one. the biggest reason at the moment is that the gestation time of elephant is 22 months! that is outrageous! i feel like the next 7 months is going to be long enough! yes that's right- we're expecting!

now for some of you who knew me in high school and college you may be a little surprised. i always sore that i would never have children. there was just too much risk involved. in 2003, while i was on an internship in malawi, a lady staying with us challenged me on this. she told me that i was named mary for a reason and i would be a blessed mother. besides scaring me a bit, i realized that i was holding this part of my life in my own hands and not surrendering it God. so i timidly told God that i wanted Him to have this part of my life too. which was scary because God does things that seem crazy to me and cost people a lot.

then i moved to ft myers and lived in the nmsi community. for a while there were almost no children around so it was pretty easy to not think about having any. and then eleanor came. she is the newest baby i have ever held. and since her dad worked across from me in the office i spent much time holding her. then the boden's moved in. and when kylee heard that i wasn't so sure about having children of my own, she made it her goal to get me to want to have children by loving her children. well seth and lydia are just too easy to love. they have changed my life. so now there were three children in my life that i would do just about anything for- like jump at the chance to babysit. weird.

and then dan came along. dan is a people magnet. i thought i was a social person until i met dan. as one of his friends says, "he makes friends out of thin air" and it is true. besides being a people magnet, he is definitely a child magnet. he was friends with all of the children in community when he was there. he planned camping trips and hang out times. if there is a small child around sooner or later they will be climbing on dan like a jungle gym and he will be loving it. so when we got married and talked about having children i was much more at ease than ever before. my husband is going to be a great dad.

so we'll keep praying and trusting God that since He has given us this gift, He will equip us for the job.

-m

christmas tree

as promised here is a picture of our christmas tree.

i like christmas trees but not like some people. this year i just wanted a simple christmas tree. so i was inspired one day and i found some homemade green paper and used our fireplace screen to make our little tree. we hung the few ornaments on it and we even got a free stocking at a shop the other day! the little trees on the left side are made of wire and beads. dan got them for my birthday from the market.

-m

Thanksgiving and the rainy season

It's weird how normal a day Thanksgiving was here. No parade, no pilgrims, not even a day off work. so we tried our best to make it feel like home. We got a turkey on Tuesday, which is a pretty normal thing to do, except that we had to keep her in the backyard because she was still alive (!). Our big splurge was a can of cranberry sauce imported from Canada (I won't even say how much it cost). We were even able to cook sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top (but we should note that the sweet potatoes were white and the marshmallows were multicolored!). I was truly amazed at the spread we had, considering we were in Africa. My dad will be thrilled to find

out that after dinner our friend Julie read the story of the first thanksgiving, which is something my dad would definitely do. And I can't complain...it made me feel at home, and it was a nice history lesson for our Shona friends who joined us. Back to the turkey for a minute--on Thanksgivng morning I called our gardener over to help me slaughter our bird. It was a bit more gruesome than I expected, but I tried to make it as quick as possible. It was my first time killing anything bigger than a sunfish, and I feel a little more grown up having done it.

On a different note, the rainy season here has come, which is a big change from our first few months here. "Rainy season" doesn't mean it rains every day, like it does in some parts of the world. It just means there is a much better chance of rain than during the dry season. So far it has rained three times, but each rain lasted for a few days. Somestimes it rains gently nonstop, and sometimes we get intense 30-minutes storms. In any case, we are grateful, because things are turning from brown to green, and the farmers we teach now have the opportunity to put it into practice. And we just love storms!! To be fair, rain has its downfalls...like hidden potholes, crazier traffic, and muddy floors. I like to sing the line from Andrew Peterson's song, referring to our complaints about rain: "Do you thank the Lord for coming up with such a great idea?" I hope so.

-Dan

my birthday!

first let me just say that i had a very lovely day here in zim. my birthday is a big deal to me and i have almost always been surrounded by really good friends to celebrate. this year my only really good friend here so far is dan. but he, of course, is an amazing gift from God, who loves me very well and did an excellent job of celebrating me. i had many suprise birthday presents, a small party, a few cards that came on time, many facebook wishes, and "happy birthday" sung in suprising new ways.

someone asked me how birthdays are celebrated here. to be honest i still don't know fully but i do know this- everytime i have heard "happy birthday" sung it has at least 3 verses, and two of mine had 5! i will give you a little taste.

"happy birthday to you"...

"how old are you now"...

"we wish you many more"...

"God bless you today"...

and my favorite "who is your boyfriend"... only altered for me to say "who is your husband"...

a little over the top.

today, dan took me to a safari park, that is actually a conservation park with an excellent black rhino breeding program. so we saw many great africa animals and got to touch and feed both black rhinos and elephants!!!! it was so fun. here are a few pictures.

-m

work permits

we got them! officially stamped in our passports this morning! :)