Shopping prayers answered.

Those of you who know me outside of Sunday morning presentations already know that my clothing choices are comfort based: jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, flannel.

So on learning that we needed to outfit Anna in business FORMAL for a 3 day summit discussing faith and politics in Washington D.C. this summer I did two things. I started to pray and research.

Even during my doctoring period in the USA, my professional wardrobe never came close to the strict recommendations that come with business formal.



I knew that other complicating factors would come to play: only a few days to shop, her 6 foot height, wide shoulders, strong opinions of what she likes, all wrapped up in an understanding of economics and frugality.


Thankful my mom could join us.

Thankful that we could spend precious time together [9 hours] in the car and shops.

SO thankful for a wonderful consignment shop where the majority of needed items were found!

VERY thankful that we found what was needed and will NOT have to head out again for major shopping hunting.

Thankful we can spend the rest of this week together as a whole family before she heads off for camp leadership training at Beechpoint.

Thankful that we can call on the Lord and He provides for our needs and is with us always...even especially when shopping.


To be clear she's still the old Anna though, these are also from this week, her pile of stuff from college and after playing in a rain storm.

Last week of summer family time

Last Saturday we spent the afternoon rejoicing because Fritzlin's American Certificate of Citizenship came in the mail. YES!!!!

What a huge praise for us!

Sunday we shared at my brother Todd's church.

His family did return from their vacation in time to worship with us.

Monday the five of us loaded up in the car and headed to Holland MI.

Our first stop was to apply for Fritz's social security number. As soon as we receive it [should be within 10 days] we will be able to apply for his American passport.

Then we headed to Windmill Island Gardens to show our children the De Zwaan Windmill and teach them a bit about their Dutch heritage.

Then an American cultural event...shopping.

The next few days consisted of packing for Anna and us, office work, making green tomato relish, cleaning elderberries and family time.

Yesterday, Friday Sept. 24th we left Fritz with Eli and moved Anna into her room.

We arrived just minutes ahead of Felicia, Anna's roommate from Cameroon.

After the parents helped the gals carry their stuff to the room and arrange their furniture, Felicia's Dad let us in prayer.

The afternoon we met and visited with other parents/guardians as well as fitting in a visit to a near-by hardware store.

We plan to return to Haiti on Sept. 18th.


Every time we saw Anna she was in a group of students chatting...at one point explaining a game to a group.

Wheel for rotating the windmill direction

Don't think she had any time to unpack but hope she makes her bed before she gets too tired!

For the next 6 days at least part of our day will be spent at Calvin participating in first international student orientation and then freshman orientation.

Next Friday we will move Eli into his room.

Making relish

Family photos

Heading to college after pie and ice cream for breakfast

Let the games begin!

Anna's Thoughts About Our Travels. Roadtrip Post

 Each profession comes with it's own particular complaints. It is a fact of life, things people with similar job descriptions can commiserate about. 

For missionaries I think visiting churches can be one of those subjects. My family is very blessed with good, understanding, accepting churches, who make our visits good. 

But constantly visiting; having to travel; always being the odd ones out; wondering if it will be the same as it was when you last saw it years ago... gets a bit old. 

You don't recognize anyone, but they all know you. It can be annoying, cause you feel like you should know them too. 

But you have visited a bunch of other churches and seen how many other people since you last saw them. 

In your head, you know why you don’t, but it still gets to you. But despite all the annoyances, I think it is a unique gift, getting to go on these trips. 

Who else gets touch so many different peoples lives? Who else gets to experience so much hospitality as people open their homes (and refrigerators)?

 You get to talk to so many people and educate them about your country. 

You get to hear stories and have a lot of people interested in you and what you have to say. (Which can be good or bad depending on people, and the personality of the missionary) 

And even if having so many people knowing you can be annoying, at least if you ever become a celebrity, you go in with an idea of what to expect… :)

As much as we enjoy travel, we are glad it is done. Even me, the youngster, is sore from all the time cooped up in the car.  

But we had a great trip out to NY + PA, and got to meet lots of great people. Thank you to everyone who made it a successful trip, and for all the prayers.

Anna

Photo's from biology lab and house...

Flat Stacy visit

Plastering of walls

The pig.. for Anna's advanced biology dissection

Cory's yacon...a path was made over it but it survived. Now rescued.

Clean up started.

Crew leaving after we prayed with them. 

I hope you dance

I raised my children listening to Lee Ann Womack's "I hope you Dance" and I know it is on their song lists.

A few of the lines read "Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
  I hope you dance         I hope you dance"

I never dreamed that Eli would take it quit so literally.

This weekend he will be performing in Calvin's "Rangeela: Yours, Mine, Ours" is an international cultural showcase featuring 13 acts of skits, dances, music and more.

This is one Calvin performance you don’t want to miss!"

I am greatly missing Eli and wish we could attend to encourage him and enjoy the show.

We are thankful to be able to see some short video's of practices and hope to have enough bandwidth to tune in on Friday or Saturday.
We hope to be able to watch the whole show when Eli gets a disk sometime this spring.

You can too.."Tune in LIVE to the broadcast of Rangeela this Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, at 8 p.m. EST. "

He will be performing in the Middle East dance. He's easy to spot due to his height.

Middle East because it included more countries and he didn't know much about the area.

We are very proud of Eli and the man he has become.

We're proud of him stepping way out of his comfort zone and joining in this celebration of diversity.

We also enjoy and celebrate Anna today as she continues to sing and dance her way through life, starting her 17th year.

As she heads toward graduation, we remain very proud of her.

She's looking forward to joining Eli as an international student at Calvin.

I am considering removing Garth Brooke's song 'Standing Outside the Fire' from her song list..."Standing outside the fire      Life is not tried, it is merely survived  If you're standing outside the fire "

One cannot be too careful, especially with a second-born, spunky, adventuresome, energetic, warrior, barefoot princess cute intellect, who thinks & debates like a lawyer and   who's ready to change the world.

Don't say we didn't warn you!

Anna's honest blog...

Hi, this is Anna. I spent Tuesday morning staining wood for Mom, so in exchange, my kind teacher is allowing me to write a blog for this week's paper. (Score for homeschooling!)

We are finally done with painting and staining the kitchen cupboards! Nothing particularly interesting has been happening, so I am going to write about some things that we have been experiencing, like stress.

This past Sunday I was having personal time at the Fort and thinking about life, and how we have very little routine in our lives right now. Each stage of the house changes things, plus there were holidays, my college decision, teams, and now we will travel north for a medical team. We have a week, start to get a routine, and then poof, changed again. But missionaries are supposed to be flexible right? We should be used to it by now, so why are we all so on edge? And then I realized something. Even contortionists need bones to function. Without bones they would be writhing blobs rather people with a interesting/slightly creepy talent.

We had quite flexible routines before, but with the added discombobulation it is also hard to keep routines like daily alone time with God. I know, shocking, since we live on an isolated mountain top.

Let me explain. Lots of isolated spots exist with gorgeous views. But most of them require several minutes of hiking. That is not so bad, since we hike a lot. But during the day we all work, and usually by the time we finish school or work, it is time to prepare supper, and then it is dark. NOT good hiking conditions with the abundance of ankle twisting rocks lurking around, even during the day, let alone under the cover of dark. Plus, my parents don't exactly let this 16 year old go hiking alone at night.

Then there is house stress. When to put up the inner walls, will the house funds cover the cost, etc. In case y'all don't remember, my mom is a family practice doctor / home-school teacher and my dad is a fruit horticulturalist.

Neither of those jobs exactly prepare one for building a house... on the top of a mountain; while house-sitting for another missionary family... and living with three teachers. Though let me tell you house sitting was a life saver compared to the other options. I also happen to room with two of the teachers, and they are both great roommates. One is American and one is Haitian, so I am continually learning about both cultures.


But it still isn't quite the same as living in your own house. Oh, and I personally have the delightful stress called home-schooling. My days include school, cooking, and occasionally working at the house site. Now imagine if all your school stuff is either in a crate, or in a cubby under the random object you shoved in there earlier since you have roommates to consider. Oh, not to mention when you accidently leave one of your schedule books in the North and don't find it for a 1/3 of the school year (luckly it was the ONE schedule book I could manage without). Put these factors all together, and it becomes very easy to accidently forget about some aspect of school, until you are six weeks behind and suddenly realize why you had that nagging feeling you were missing something.

So yeah. We are all a little stressed out. Hopefully going North for the medical team and then staying at Fauche a few days will help reset us. Dad will get a chance visit his gardens, and I will certainly enjoy a week of not coming up with meals (and hopefully playing some volleyball).

So those are some of the stresses in our life. Speaking of meals... I need to go.

Anna's Announcement.

Hi everyone. So, straight to the point, I have decided to skip a year and start college this fall. Surprise (to everyone including myself)! This is the result of many things, and came about in a rather sudden revelation, which happened to occur while I was talking with Grandma as we painted. (Have to watch out for Grandmas and those serious discussions!)

Back when I first entered high school I wanted to go after four years of high school. Let me explain. In Haiti high school is five years instead of four. Since Eli and I were ahead, Mom had Eli do an extra year, he only turned 18 the week of his college orientation. We planned on doing the same for me. After Eli left,  I heard about his adjustments to college and I started to hit the difficulties of high school, I agreed with mom.  I was perfectly content to spend an extra year without all the worries of college, without having to figure out college financial aid forms with dad, without stressing about college grades and scholarships. Without being separated from my parents and without leaving Haiti, my home of 16 years. The longest I have ever been in the US at once is four months.

So this decision was not taken lightly.  I lined up the pros and cons. Part of the doors opening was my elder brother, who if not necessarily enthused, is no longer opposed to having me overlap a year with him (Apparently he met some people who overlapped with siblings or relatives, and they all said that they were so busy they didn't actually see each other much.) My good SAT results also motivated the change.

For my 5th high school year, 'senior year', the main things I planned to do were advanced Chemistry, World history, and Pre Calc. I want to major in International Relations. Pre Calc and Advanced Chemistry have nothing to do with that, and I already studied more science than usual. World history does sound interesting, and I had been looking forward to that. In fact the deal was, if I wanted to do it, I needed to finish all the high school literatures we already owned, so I did double literature this year (some of the old British and American classics and poems are painful😝).  So academically I am ready.

I like Délice. I can see how Mom and Dad will help and teach this community about health, nutrition, and other things. However, I am also a social, competitive person. School wise, I studied a lot for my SAT. My motivation and goal was to compete with different scores and the percentile posted on the internet, also scholarships are competitive, so they were motivation too.

I know the whole ideology of "compete against yourself" But sadly one of my big motivations tends to be competing against other people. And trust me, it takes talent (and google) to be competitive academically when you are homeschooled and the only one in your class; the only one in your high school for that matter... Volleyball used to be an outlet, and I would release my competitiveness for about two hours a day, five/six days a week. But I left that outlet behind in Fauche.

 Délice has already changed me for the better. I learned a lot during my short time here, and will continue to learn until I leave. But I feel I will be able to grow much more in the Calvin College community, even if it involves some major transition/growing pains.

 If I stayed I would still learn, probably mature a bit... (I will be turning 17 in February) but I think I can do the same at college. There will be homesickness, but that will happen no matter when I go, and this way Eli will be there, one member of my immediate family.

I decided all this a couple days before Christmas, and spent the day before Christmas Eve, and several days after Christmas, working on my application, with Mom helping and working on my transcript/course description. We took family and senior pictures on New Years Day at the fort.

Talk about fun holidays. But we got it done and sent in, though still working on other college related applications.

Kris & Cory- How do we feel? As you may guess.  We know that Anna is ready for the next phase of her life and are excited to see her grow and thrive in college. We will miss her greatly and not just because of her good cooking.

We are grateful for our time together and thank the Lord for our energetic, lovely daughter. Please pray for all of us as we transition through this big change.

SAT/North Travels, post by Anna

So the SATs have been stressing me out for the past month or so.

Though some would think I am the care-free type who just lets what happens happen, I am actually just much better at hiding my stress. (Unless you happen to live with me)

I was doing some SAT practice for several months on Khan Academy, a free site connected to Collegeboard.com, then switched to more concentrated study the month prior, taking practice SATs and finally spent hours on Wednesday and Thursday reviewing all the math subjects on Khan Academy.

Last Friday we headed down the mountain.

Everyone told me not to study the day before, so instead my French-teacher/roommate and I watched part of a movie in French during the trip. (usually we do two hours of French on Fridays)

We only made it part way before we both tired of attempting to focus on the jostling screen, while simultaneously endeavoring to keep ourselves steady in the back of the vehicle as it bounced and tipped along the rocky mountain roads.

Left over pizza and local tangerine

We dropped off our two passengers at the base of the mountain, and continued into Port au Prince.

I slept for the majority of this part of the journey, taking advantage of the unusually smooth roads. 

Eventually we stopped at a C&K Hardware store and looked around for house supplies.

As Dad was looking through the roofing screws, a small group of men walked up and were looking at something a little ways from us, and I was very surprised to see, on the back of one of their legs, a tattoo with a familiar volleyball symbol on it.

Up till then, I had only ever seen the symbol on some old volleyball uniforms at Fauche, and was quite surprised.

Later research revealed it was in fact the symbol of the FC Barcelona club, which does seem to have a few members in Haiti. But how we had uniforms with their crest, and who the man with the large tattoo was, are mysteries to me.

Peach palm from several trees

After finally leaving we had street food for lunch and then went to MSC, another hardware store, where we picked up additional supplies and looked at stuff we will need later.

By now it was late afternoon, and we decided we should try to find the place we were staying while we still had light. We found it with minimal wrong turns, and headed back through town, up to the Caribbean Supermarket.

Kids Club

There I enjoyed walking around looking at all the American items, and spent a moment surveying the cereal isle, catching up on all the new cereals that had come out in the year since I was in an American styled store. I was stopped short mid-stride when I realized that the song playing over the loudspeakers was by Pentatonix, a song I happened to have been listening to the night before. It was a sound from home in the most unexpected of places.

We looked around, and dad made his shopping list for the next day, while I would be taking my test.

We left with some good soft serve ice cream, and spent the next half hour or so driving around looking for a pizza place Dad had been to once earlier this year.

We eventually went to some other one we happened to see, and finally headed back. We may have gotten lost again trying to find our way back.

We slept well, and rose early to beat the traffic.

Apparently we were overzealous in our earliness, and we sat in Union School's parking lot about 45 min. before anyone else arrived.

Dad left and I remained, waiting until we were finally all allowed to sign in. I survived, and at about 12:30 Dad and I began our trip to Fauche. We arrived at around 8:30, very tired.

We were happy to attend our old church Sunday morning, and I spent that afternoon packing, reading, and relaxing.

Spent Monday similarly, enjoying the lack of cooking and dishes, mostly eating fried food; peanut-butter, honey, and banana sandwiches; fresh fruit from the garden; and some other food we were given by Jean Pierre's family.

champedak

Tuesday found us rising early and driving back. We had to make several stops, and despite leaving at 7, we didn't make it back until around 5:30, tired, and ready to be home.

peach palm