Late October Updates

A few quick updates.  Some with pictures!  Sorry this post is so long, but I'm trying to make up for lost time.

* We could use some prayers for health if you're so inclined!  The Princess has been battling a barking cough which may be turning into an ear infection.  Melissa's taking tomorrow off from school to take her to the doctor.  Melissa and I are both dealing with head colds, too.

*  Melissa turned 40 about a week ago.  I feel guilty that I didn't have the time or funds to make her day more special.  She planned a big surprise party when I turned 40 a few years ago - and actually surprised me.  I am promising to take her to Indy soon for a getaway, though.

*  At school, I am directing the fall play - a Woody Allen comedy called "Don't Drink the Water".  It's been a fun cast to work with, but we are in the final three weeks before production, so things are bound to get more stressful from here on out.  Come and see the performance if you get the chance - November 19 and 20.

*  Finished our funding training with OMS yesterday, so we are now ready to officially begin sharing our call to ministry in Haiti with folks and inviting them to partner with us both financially and in prayer.  We are still hoping to get our family to Haiti in August of next year.  We're also looking for some dedicated pray-ers who will commit to lift us up in prayer on a regular basis.  If that is something you would be interested in, please email me at steve_gross@juno.com!

* Speaking of prayer, over Fall Break, we slipped up to Greenwood to get our pictures taken for our prayer card.  The ladies in the communication department at OMS were super helpful and patient and went out of their way to help us get our picture and information formatted in time for a deadline  - even though we were still in the office after 5:00 on a Friday afternoon!

*  Afterwards, we stopped by the portrait place in the Greenwood Mall since we were all dressed up to see if we could get a good family shot and some individuals of the kids.  Melissa was excited because we left with 100 Christmas cards all ready to go.  Now I'll really be in trouble this year if I'm late in writing our Christmas letter.

Here are a couple of the shots:

*  Yesterday evening our small group hosted a fall carnival at the church for the bus ministry kids.  These are kids who ride the bus to church every Sunday - mostly without their parents.  They had a great time and it was more fun than I anticipated.  My brother donated the use of his jump castle, so I spent part of the evening supervising the kids inside it - until I was about deaf.  At one point, one little guy - about 7 years old - poked his head out of the castle and yelled, "This is the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!"  They all went home with tummy aches and little plastic toys...

Some pics:



Getting some hotdogs ready.




The kids line up to eat.




Melissa manned the cotton candy machine.




Grandma Trudy even came along to help out.




The jump castle was busy the entire time.

*  Earlier that afternoon, the kids helped with raking Grandma Trudy's leaves...

Dats used the leafblower for the first time.

Grandma buried Ida.

The Princess buried herself.

And, of course, a leaf fight eventually broke out.  Miraculously, nobody ended up crying!

* This evening, a nearby church was hosting a "Trunk or Treat" event and so we took our kids over for an hour.  That way we get a little more use out of the costumes.  This year we have a Princess (of course) and 3 Star Wars characters:  Obi Wan, General Grievous, and Padme Amidala.  And so begins the candy season, which lasts until early summer:  first the Halloween candy which stretches until Christmas, then the Christmas candy that stretches to Easter, then Easter carries us until early summer when any leftovers get tossed out of disgust.

The Princess

The whole gang.

Trunk or Treat

Carving the pumpkins.  Since Dats is now 10 years old, I am trying to allow him to do more on his own.  So I stood back and let him carve his own pumpkin while I prayed that we would not be making a trip to the emergency room tonight.

The most disturbing Halloween costume I've seen in a long while.

Newspaper Articles

This is the longest I've gone without writing since I started here about a year ago.  Life is hectic and I am tired... blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, I don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but the local newspaper is actually paying me to write a monthly article for the "Classrooms" page.  I have a spot the 4th Monday of each month.  They are paying me all of $40 per article.  That's cool, but when I do the math, figuring in the number of hours per article, it's probably around minimum wage.

I would appreciate your prayers for wisdom, though, because the coolest thing about it is the fact that my editor at the newspaper said I could write some about our transition to Haiti.  I haven't done that yet ... still trying to figure out how to make that move.  For now, my articles (this is my third) have been observations on matters relating to education. 

This month's was about grading student papers and I reprint it here to help fill the gap left by my recent busy-ness:

STUDENT WRITING NEVER CEASES TO ENTERTAIN, OR AMAZE

For this English teacher, the job’s greatest joy and its greatest frustration are one in the same: grading student writing.  This paradox resolves itself this way:  Grading student writing is frustrating because it takes so much time, but the main reason it takes so much time is because I find it utterly fascinating. 

I seem to be incapable of skimming writing assignments.  At times I will tell myself, “Let’s save a few minutes by glancing over these paragraphs and giving only a completion grade,” and within sixty seconds I will be deeply engrossed in some student’s description of how spoiled little sisters are or how frustrating math class can be.

I’m sure some readers will doubt me when I say student writing is fascinating.  Maybe you recall your own school day compositions, and you know they were mostly a series of mind-numbing generalities strung together to fulfill an assignment with as little effort as possible.  Some of that writing crosses my desk too.  I didn’t say student writing was 100% fascinating, just that it is interesting to me as a whole. 

Sometimes student writing makes me laugh until I have tears streaming down my face.  And the unintentional humor is almost always the best kind.

Like the 7^th grader who I asked to write a description of the launch of a rocket heading to the moon.  The objective was to employ plenty of relevant detail.  This young lady wrote of being strapped into the chair and wearing her space helmet and how, as the rocket gained altitude, “my ears popped inside my helmet.”  A great detail to include, but her intent was derailed by an egregious spelling error:  instead of doubling the P in “popped”, she had doubled the O.  I had trouble breathing.

And then there was the 10^th grader who wrote a short story entitled “Day with Mom and Grandma!”

“I woke up to the alarm going off, telling me to get up and get ready for my day.  It was a Friday morning and I was oh so warm in my bed.  Nevertheless, I got up and went downstairs for breakfast. “

She was off to a fairly dull and unoriginal start.  But the next sentence grabbed my attention and had me anticipating a rather macabre turn to her tale:  “There, cooking over a hot stove, was grandma.”  

Unfortunately, it turned out to be nothing more than a preposition problem. 

(Even the mistakes students make while writing leave me intrigued by language and communication.  Isn’t it curious that in this sentence structure, either “cooking at” or “leaning over” will work just fine, but “cooking over” conjures up a fundamentally different image?)

The other fascinating aspect of student writing, which stretches out grading time, is that it is a window into the student’s mind.  This, more than anything else, keeps me engrossed in student writing.  It doesn’t take more than a twenty minute journaling exercise to reveal waves of teenage angst, family dysfunction, hopes, future plans, sports, questions about God, and tales of dust-ups with the local police.  The act of grading these papers can drag me from heartache to great joy and then back again.

Of course the absolute best part of grading student writing, the aspect that truly rewards the time and effort spent in reading, is the discovery of a diamond in the rough.  These are bits of writing so good they beg for a much wider audience.

During a recent journaling exercise, where the topic was open to the students, a handful of my eighth graders spent twenty minutes writing variations of “This assignment is stupid” over and over.   Meanwhile, one young man poured out a couple of poems.  I only have space here for one and I reprint it with his permission:

“Grassy Plains” by Logan B.

Hindering winds echo

Upon the grassy plain,

No caverns in sight

But hither,

As it wails into your ear.

What it has sought long since faded,

Only a memory is it now.

Anger arises, in the plain,

The wind

Now it bares fangs,

Having lost all hope

As to what it wished to gain.

Tread lightly upon

That desolate grassy plain.

To my way of thinking, reading through stacks of paper is worth it to find a single heartfelt poem written by an 8^th grader in under twenty minutes.

Missionaries-in-Waiting

My primary objective in writing on this blog is to sort through my own thoughts - especially relating to the experience of being a missionary-in-waiting, which is what Melissa and I have been, to one degree or another, for almost an entire year now.  What I am finding lately is, that at this point in the process, EVERYTHING in my life seems to be related to that experience. 

In other words, the reality of being a missionary-in-waiting is the backdrop for nearly all else in my life:  the joys and the stresses, how I spend my time and money, and definitely my prayers and devotional life. 

The Princess (age 4) has taken up a new habit in the last two months or so:  when she sees a commercial on TV for the latest plastic toy from China, she blurts out, "I WANT that!"  Each time I hear it, I think A) She sure says that in the cutest way and B)  I personally DON'T want that ... because we don't have the money or space for it ... because we're trying to get the family to Haiti. 

Even our morning schedule is a reminder that I am an M-in-W, since the whole point of us moving in with my mother-in-law is to pay off debt before entering the mission field fulltime, and this move, in turn, has had very prominent repercussions on our daily schedule.  I've been thinking of capturing the routine in photos to post here, because I know "this too shall pass", and someday it will be just a vague memory unless I've written it down.

The simple act of checking email also reminds me of where we're going.  I get regular emails from folks at OMS now, especially as we anticipate a web-based training on fundraising that starts this Saturday morning and runs for three weeks.  There's homework for this class.  I actually have it done early for this first session because I know how a week can get away from you.

Morning devotions are also performed with our mission in the back of my mind.  I am currently reading through II Corinthians.  And when I came across 1:16 yesterday, Paul's appeal for financial help (which I wouldn't have even noticed a year ago) now jumped out at me:  Paul writes that he hopes to come to Corinth from Macedonia in order to "come to you, and by you to be helped on my journey to Judea."  So I make a mental note that Paul did not hesitate to give advanced notice to some brothers and sisters in Christ that he was needing financial support to continue the plans God had called him to. 

Another reminder of our plans to move to Haiti:  watching our kids.  They continue to amaze me and make me proud when I observe how flexible they are.  The four of them - ranging in age from 4 to 10 - are sleeping in two bunk beds in a tiny bedroom, but I haven't heard any complaints from them. (Arguments?  yes... a few.  But no general complaints.) 

Even their willingness to clean their plates or try new food reminds me that we are all missionaries-in-waiting.  They showed a real willingness to try novel foods while we were in Haiti in July - especially when it came to fruit.  The other night, after a cool autumn day, Melissa served a soup we hadn't had for some time:  Italian sausage with zucchini and yellow squash.  The Princess picked at some of the yellow squash and announced, "I don't want the LEMONS!" 

We laughed and Melissa replied, "Those aren't lemons." 

"Then what are they?"

"Squash."

"Squashed WHAT?"

So every day is filled from beginning to end with reminders that we are missionaries-in-waiting.  It's not a bad thing at all, but as Tom Petty once stated, "The waiting is the hardest part."

The Return from Miami - Final pics from our July Trip to Haiti

I must force myself to finish posting the remaining pictures of our Haiti Adventure.  It is tough to do because it provides a sense of closure to me that I'd rather not have!  But the record would not be complete without documenting our return to Indiana from Miami - mainly because our friends Twila and Gonzo provided such great hospitality. 

We stayed with them the night before we left for Haiti, early in July.  They found a safe place to park our van for the two weeks and then picked us up at the airport upon our return.  It was in the afternoon and I knew I wouldn't be in the mood to drive, so we were so glad that Twila and Gonzo were willing to put us up for the night in the condo where they live in downtown Miami.  The kids were excited to get their hands back on their video games and to spend some time in the condo's pool.  It was beautiful.

The condo had valet parking!

Gonzo.  He and Twila used to live in Indianapolis and Gonzo helped with the youth group quite a bit while I was youth pastor at the Free Methodist Church.  I was surprised to see all these years later that Gonzo still keeps a group picture on his night stand from our youth mission trip to Mexico.

The Drama Queen checks out the view of the pool from the condo balcony.  The pool was on the 12th floor.  Very cool.

Downtown Miami in the background.

The Princess plays with Gonzo's toy - "Sharkie".



Ida rubs his mom's shoulders after a day of travel.  Speaking of back rubs ... I have never seen our kids closer to each other than they were on this trip.  It was a beautiful thing.  Don't get me wrong; it's not like they are usually at each other's throats.  But I was shocked once to walk into one of the bedrooms in the Bundy house in Haiti to find Dats rubbing The Drama Queen's shoulders as they sat and talked!  Another time I walked in and found DQ rubbing Dats' shoulders.  It freaked me out a bit.



It's a rough life.

Twila came down to swim with us for a while.  She was an incredible hostess.  She had packed their fridge with about every type of snack food imaginable. 

There was just enough floor space for three queen-sized air matresses.

Ida bonded quickly with Gonzo and showed his affection as he always does ... by treating him like a jungle gym.

The kids survived for two full weeks without access to their DSs, but the addiction immediately returned.  Unfortunately.

We spent one night in a small town south of Atlanta and then continued home.  Oreo was mobbed once we got back to our house.

She was so excited.

And Amber, who house-sat for us, was there when we arrived.  We were so grateful to her for watching over the dog, the house and the pool while we were gone.