Pennsylvania Highlights - Warfordsburg

We returned from Pennsylvania a couple of days ago and I want to write a huge THANK YOU to our two sets of hosts while we were on the road.

First, Warfordsburg.  I'm having trouble finding a word to sum up our time with Troy and Dina.  I want to use words like fun, encouragement, hospitality and support.  If forced to pick one word, I guess it would be "fellowship".

 

These two invited us, put us up in their house, sent out letters to friends, hosted multiple open houses, and served up a never-ending stream of meals and refreshments.  And then filled spare moments with ping pong games and late night chats.  We met some great folks from their church throughout the weekend and had multiple opportunities to chat about the challenges faced by Haiti and what role Christ is calling us to serve there.

We met Troy and Dina just a year ago through their daughter, Loni, and son-in-law, James, who are serving as stateside missionaries at One Mission Society headquarters in Greenwood, Indiana.  We LOVE James and Loni (and their cute kids!), so it was a real joy to get to meet and to know so many in their extended family.

I love the church's sign! "Really!"

The kids were obsessed with spotting deer.  The Princess spotted one of her own from this perch Saturday morning and was so very excited!

Troy and Dina hosted a party for their "life group" on Saturday evening and it was a welcome opportunity for us to meet some great people.

I have to tell you that I think the trip was a little frustrating for this little guy.  Sure there were plenty of fun things to do: swimming, hiking, and making s'mores.  BUT his big brother (and best buddy) was at camp and that made for a lonely week.  And a lot of pestering for the sisters to put up with!

Fortunately, there were people willing to "stand in the gap"!  Of course Troy and Dina were willing, but others were too... here the pastor's wife plays football with Sammy.  Way to break the stereotypes, Kathy!

Tim was another guest who got to play big brother - this time at the ping pong table.

Ladderball!

The Sunday School time and worship service the next morning were sweet times - and not just because of the playground equipment outside.  The sanctuary itself was busting at the seams - construction on a new, larger sanctuary is nearly complete.

One of our little side trips took us to an old canal just across the state border into Maryland.  I got to jog a couple of miles through this area Saturday morning and it was beautiful - saw two bald eagles overhead and startled a fawn on the path.

An all-around great time!

You know it was a wonderful visit when - after just three days time - The Princess cries about having to leave!  (But fortunately we still had time with second cousins outside of Pittsburgh to look forward to!)

Thank you so much for all you did and all you ARE, Troy and Dina!  We anticipate with true joy the next time our paths will cross.

P.S. During the final leg of our journey back to Indiana, we got to listen to the Mark Cahill book on CD you gave us and LOVED it.  Quite challenging but also so practical!

Milestone: Melissa's Classroom Packed

A few weeks ago, Melissa made it official and resigned from her position at Southside Elementary.  She had been teaching Kindergarten there for the last seven years.  We had hoped she might be able to take some sort of year long "leave of absence" to hold onto the job even as we serve at Cowman School in Vaudreuil, Haiti next year.  Turns out it wasn't even a remote possibility - such leaves are granted only for furthering one's education and the year's leave is predicated on a promise of serving at least two more years in the district following the leave.  So, no safety net for us; Melissa had to cut ties completely.

On the last day of school, a Friday, one of Melissa's coworkers asked if she would be spending all weekend cleaning out her classroom so she could be out of the building by the following Monday.  Ha!  It is not the sort of job that is completed in two days.  More like two weeks.

First, Melissa had a huge room - about as much square footage as a small house.  (Not exaggerating!) She had to sort through all sorts of furniture, games and files.  Secondly, the sorting wasn't simple and straightforward.  A flowchart would have been helpful... Bought with PTO money?  - Stays for the next teacher.  Bought with our money?  - Then ask Is this needed in Haiti? If "No", then stays for the next teacher or goes into long term storage.  If "Yes", then ask Is it feasible to ship? - If "No" to feasibility, then long term storage ... etc., etc.

Finally, Melissa has the spiritual gift of organization, so the resources bound for Haiti were not just tossed together into boxes randomly.  No, they stand largely ready to pull out of tubs and be put right to use.  (But just between you and me, I will bet you a thousand dollars it will take her almost two weeks to organize her classroom at Cowman once we reach Haiti in August!)

So every spare moment over the past two weeks has been devoted to clearing out the old classroom and preparing for the new.

The kids "helped" quite a bit over the last few days when both Melissa and I had to be there.  The best part apparently was the ride back to the classroom on the dolly after loading boxes into the van.

Since we are going through a similar sorting process at home, we decided for sanity's sake to rent a storage unit for the next two months in which to store items we HOPE to ship to Haiti.  (No guarantees - we'll have to see what we can afford.) These are all Melissa's classroom boxes.  I dare say that if we can get these things all shipped, she'll have one of the best supplied Kindergarten classroom on the entire island!

The classroom is almost empty and Caleb is ready to celebrate!

One last walk-through reveals a solar system we almost left behind.  How could we miss entire planets?!

Signed out and heading home!  Melissa will meet with her principal and the newly hired replacement on Monday and then her time at Southside will be officially over.

I tend to struggle with multi-tasking on the macro level, so I am glad for this milestone.  Now we can turn our attention to getting the house sold or rented, arranging various events on the calendar for these last two months, and raising the financial support we are still lacking. 

Caleb heads to Nerd Camp tomorrow and the rest of the family will be gearing up for a trip to Pennsylvania in a couple of days to speak at the church of some friends in Warfordsburg and to visit family and friends in the Pittsburgh area. 

Things are definitely moving and we'd love your prayer support. These milestones are wonderful, but they can be emotionally taxing.  Leaving Southside is bittersweet for Melissa.  She is so excited about getting started at Cowman, but she has wonderful memories from her years at Southside, including some exceptional classes, parents, helpers and co-workers.  Goodbyes are tough!

 Let us know of specific ways we can lift you in prayer, too!

House for Sale - Lesson #1

[I've been working on this topic for a couple of days off and on and finally came to the realization that it will be much too long for a single post, so I need to break it up.  The danger for me always is: will I come back to it and finish my thoughts?  I believe I will - because God has taught me so much through this whole process.]

Once again our house is empty and "up for grabs" - ready to sell or rent ... or rent to own.

Over two years have passed since we first put our house on the market.  Early in 2011, after deciding that God was calling us to Haiti, we spent several months fixing up the place.  We even dealt with all those inconveniences that we had lived with for years but that we figured might be off putting to a prospective buyer - a missing outlet plate here, a  scuffed wall there, a sticky closet door here.  Overall, the house was in darn good shape; we had put a lot of sweat equity into it over the five years we had been living there.  Every wall had been painted, every light fixture updated, and every square foot of wood flooring sanded and refinished.  Likewise, on the outside: the dingy gray was gone and replaced with a beautiful "Ocean Foam" ... or something.  Even the kids' play structure in the backyard had gotten a face lift.

By March of 2011, we were ready to put the house on the market: for sale by owner.  We scheduled an Open House on either end of our spring break week and advertised it in the local paper.  By that point, though, the bottom had dropped out of the housing market, drying up every last bit of our sweat equity - and then some!

Still, we reasoned, God wanted us to go to the mission field, so He would sell our house.  When the Sunday of our first Open House arrived, we put the finishing touches in place, sent our four kids off to play with friends for the afternoon and eagerly awaited our first visitors.  Sitting on the couch in the living room beside the picture window at the front of the house would afford us a perfect view of approaching strangers, giving us plenty of time to jump up, rush to the front door, greet them and show them around the house.

That couch was where I fell asleep ... and enjoyed a nap completely uninterrupted by the doorbell.  Our second Open House a week later brought in one solitary couple - those two wandered through the house for 3 minutes and then disappeared without so much as a smile.

Melissa and I were crushed.  It wasn't just that crowds of potential buyers hadn't shown up ... Where was God?  Why didn't HE show up? Was this a sign?  How was I going to have a neat and tidy miraculous house sale story to share with others if God wasn't going to cooperate:   "We put the 'Open House' sign up and fifteen minutes later a couple walked in and offered cash - $10,000 over our asking price!  We serve a mighty God!" 

This was the first of several gut-level lessons God would teach us through this house. (I'm talking about "gut knowledge" beyond just "head knowledge" here!)

Lesson #1: Just because I believe I am following God's will, doesn't mean the path is going to be easy and paved with miracles.  Now this might strike you as obvious ... and it IS obvious and I already knew this in my head, but my gut was holding onto the belief that because God was calling us to work in Haiti, He was bound to expedite our transition. 

I say it is obvious that being in the center of God's will does not equal smooth sailing because anybody can open the Bible to just about any random passage and find proof right there in God's word. Case in point: Take a good look at the Apostle Paul's experience once he got launched onto the mission field.  His missionary life was filled with tales of prison time, a couple of attempted murders, beatings and shipwrecks. 
 
But even though we "know" that neither success nor failure is directly correlated with the quality of our relationship with God, how quick we are still to judge others and to evaluate our own standing with the Lord based on the positive or negative circumstances of our lives.  We forget that even what others might mean for evil, God can use for our good - even though it still looks very much like "bad" right now.  And we forget that the man who has to build more barns to store all his harvest may die tomorrow and lose it all ... and face judgment before God's throne. 

Truth is, at least part of me wanted that miraculous house sale to prove to myself and others that God really was calling us to Haiti.  The last chapter of Acts is so instructional regarding this in-grained attitude we carry with us regarding hardship as being equivalent to God's disapproval and blessings being God's thumbs up:  The Apostle Paul and many others are caught in a storm at sea and their ship breaks apart just off the coast of Malta.  All the victims survive and are cared for by the natives.  Paul goes to help build a fire as they are drying off and a snake latches onto his arm.  Acts 28:4 records the reaction of the islanders: When the natives [fn] saw the creature hanging from his hand, they began saying to one another, "Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, and though he has been saved from the sea, justice [fn] has not allowed him to live."  BUT when Paul fails to keel over and die in the coming minutes, the people "changed their minds and began to say that he was a god."
 
They were wrong on both counts!  The only thing the incident truly proved was that God was sovereign over all circumstances and His will was taking precedent - even over snake venom. 
So back to our real estate situation: the house is again up for sale and I am now more inclined to pray "Thy will be done" than to request a quick and easy sale.  I can honestly say I am more interested in a resolution that brings glory to God than one that just simplifies our life and finances.  If they happen to be one in the same, then yahoo!  Maybe in my next post I can tell you a bit about how God has put the house to good use over the last two years - in ways that would not have been possible if our Open Houses had been "successful".
 
Prayer Request: Even as I finished writing this post tonight, I received a call from a stranger requesting a showing of the house tomorrow morning at 10.  Currently though, first dibs on the house belong to a new friend/sister in Christ who used to live in that neighborhood and would like to return.  She is working on figuring out finances with the bank.  I simply ask you to pray with us that God's will be done.  Thank you!