Youth Camp Pictures

The kids had a great week at the PCU youth camp in Entebbe.  They brought home lots of fun stories, great memories and hopefully some good learning too.  Eric spent the week with them (as a speaker and counselor) and I'm told survived the late nights and early mornings on coke and biscuit crackers.  

Here are some pictures that I got from them!

AP exams

This spring Timothy took two AP exams: Calculus and Physics.  As a homeschooling mom, whose strengths do not lie in upper-level maths and sciences, this was a bit nerve-racking for me.  But Timothy was motivated and up for the challenge.  He used Saxon's Calculus, Apologia's Physics and a few other resources on Kindle and the internet and taught himself.  (All I did was help to craft a study schedule to make sure he finished everything in time!)  About a month before the tests, we realized that the AP physics exam was calculus based and not algebra-based, like apologia's physics textbook that he had been learning from all year.  A huge oversight on my part!  He ordered more books on kindle and really buckled down for the remaining days...determined not to be thrown off course by this realization.

We just got his results back yesterday and we were so happy for him!  He did very well!  A 5 in calculus and a 4 in physics!  Wow!  All his hard work paid off!

I hope that this will be an encouragement to all the homeschooling moms who are still in the grade school years and still have little ones toddling around dumping out juice cups and throwing toothbrushes in the toilet while you're trying to homeschool your older kids.  The moms who are sick with morning sickness or chronic illnesses.  The moms that are trying to move and in the middle of packing or unpacking boxes.  The moms that are learning what it means for their family to live in a new culture.

This is my oldest child...the one who had his education interrupted by 5 pregnancies (that's like 5 years of morning sickness and sleepless nights and newborn struggles! ha!), two adoptions, one cross-country move and one international move (and everything that was involved in pre-field training and settling down in a new culture).  That adds up to a lot of days of missed textbook time!

During those days, I never believed older moms when they told me that my kids would be okay.  hmm...I fretted a lot over everything that I wasn't getting done.  I think they were right though.  God's grace covers a multitude of gaps in our children's education.    I've done a lot wrong in our homeschool journey but there are three things that were brought to mind last night as I was in bed thinking and thanking God for Timothy's exams.  Three ways that God led us that I'm thankful for:

#1-- an absolute and utter dependence on the Lord for all that I need and all that my kids need.  By his grace, my kids' hearts are being shaped by the Holy Spirit and this is so important.  Even on the best days, with no other interruptions, it is very difficult for academic education to happen if hearts are not submissive to the Lord.  I am thankful that was convicted early on that my first job in homeschooling is to discipline their hearts and lead them continually to the Lord.

#2-- When life throws interruptions to school we shouldn't fret so much.  But when there aren't major interruptions, we have got to run and work hard and get that school done.  Kids do learn a lot by experiences and life, but it actually won't get them to college.  haha!  Sometimes homeschooling goes at a limp, sometimes it halts all together, and that's okay! But during the seasons that it can go--it should fly!

#3--I think it was drilled into me in my early days of Classical Conversations to give our kids the tools of learning.  When Timothy got to pre-algebra and algebra 1, I was still able to dig into the depths of my brain, remember my college algebra and figure out his math with him.  But I knew that wouldn't last long.  I knew nothing of upper-level math and with lots of other kids and my chronic illness, I knew I wouldn't be able to continue to learn with him... there just wasn't time or strength.  So during those two years, I spent hours relearning myself, then teaching him and modeling to him how to take his textbooks and make them his own, how to use google and youtube to figure out concepts, and how to use the answer key to work a problem backwards.  I taught him how it was never enough to see where he made his mistakes, but that he had to get to the point where he could teach someone else...then he'd know that he had learned it.  I have found the CC idea that our children will always have gaps in their education, but if we can turn them into lifelong learners by giving them the tools of learning, they will be just fine to be so true!

So there it is...three thoughts whirling about in my brain as I rejoice with my son who did really well and my Lord who is so gracious to our little school at home.  God has been so good to us!

March so far...

March has brought us the end of dry season.  So thankful for the returning rains.  While the dry season brings out beautiful flowering trees, it also includes lots of heat and dust!

 We spent a recent Sunday at the church that meets at KTC. (Actually, come to think of it, I think this was in February, but oh well...)

There were quite a lot of baptisms since their own pastor is not yet ordained.  Thankful for concrete floors...haha!

This is little Talitha being baptized...named after our own little Talitha.

We had a 24 hour visit with this little guy that flew into the other house on our compound...a little Red Cheeked Cordon Bleu.  We all enjoyed watching him so much.

Lots of rest to be found!

And we celebrated Timothy's 17th birthday!  (How is it that I have a 17 year old?  wow!)

As per African birthday tradition, Timothy got a water dumping... several times over!  Once on his actual birthday, then again during our youth night and then again the night we actually celebrated his birthday.  Ahh!!  I caught a couple on video.  :-)



Thankful that March has brought some time to settle back into real life and start school again.

December Photo Project: Day 13

We managed another day of school today and two science experiments.  One was successful, one was not.  Ahem, that'd be the one that I was involved in...silly pineapple enzymes...why didn't you break down like you were supposed to?

I love it that Timothy is patient enough to include the littles when he does his experiments.  They love it so much!

Bullet Post Update

The month of May flew by with a vengeance.  We took some weeks off of school and lest we grow too lazy on our break, life threw some crazy busy times at us to keep us relying on the Lord and looking to him for strength.  Here are some of the highlights.

:: We had, what we hope, will be the first of many training sessions for the pastors and wives.  The pastors are going through very practical material such as "how to run a session meeting."  The wives are getting encouragement to keep pressing on in their roles as pastors wives.  (The role of pastor's wife is even more difficult here than in the states since the husband will put in many hours of labor for the church with no pay.  Often times the family struggles for food and school fees and yet the husband presses on working for free for the church.  It is easy for Satan to use that opportunity to discourage the wives, as you can well imagine)  

For the ladies, I taught one session and Mama Rachel and her mama (Mama Maria) taught the other session.  It was a real blessing to all of us.

::  Our other big event of the month was that Timothy flew by himself back to America to work for his uncle for the summer.  It's hard to believe that this kid is 15 years old and old enough to even consider such an opportunity!  We are praying that we will get Denise's visa in order to be able to join him in August.  This whole "leaving the nest" thing is killing my mommy heart, but we are so much at peace with where he is staying (With his Uncle, Aunt and 7...soon to be 8...cousins) that we can't help but be very happy for him!  It was quite brutal on my little ones though.  They just don't get the whole idea of "America."  It seems so far away to them...truly a place people go to and don't come back.  ("Does America have playgrounds?"  "Is Timothy going to die there?"  "Will we ever see him again?")  Little Talitha has cried herself to sleep more than once, but she seems to be settling down now.  We were so thankful for how Emirates airline took care of him.  We didn't pay for any additional escorts for him, but as soon as they found out that he was flying alone, they walked him through everything...from leaving here, to a special lobby during his layover, to his next plane, and all the way through customs and out to his waiting grandparents.  We were so thankful for that!

::Today there was a Fun Run in town.  Anna (our current visitor) and I decided to go for it.  It was announced as a 7 km race, but in reality it ended up being 5.5 km.  And it only started an hour and a half late this time.  :-)  

They had people going around taking pictures and then when we finished, it turned out that they had printed them and were selling them for 30 cents.  Here's our "snap."

::With the start of June, also came the start of our new school year.  We are trying to get 6 weeks done before we hopefully head to America.  After our crazy month, I'm thankful for a bit of settling into a schedule.

:: We don't have much to update concerning Denise's adoption.  We are still waiting for a very important document called an I600a (from the American side of things).  We are also still waiting for the judges written ruling.(From the Ugandan side of things).  We need both of these documents before we can ask for a visa appointment at the embassy.  Please continue to pray with us that these things will come together in time. Even once we get the appointment, it could take a bit of time as we have heard that the embassy has started doing their own investigations on each case.  We really want to go on furlough in August.  Having Timothy there waiting for us puts even more pressure on that August date.  Please continue to pray for our hearts: we don't want to make an idol of getting on a plane in August.  We know with certainty that God's timing will be perfect regardless of when it is.  At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold the date on an open hand.  We want to plan.  A family our size can't just show up with no plans in place.  We also want to know when we will see Timothy again.  This is especially true for the littles who tend to struggle a bit more.  Pray also for Denise's heart...whether or not she gets into America (although we presume she will, we won't know for sure until it happens) is a HUGE deal for her life...it's a fairly large weight for a 13 year old to carry.  We appreciate prayers for this!

Thank you friends!  Hopefully June won't be as quiet as May was in bloggy land.

A little update...

Life's been extra busy again the past couple weeks.  Here are a few highlights.

::Our MA, Sarah moved into the house behind us.  The compound neighbors ours.  We put in a gate, fixed up the house and now it makes a cute little place, perfectly suited to the ministry that Sarah does.  She has a school room to teach her reading classes, a guest room, a storage room for us, her room, a kitchen and even an american bathroom. (score!)  Right now, she has a great new friend staying with her...Miss Paige.  But our kids actually call her Miss Paige of the Paper.  Miss Paige of the Paper has a really fun pair of trousers and Talitha happened to find the exact same ones in her size at the store.  She was SO excited to find them!  :-)

::The girls had their spring dance recital.  Due to schedules, elections and everyone's furlough plans, they only had about 5 practices to put all this together.  Lots of fun though!

::My Timothy turned 15!  Katelyn surprised him by making him a hobbit hole cake.  Super cute!  I love these kids!

What a day!

Recently, at one of the OPCU church plants, three widows lost their homes in a land dispute.  The day after the court case was lost, they were evicted from the property and a barbed wire fence was put up to keep them off.  The church shines during difficult times like this: they gathered resources and began to build new houses for two of the widows (the third had children helping her).  The youth in our church spent the day yesterday helping to construct the mud and stick structures.    

They are built by making a frame of sticks and then slapping mud up onto the frame.  When the mud dries, they smear it with cow dung and it hardens enough to last a couple years.

Making the mud can be a fun project for a bunch of teenagers...they basically dig up a huge area of dirt, add water and stomp in it until it is good mud. :)

This is one house frame:

And here is the other:

We have visitors in from Australia right now.  Here they are smoothing out the floor of the house.

The morning and afternoon went super smoothly.  They got a lot of work done.  Eric left with one car load of kids to bring them home and then this happened:

Heh, heh...While Eric was gone, four of the kids (including Timothy and Katelyn) that were working needed to get some bricks.  The neighbors told them to cross the barbed wire fence (yes, the one blocking off the disputed land) and get some.  When they crossed, they met a security guard, told him what they wanted and he said "yes."  But then, he left and went and got the other two security guards and when the three of them came back, they were NOT happy.  It was as if the first security guard tricked them (lied to them?) in order to get them in trouble.  They made them march to the security guard head quarters and beat the boys with a stick (including Timothy one time, the other two boys got a bit more) along the way.  Thankfully, they didn't hit Katelyn although they did push all of them around quite a bit.  They got a good yelling at.  The guards were roughly talking in Luganda to the two other boys and they had quite a discussion that Timothy and Katelyn couldn't follow.  Then they turned to Timothy and Katelyn and got their story, talked some more among themselves and finally released them.  About that same time, Eric had come back and all the other kids came running up, "Pastor Eric, pastor Eric the kids were arrested!"  He eventually met up with them on their way out.  They were a little shaken up over their "arrest" (a few tears), but then once they were home, we all had a good laugh about their "record."  And we just had to take a few mug shots to remember it by, right?

Happy to be home...

Rainy Season and White Ants

God has been so gracious to our little corner of the world to bring the rains back once again.  Dry season was harsh this year...and a few weeks longer than normal.  By the last 3 weeks, city water was being cut off by 8am most mornings and it was dry, dusty and HOT!  We felt uncomfortable in the city, but the people in the villages had it a lot worse than us as streams dried up and water tables dipped lower than the boreholes.  

But we praise the Lord that once again the weather is back in the upper 70s/low 80s and the skies are clearer and the grass is turning green.  The people are busy digging and planting in eager expectation of a harvest in July.

With the rain also comes the invasion of the white ants.  They are the sure sign that the rain is here to stay.  I took the following pictures and video with my cell phone this morning on my way out to run.  I couldn't even get out our front door there were so many!!

The entire outdoor sink was full!  Timothy scooped them out and bagged them up for his friends.  As you probably know, these make for good eating.  They will collect them and roast them... but it's kind of like blue berry picking... quite a few get eaten while they are being picked up.  On my run this morning, there were lots of people lining the road catching them all... every year at this time, there is a festive feeling in the air...everyone is refreshed by the rain, kids are excited to see the white ants, adults are out laughing and chatting with neighbors while collecting...it's kinda fun to watch.  And of course, this tends to be the hardest time of the year as stores of food from last year are starting to dwindle, stomachs are still hungry for food and the harvest won't be here for a while.  These white ants really are a provision of protein to the people during "hunger season."

When the kids showed up at our house this morning.  Eric asked them how they were.

"Not fine...we haven't caught any ants yet..."
Then Timothy brought the two bags out that he had scooped out of the sink.
Cheers and laughter erupted and there was no need to wait to roast them... breakfast was served.
God is good to provide our daily bread...

and ants...

This is a video I took this morning.  I tried to get close enough to show the sink full, but eww!!  I got too many bugs in my face... that's why it ended abruptly...haha!  :)

Happy Birthday, Timothy!

I find it hard to believe that my oldest is now 14 years old!!  Wow!  He's almost as tall as me and his feet are quickly passing mine.  

He's a great older brother (very tolerant of the younger members while doing Algebra), helpful, kind, and eager to take on life.  I'm so very thankful for all the many ways God has and will bless us through this young man!

Talitha and Divine are having a blast together these days.  They were crawling around pretending to be kittens while waiting for cake.