Waiting . . . . . . And Then An Email From Haley!!!!!

Yesterday we FINALLY had a few updates on the GE South Africa A 2010 page on Facebook, and one of them was even a video of Haley sitting in the airport in Paris and being interviewed!!! I've been trying to get some of these things shared on my own Facebook page but with no success, so I would highly recommend getting on that page periodically and see things for yourself if you're interested. There are some pictures, a couple videos, and just some verbal updates that you can read. Probably the most amazing thing that I read was that they witnessed a miracle of someone going from paralysis to being able to walk! Praise the Lord!

Today they are going to be in a mall where they were hoping to have internet and/or phone access. Beth actually popped online and saw that I was on too, so she asked me to call her mom and ask her to get on. Evidently the phones they were hoping to access must not be available. She said that Haley was in a different group, so I could expect to hear from her later on. I'm feeling a little compelled to stay glued to my computer until I hear from her, but there are certain things that must be done around here, so I'm not sure how to handle that. We haven't heard anything from her since last Thursday, so the thought of missing out on my one shot of communication is not fun. I'm praying that she calls or "chats" soon! Tomorrow they are supposedly going to a typical African church and then heading to a lion park, so I'm thankful that they are allowing them a little down time.

Val shared with me that Beth has asked for prayers for strength. There has been some strep throat and flu, the food has been a little interesting, the shack-to-shack evangelizing efforts feel a little weird, and the lack of communication has been difficult. Beth was in Uganda last summer, so her expectations for this trip were a little different than what she's experiencing this time, so it's been a little bit more challenging. Haley went into this without really knowing what to expect, and she's in a different group than Beth, so it will be interesting to hear Haley's perspective. Please keep praying for ALL of them as they continue to adjust.

For us back here, it's been a fun and full week. We spent three days in the Pella area showing Charlene all kinds of things and introducing her to some of our family. My nieces happily gave up their beds for her and Kelsey and even greeted them with signs. You can't read it in the picture, but in addition to the greeting, it says, "You can sleep with this." They each gave up a stuffed poodle for the night! Charlene has three new little friends who adore her!

We visited our dear neighbors who live just half a mile from where we used to live, and they graciously let the girls tour their farm on four-wheelers. Charlene had never been on a farm or on a four-wheeler, so they had a great time exploring!


The afternoon was spent "swimming" in a farm pond complete with paddleboat, a floating thing in the middle, and fish, and then we went to my niece's softball game in the evening, which was also a first for Charlene. We got back to my sister's house, and my folks joined us for a yummy meal and a nice night of fellowship.

Wednesday was designated as the day to visit Des Moines! When is the last time you've been to the capitol building? May I urge you to go if you haven't been in 30 years like me? It's a gorgeous building and so much more meaningful to visit as an adult, and yet I think the girls thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of it too.




We even got to climb the 92 steps to the "top" of the building!


Once the tour was over, we decided to hop on the downtown trolley for a free ride to the State Historical Museum.

We enjoyed a nice girly lunch at a little cafe in there and then took in the sights of the city from its balcony. It was there that we discovered that all of us were either low on memory or battery, but it didn't stop us from taking just a few more pictures.



When Kelsey and I learned early on that our French guest was a gymnast, we knew it would be really cool for her to be able to tell her friends back home that she visited the studio where Olympian Shawn Johnson trains. We attempted to keep it a surprise, but her eyes lit up when she overheard a conversation Harris was having with a clerk last weekend. In his defense, he didn't know it was supposed to be a big secret! Photography was prohibited at the studio, but they were very gracious about letting us sit in their balcony and watch all the training that was happening for as long as we wanted. What fun it was for all of us! Unfortunately, Shawn was not there at the time, but we did get to see her instructor.

We traveled back to Pella and had another delicious meal at Smokey Row. The girls enjoyed their own booth while I was able to meet up with Beth's mom. It was so good for both of us to just talk about our daughters' passions for Africa and missions and work through some of our thoughts and emotions together.

Before heading back home on Thursday, we made a visit to Harris's folks' farm where Harris had been working on a tractor. He LOVES, LOVES, LOVES John Deere green!

His dad's cancer has been really debilitating, and prayer is appreciated. It was good to have lunch and some time with his parents and his brother. The girls explored this farm too, but this time Charlene was at the wheel for the first time in her life!


The girls are serving with the youth group at the air show this morning, and Keaton comes back home this afternoon! We've missed him! My guys are at the office, and I'm still patiently waiting by the computer for some communication from Haley. Pray with me, would you, that somehow we'll be able to chat today? Your prayers are so appreciated! Thanks!

UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!!

Just as I was editing this, my mom called, and I went into my email to send something to her, and I noticed an email from Haley that she sent a while ago already!!! Praise the Lord -- I can now get in the shower and move on with my day! It's not quite the same as hearing her voice, but it's written in true Haley style, and I can "hear" her voice loud and clear when I'm reading it. I'm just so thankful to hear from her at this point that I'll take anything!!! I can assure you that she's really very good at grammar, spelling, and punctuation, but she tends to like to type emails this way, probably just to get on my nerves a bit because she knows how I hate it, but in this case, I'll take it! If she weren't writing like this, I'd probably be worrying what's wrong!

After just a tad bit of editing, here it is:

Well hello there! So excuse any punctuation stuff because my keyboard here is whacked... im kinda mad at the moment bc my fb isn't working here and this could be the only chance to catch you up... another reason im mad is cuz there is absolutely nowhere we can call home and i have screamo blasting in my ears. grrrrr... other than that what's up? so im in africa... crazy stuff! it's been awesome and crazy and amazing and heartbreaking all at once... the emotions in my head are overwhelming but i'm doing alright! i am hearing from people that home it's warm and 95 degress! well we are here freezing our butts off! leg warmers, two pairs of socks, pants, underarmor, two or three long sleeve shirts and both jackets and we still freeze in the morning! in the middle of the day though it's hot hot hot... the children here are freakishly adorable and i almost packed phelli with me... don't ever let me forget to tell you about phelli and justice! they are the loves of my life and i miss them dearly. we have spent most of our time in diepsloot! crazy poverty... this is the first day we aren't out on a full day of ministry. we are at a "big mall" and doing our first bit of shopping. it's all kinda expensive so im waiting to do most of my shopping at the market. tmw we go to african church and then to lions park! excited for down time. i have showered i think three times! we could shower every day but psh that's lame... we are in africa! and only the girly girls are bc they are brave enough to get all their clothes off and actually hop in the shower. dude it's cold and there is nowhere to actually go to be warm... missing those meals too! we have had some kind of hot dog concoction for breakfast about three times and let me tell you... i don't stomach that meal very well! at least we are eating though and im still at the point where i am enjoying pbandj. the guys here are amazing and such gents and the girls are only now starting to be a bit annoying! lol it's all good though.. .considering we are together all the time i think it's going alright! i ahve made soo many new friends and am loving it here! my soccer skills are improving but this trip is absolutely not like i thought at all! yesterday i led four women to the lord but they were laughing at me the entire time but come to find out that they were just overwhelmed and overjoyed that we would come and share with them this kind of news! if i only had a picture for you guys of these peoples faces when we ask if we can do their laundry and dishes! lol well im journaling as much as i can! ill try and write again but i gots to go for now. i love you all so incredibly much and miss you more! hope you are enjoying your peace and quiet dad bc its not very long before im back full force! im loving the notes so keep em coming! and plz tell me more/anything about gpa... love love love... tell everyone hi!

byes!
haley

A Little Bit of News!

Haley's project director posted a little bit of info for us this morning! It's so good to hear SOMETHING!! They are in their first full day of ministry, and things are going very well. They have three teams, and they are rotating doing Vacation Bible School and shack-to-shack ministry. The public telephone lines were cut and burned down so the copper could be retrieved from them, so they are using a team leader's computer for Skype, Facebook, and email. Everyone is very healthy and really enjoying the trip. They have seen some salvations, and the students have been praying for people with various diseases ranging from AIDS to tuberculosis. The weather is cold, but they seem to be staying warm. He thanked us for our prayers.

People have asked me periodically how many are on the same trip as Haley, so I made a phone call to the parent communication hotline this morning to inquire as I've been curious myself. There are 18 on the African Excursion C, the two-month trip that Haley is on. In addition to that, there are 26 on the South Africa trip for the first month and 60 on the Zambia trip the second month.

For every 6 to 7 students, there is one person among them appointed as a leader. That person is 18 or older and serves kind of as a "camp counselor." For every 30 students, there is a male and female team leader, and they are at least 21 years of age. For each trip there are 2 project directors, one male and one female. Then there are also global partners who live over in the different countries. They are responsible for scoping out the conditions before the teams from here go over there.

As always, thank you for your prayers!

Life Here At Home

Communication from Africa has been slim to none. Supposedly there are no phones available, but one mom posted an update on Facebook that she had received an email from her daughter who said that they were in the biggest squatter camp of Diepsloot, which is north of Johannesburg, and that things were going well and that the Lord was present and moving! How they can randomly get online is beyond me, but I'll take it! I so wish I could give you more than that, but since I can't, I will post a few pictures of life back here at home.

First of all, we welcomed our French student, Charlene, into our home on Tuesday evening, and she has been a delightful addition to our family.



The kids went to Splash Landing on Wednesday afternoon, and then Kelsey took Charlene to youth group while Keaton and I went to his first piano recital on Wednesday night.



The idea behind Charlene's visit is that she's just supposed to live life with us as an American family. Kelsey introduced her to making chocolate chip cookies on Thursday, and she has accompanied Kelsey to dance recital rehearsals on Thursday and Friday nights. We had a big Primerica weekend, so we took her with us to a big party on Friday night, and then Saturday was the big dance recital day for both Kelsey and Heath's girlfriend, Jenny, who happened to be in one of Kelsey's classes this year.







Once the recital was over, we took Charlene for a major grocery shopping trip, and we were excited to find sweet corn worth buying for the first time this summer! This was a whole new experience for our guest, and it was so much fun to see them interact outside on the deck as they cleaned the corn for a little family cookout.







Keaton left for church camp in Michigan early this morning for a week. This picture makes him look really short, but he just happened to position himself right underneath the hatch, and the angle is just all wrong. He really seems to be getting a lot taller lately!



After church this morning, we had a nice Father's Day lunch complete with the children who are here, and then Harris took the girls for a drive. I hear they have lots of cool new pictures from a visit to LeClaire, but they're all more interested in cooling down and relaxing in front of a movie right now than handing over the goodies to me.

Happy Father's Day to my husband, who's the best dad in the whole wide world and who our kids adore, and to our dads back home in Pella! We come from a long line of God-fearing, Christian parents and grandparents, and my heart is full of love and appreciation for them today!

YouTube Videos from Texas!!

Technology is my friend! When I got on Facebook this morning, there was a status update from the Zambia page telling us that there are videos posted on YouTube that feature the registration process and some of the C trippers. Haley and Beth are even in one of them!

A Whole Lot of Emotions

It's amazing to me how one minute I can think I'm just fine with all of this, and within a matter of minutes, a whole lot of emotions have a way of flooding over me.

Harris and I had just said good-bye after a lunch with some business associates today, and before my van was even out on the street, I found myself calling home to have the kids put the flower pots inside the porch because a big nasty storm was brewing and coming on quickly. They didn't answer the home phone, but Kelsey answered her cell phone and quickly told me that they were on a walk and that I needed to pick them up right away. Before I could even get to them, she called and said that someone offered to give them a ride, and they had to make a hasty decision on whether or not to take it, knowing full well that that is against our rules. Thankfully God provided a nice honest person, and they all arrived home safely. Our French student just encountered a typical Iowa thunderstorm!

While they were tucked safely away in the basement, I was up here monitoring the storm and discovered an email from a missionary from our church who must have read my last blog entry and who wrote to encourage me with regard to the lack of communication we've been receiving. Before I could even read through it all, my Facebook messenger alerted me that Haley had just posted a status update!! I was so excited and quickly opened up my chat box so we could visit a little bit, and just that fast she had to go again. My heart had leapt for joy and then took a big nose dive all within about one minute. She wrote just enough to let me know that they are safe and have all their bags (praise God!!) and that she's seen one snake and they have no phones. That's it! I am thankful for the report and the fact that she's alive and well, but after much anticipation and thinking we MIGHT get a chance to have a real conversation, even if just for five minutes, my hopes were devastated just that fast. I went back to reading Jennifer's email and have just been trying to sort through it all in my mind ever since.

Am I worried about her? No, she's in God's hands, and my heart is at peace, and I know I can trust Him with her. Am I missing her? Yep, I guess so! I just wish we could communicate long enough for me to ask a few questions and hear her heart and know how she's really doing. Is that too much to ask? Maybe.

I think it boils down to the fact that I need to not have so many expectations and just be thankful for the little tiny snippets of info that we get. I think God's just teaching us a little more about letting go and trusting Him.

Thanks for walking with me on this journey. Somehow it just feels better to pound it out on a keyboard.

It's A Small World

When we went to bed last night, we were anticipating a phone call from Haley in the middle of the night because that's when she was due to arrive in Paris, France, but the phone call never came, which kind of surprised (and disappointed) me. I was just as surprised by the fact that I woke up to a couple Facebook greetings from her instead! I was one of those nervous moms who bucked the Facebook concept for a long time but finally gave in when Heath was in college and some fellow moms talked me into it, and my kids have never let me live it down. The chat feature on it is one I rarely use, but for whatever reason this morning, I decided to see who else was on, and it was fun to strike up a conversation with my sister. We could have covered way more ground in way less time if we had just picked up the phone, which is what drives me crazy about "chatting," but it was fun nevertheless.

Then all of a sudden, Haley's friend Beth, who is traveling with her, popped on!! We were able to have a quick conversation in which I learned that plans had changed AGAIN, and now instead of going to the Eiffel Tower, which would involve too many risks (time? safety?), they were hanging out for the 15-hour layover in the airport instead. They were all dead tired because they hadn't slept on their flight to Paris, and yet they were encouraged to not sleep in the airport either because now they're on Africa time, which is 7 hours ahead of us, and they need to get used to that schedule. The idea is that they will sleep tonight while they're making their 10-hour flight to South Africa and then be ready for the day when they arrive there in the morning. Somehow the leaders must have caved a little bit because when I asked what Haley was doing, Beth said that she was passed out on the airport floor for their allotted 45-minute nap. I doubt the leaders had a clue how hard it would be to wake her up!

I was kind of surprised that they wouldn't let them sleep more of their layover time away, but when I asked Beth if everyone was okay with that or if there was grumbling amongst them, she said that they were not allowed to complain and that they were there to serve. They were supposed to keep each other in check. As a mom who's been grumbling a little over all the packing issues we've had, that was kind of hard to swallow, but what I quickly came to realize was how much training they are really putting these kids through already. I had already learned too that the reason the kids aren't calling home more is because they are being discouraged not to do so. They want to focus them on the Lord and not let them get sidetracked with relationships back home. Many lessons are being learned both ways.

Anyway, it was a really bizarre feeling for me this morning when I thought about the fact that Haley was sleeping in the airport in Paris, and our foreign exchange student from France, Charlene (pronounced Shar-LEN), was sleeping in our basement! She came Tuesday evening, and as we've been introducing her to the American culture, I keep thinking about her parents and how they must be wondering about their daughter. I'll have to post a picture later because I don't have any on my camera yet, but she's just the sweetest, cutest, and soft-spoken girl you could ever meet. When she speaks English, it's very identifiable, but when we speak to her, you can see the blank look in her eyes at times. Because Kelsey has taken some French, they get along a little better with their communication skills, but once again, I have to give kudos to Facebook because through it they connected for a few weeks before she ever even came. They spent as much time as they could chatting with each other, so they formed a bond before she even arrived, which is pretty cool when you think about it.

Right after Beth and I chatted this morning, then Haley's small group leader who just moved to Texas popped on too and told me that she had prayed for Haley this morning. What a blessing that was for me to hear! Her college-aged daughter is in Thailand all summer, and that was news to me. We're definitely raising a generation of kids who go far more places than we ever did!

And then to top it all off, I just have to share one more piece of trivia. I have a cousin who has lived in Des Moines most of her life, but she has been dating a guy originally from right here in Bettendorf for the last 10 years. Just in the last month or two, they announced they were getting married. You can imagine my surprise when she announced that they were getting married in ... drum roll, please ... South Africa!!! And guess when? Tomorrow -- the same day that Haley arrives in South Africa!!! How wild is that?

I guess I'll just get on with my life tonight in Bettendorf and figure out what to next feed our French girl. Wonder what Haley will eat tomorrow morning in Africa?

Update!

Haley arrived safely in Texas on Monday, and our conversations have been pretty limited. She just called me a few minutes ago from the Houston airport and was a little too unraveled to suit me in the two minutes we got to speak. Evidently her carry-on bag was too big, which contained a lot of her clothing, and somehow they shuffled a lot of her clothing into another bag. I'm not really sure of the details other than she did assure me that her stuff is on the plane, not setting in Texas, but she wants us to pray that it all makes it. She knows of one gal whose luggage was stolen on a trip, and she had nothing the whole time and had to borrow from anyone willing to loan her anything, and the thought of that is making her nervous. Please pray for not only her bags but the whole team's worth of bags to arrive safely in Africa on Friday!

She is flying out now (Wednesday, June 16) from Houston and will arrive in Paris nine hours later, which will be Thursday morning in Paris. Their layover appears to be longer than originally planned, so now they do get to leave the airport and see the Eiffel Tower, which is pretty cool. They'll leave Paris Thursday night and have a ten-hour flight to South Africa and will arrive there on Friday morning.

She's supposed to be able to call when she arrives in the different countries, so we'll be anxiously anticipating the phone call that will assure us that all her luggage is there with her! Thanks for your prayers!