Heartaches And Updates

 I have been contemplating a post for awhile now, but where to even begin?  Even as I sit here ready to start typing, I hardly know what to say.  The last week and a half has brought so many things that just hurt.  The earthquake in Haiti, Afghanistan, and the tragic death of a sweet little girl in our home church family.  For us personally, the earthquake has the most effect.  We have some pretty mixed emotions about being here vs there.  At first I really really struggled with not being there.  I wanted to be able to experience everything together with our team rather than watching and trying to process from a distance.  I wanted the people in our Haitian community to feel our support and not think we abandoned them in a time of trouble.  I just wanted to be there.  With some time to process and have some much needed conversations, I am peaceful in knowing that God had us here and that is the best thing for our family.

We also grieve with our church family.  While we are not close to the family who lost their little girl, when one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts.  Last night we had a previously planned get together with some friends.  We took some time to break into groups and pray for all the heavy things we are feeling right now.  It was a special and encouraging time together.

With all that happening, life and plans and furlough are still going on.  So while it hardly feels right to do a big fun post, for memories sake and just for the sake of updating, I still would like to!

After we left the lakes we headed straight to Illinois for 2 1/2 weeks.  (Side note: while we were driving, Danny got on his phone while we were driving through a residential area.  His phone picked up some WiFi and one of the networks he saw was called "hideyokidshideyowifi".  We got a good kick out of that one!)  Anyway, our time there started off with a bang:)  The first night I went to watch "Oklahoma" with a few of my peeps.  Angie and I had a good ole time laughing and reminiscing together because we had done that musical when we were in high school.  Well, she was in it, I was a lowly stage crew.  But still there for every rehearsal nonetheless and knew the play very well.

The next night we caught up with the Herrmann's who were in the area for a birthday party.  It was so good to see them and I love how our kids just pick up where they left off!

Then things slowed down for a little while and we had some time to relax and be with my family.  Many a tractor ride was taken, mostly by Tucker.  He could spend hours and hours in the tractor with grandpa.

They loaded turkeys while we were there which I believe is the first time my kids have seen that whole process.

Lots of swimming time!

Busting out the ole' lincoln logs.

After a night of overly hyper kids, we tried to wind down a little bit by singing a couple songs.  It kind of worked.

Summer and Sawyer had swim lessons with Libby!  That is one area where we just can't seem to get going in.  It's a mixture of fear and lack of opportunity.  But they loved going in each day and made great strides in just being comfortable with the water.  Summer especially has been working hard to improve and practice what she learned.  She is fearless in so many other things as far as outside kid activities.  I told her she is really good at a lot of other things that are scary so I know she can learn to swim good even though it's kind of scary for her:)

A huge highlight of furlough was a little getaway to Galena we took with just the two of us.  Galena is in the northwest corner of IL and while most of the state is flat, Galena is hilly and rolling and really pretty.  Even though I do think there is beauty in miles and miles of flat cornfields:)  Also we were so thankful we went before the earthquake.  It would have felt tainted otherwise.

It started off with a doozy of a thunderstorm.  Like the grip the steering wheel and lean forward like a little old lady and drive about 35 mph on the interstate type of storm.  We pushed through for a little while but when the strong need for a bathroom break arose we pulled off and just waited out the storm for awhile at the gas station.

We packed a lot into our two days!  There were a few nice restaurants and shopping at a bunch of cute little places downtown.

And there was an alpine slide and chair lift/zipline thing.

A late night game of scrabble at our BnB.  I had no shortage of vowels and Danny dominated for most of the game.  But I had a pretty good comeback and the score ended up being fairly close!

For breakfast we tried going to a yummy looking restaurant but with a wait time longer than we were hoping for, ended up going somewhere else.  Trip advisor told us it's where the locals go, which made half of us excited.  We showed up to the place and realized we were having breakfast in a bar.  But the food was good and it wasn't busy so I guess it was successful!

With of couple of nature preserves in the area we spent the rest of the morning doing some hiking.

Our biggest thing was a hot air balloon ride!  It was a bucket list thing for both of us and we decided to just go for it.

I was pretty nervous right at first but once we got going I relaxed and enjoyed the view!

We landed once and the person living across the road was NOT happy with us.  By the way he was yelling we all half expected him to pull a gun.  So the pilot of the balloon took off again and we got an extra mile or so in that we otherwise wouldn't have:)  We landed in a waterway both times.  He kept talking about how there's usually a lot of hayfields for him to chose from but this year there was just corn and beans.  He said he's from Iowa and he knows better than to land in one of those fields!

I'm not super adventurous and I don't think I've ever signed a waiver before that had the words "including death" in it!

Our last couple days in IL, we took a little trip to Brookfield Zoo with my family.  We spent the night in a hotel that was being renovated.  Between renovations and some virus that people keep talking about, the hotel breakfast was sub par.  So we hit up the Krispy Kreme by the hotel.

We went to Brookfield because my dad saw advertised that they had a dinosaur exhibit.  Our kids, especially Sawyer, have been really into dinosaurs.  I don't really know why- I have never been into them and I don't remember talking about them with the kids but they love them!

Sawyer's very favorite is the pterodactyl!

Tucker's primary mode of transportation for the day was grandpa's shoulders.

And then we had a flat when we got out to the van:(  Dad and my brother got us fixed right up and we were on our way.  We would have been pretty lost without them!  And it's not my favorite thing in the world to drive home from Chicago on a doughnut when I can only go 55-60 mph.  But we made it.

At our supper stop Summer pulled out a handful of treasures from her pocket.  That girl...

And I got to meet baby Roy!!  It was truly a blessing for me to be in IL when Katrina had her baby!

It was a time well spent.

On the road again back to Indiana with a lunch stop at Steak-n-Shake.

More cousin time and swimming time.

Catching up on doctor appointments.

And we got to see Carrie!!  So good to catch up and laugh together and talk about everything and watch her love on our kids again!

And that pretty much wraps up our furlough.  We have a few things going on yet this week but that's it.  We are supposed to be going back to Haiti on Saturday but we are not sure yet if we will be.  There are a few logistic things we need to figure out still.  We have a meeting planned for Thursday morning where we will make our final decision.  It's not ideal to be making that decision so last minute but it's just our reality.

From everything we've heard, our house is fine to live in but that will be getting double checked this week.  We have a chimney type thing on our roof that crumbled but it did not affect the rest of the house.  Our freezer door came open during the earthquake and since there was nobody there to shut it, all of our food went bad.  We have minimal pantry items because I had cleaned out pretty good before we left.  Whether or not we can easily travel to town and get groceries is a definite factor in our decision.  Also, is it still chaotic and how is the community interacting with the missionaries by now?  Would we just add to the chaos by taking four little kids or would it be just fine for us to go and resume life?  So many things to think about!

I might do a more specific earthquake/Haiti update but for now I wanted to get this on here.  If you made it through the whole post, congratulations!

One thing before I quit here, the verse that keeps coming to me these days is John 16:33.

"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world."