1. You appreciate the free-roaming geckos in your home because they help keep the bugs out. I even saw a big juicy bug earlier today, and instead of killing it, genuinely thought, “Nah, I’ll leave it for the geckos so they’ll stay around.”

Yep, things have changed.

2. You learn that company’s coming, so the first two things you do are sweep your porch and put water on to boil. Porches are kept squeaky-clean here. People don’t even wear their shoes on their front porch. What am I sweeping off of my porch you may ask? Of the millions of strange bugs that were swarming last night, a few thousand decided to kill over right outside my door. Our first night here, we somehow left a light on in the room where all our opened luggage was. The next morning, tens of thousands of dead bugs were all over and in EVERYTHING. The good news is, the swarms haven’t been the norm (and we also learned which light switches are for what), it’s just happened two or three nights since we arrived. Reference number one.

3. 10 people climb into a 5-seat vehicle and it still feels nice and roomy. I haven’t taken a picture inside one of the buses here, but we sometimes fit 20 people in a “bus” the size of a minivan. So it’s quite a treat when our coworkers give us a ride in their vehicle. Here, we accompanied them to a church service in a town up the nearest volcano.

It’s been fun to have these thoughts and then afterward realize how my thinking has changed in little ways in the short time we’ve been here. Of course, for each one we mention, there are dozens more. Some are lighthearted and some quite sober, and most will probably happen without us even realizing it. And thus begins the long process of becoming.

Noah, of course, has begun to acclimate to the local culture faster than the rest of us, in behavior as well as appearance! Below, this was his own idea to whittle a stick on the side of the road.

Okay, kidding. This is a neighbor boy. But he’s got mad skills. 😉

It has been four days since we moved our little family to an island in Asia Pacific. We’ll be in this particular location for the next 8-12 months (until we move to a different island for the long-term) so we’ve been eager to show you our new home!

Our friends here picked us up from the airport and are helping us get settled – a huge help!

This is what  typical traffic around here looks like.

So of course we’ve all had to pick up some helmets

Hudson is hilarious! He keeps telling people “Hi, I speak English. Do you?” And then disregarding the lack of response, he goes off in his usual fashion talking about any and every thing while people just smile and giggle. Of course, there’s nothing like a big pile of dirt to break down a little language barrier.

Hudson also enjoys walking around the neighborhood naming all the chickens and roosters we come across in the street. His favorite one is “shaky-head.”

We’re loving the tropics and all the yummy fruit! I never knew bananas could taste so good! Seriously blew my mind!! Of course, there are a few volcanoes right around us, and we hear that lends to great soil for great produce! We’ll take it! The below pic is just around the corner in our neighborhood.

Noah chowing down on some dragon fruit. This fair-skinned baby is quite the attraction here. We’ve found ourselves periodically pronouncing his name like the locals do: NoAAHHH. =)

Some of the countryside

We came just as monsoon season is beginning. It’s been raining for a few hours every evening, but we hear it’s supposed to rain more during the day as the season comes into full swing. Check out our beautiful backyard! 

I wish we could show you the smells and sounds as well, but pictures will have to do. We’re enjoying meeting our neighbors and we’re having too much fun with all the newness to notice how tired we are, but suffice it to say we’ve been going to bed around 8pm each night!

We recently enjoyed spending some time out in Clyde with my (Rachel’s) family. Here are some of the highlights that we’ve had with this special crew over the last few months.

Dinosaur Valley State Park

Hunting dove right out the back door.

When we’re all together, few (if any) days go by that we don’t pull out some board games. Usually we they will play well into the early morning hours.

Hudson cannot get enough of his sweet cousins (and Nana’s never-ending supply of ice-cream)!

And here’s proof that every now and then this Grandpa will change out of his wranglers and boots.

Here, Hudson had lined up the chairs for Nana, myself, and the stuffed animals to watch him race.

“No tires, just gas!”

And sometimes Nana pulls the race car.

I’m glad you can’t pick your family, because I couldn’t have pick better if I had tried.

It was about this time last year. I was still in my first trimester with Noah, and was completely exhausted by about 7pm each day. If I went to bed too early, though, I would wake up super-early, and then the next day I would be even more tired, so in the evenings I would usually read to keep myself awake until at least 9.

Well, one day in particular was just brutal; I was mentally and physically beyond exhaustion. I’m not typically one to enjoy sitting and watching much television, but this particular evening, the only thing I could imagine doing while waiting for 9:00 to roll around was sitting and watching a movie. There was no way my eyeballs could handle scrolling back and forth to read, and no way my fingertips could handle browsing the internet. I really don’t think my words can sufficiently convey how desperate I was this particular day to collapse onto the couch and just be mindlessly entertained.

So. After we got our son in bed, I trudged down the stairs, grabed my laptop, and crumpled onto the couch to stream a movie. I found some romantic comedy on Netflix, put on my headphones, and started watching.

After about 15 minutes or so, Jim asked if I was streaming something. The apartment we were in at the time had slow internet, and so his football game wasn’t streaming as well as it had been before I started my movie.

I answered, “Yep,” and went back to watching my movie…

A little later Jim said, “You know, the more things we have streaming at once, the slower it will be.”… “Yep.”

Now, in my mind, I knew that the thing to do was to die to myself by turning off my movie and letting Jim finish the football game. But I didn’t care. As ashamed as I am to admit it, I vividly remember knowing full well that that is what I, as a Believer, should do, and saying to myself, “I don’t even want to think about that right now.”

Instead, I justified myself. I mean, I was pregnant for cyring out loud! – I deserve this! I never stream stuff, and, the football game Jim had on was one he didn’t even care about! He just had it on because it was the game that was going at the time. Not to mention it was just on in the background while he was reading on his computer! This was a no-brainer!! I had every livin’ right to watch a movie that particular evening, so I did, and it was fabulous.

The next morning, I made some coffee and went into our laundry/sewing/play room to read.  I was reading in Matthew 6:  “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” And the next part of the verse read very clearly for me: “You cannot serve both God and Rachel.”*  At that moment, the events of the previous evening flashed through my mind.

I’ve known that particular verse of Scripture for years, but that particular morning, the part that says, “you will be devoted to one and despise the other” made full sense. As I was busy serving myself the previous evening, I knew that obedience to God would mean dying to self and serving my husband. But instead, I had disdain for the very thought. I despised the idea of serving God in that particular way at that particular time, and so despised God.

Now, I love my precious Savior. I talk to Him all the time. He helps me through countless moments every day. It broke my heart to think that I had at that time (and every day in various ways), despised Him.

But at the same time, I really really love serving Rachel. She’s really demanding, but oh so fun to serve… But no one can serve two masters.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.’” (Mt 16:24-25).

Jesus invites us to find life. Find life by losing it. That’s how His kingdom works. It’s waaay above what the wisdom of this world could ever come up with. Dying to Rachel would mean such freedom for me! She makes demands constantly, and if I could tear away from having to serve her, just imagine how fruitful my life could be! I would be free to live for that which is infinitely more valuable and worthy than myself.

Of course, the problem is that it’s so stinkin’ hard to die to self! However, Jesus doesn’t ask us to do it alone. While on Earth, He daily let go of His status as God to take the role of a servant. Daily took up His cross. And although no longer walking the Earth, He continues to serve us daily, behind the scenes. So when He invites us to take up our cross and serve, He is inviting us to accompany Him.

In my Christian life, by far the most precious moments of fellowship with God have not been during worship services, or climbing scenic mountaintops. They have been in the midst of unglamorously serving, and particularly when the people I’m serving are unappreciative (just as I rarely appreciate what Jesus does for me on a daily basis).  Those moments often occur when I’m doing laundry, or changing yet another diaper of an uncooperative child, or cleaning up a stranger’s mess. It’s the least glamorous moments – during times that my heart naturally wants to be bitter, but when I, instead, uncharacteristically remember to turn my eyes away from myself and I realize that Jesus is right alongside me, sleeves rolled up, serving these very same people knowing he won’t receive gratitude.There is an incredible bond that forms when two people are suffering in the trenches together, bleeding and sweating (whether literally or figuratively) for a common cause.

The Apostle Paul spoke of this very thing as one of the things He counts all as loss so that he could attain: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death (the continual dying to self), and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead (not the physical resurrection that is guaranteed for all believers, but the new, “resurrected” life that Romans 6:4-7 speaks of – one not enslaved to sin and self) .” (Phil 3:10-11)

I love the fact that only in our God’s upside-down Kingdom would dying bring life. Only there would the King of Kings be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And as follows, only there would suffering and dying bring the sweetest companionship with Him.

Still, it takes a conscious choice. A day-by-day, moment-by-moment choice of who our master will be. We have no shortage of masters to choose from, but we can only serve one. Oh, that narrow road.

*The passage reads, “You cannot serve both God and money,” but it was clear what message the living and active Word had for me that morning.

This June we moved out of the house that we’ve been staying in since we got back to Texas.

Through this living situation, I could tell you countless ways that I saw God’s hand in providing exactly what we needed at exactly the right time (some were answers to specific prayers, and others were just God doing His thang: knowing what we need and providing), from the location, to the timing, to the accessibility of a language helper… (I really could go on and on), but I’ll save the specifics for another time.

During this season following our formal training with NTM, as we make our final preparations for moving to Asia, living close to family has been a priceless blessing.

Until we depart in November, we will be on the road quite a bit. We would love to see you if/when we’re in your area! We’ll be going to Chicago and Michigan in July, College Station and Central TX for a few weeks in July/August, and then to Missouri. In between trips, we’ll be staying with family in Clyde and Frisco. We have a lengthy to-do list, and I have a feeling November will get here before we know it!

There’s been a lot going on these last few months, and little time to post an update.

We’re currently wading through visa paperwork, insurance, etc. Regarding the visa application, what I want to know is: Who the heck knows where their high school diploma is? (Or perhaps I’m the only one who doesn’t?)

Jim is about to head to North Carolina for two weeks to get further medical training for living in the bush. Just today I picked up one of the text books for the course and opened right to the section describing how to take a skin graft…You know, just the typical skin grafts you do every morning over coffee.

Hudson turned four in April. This was his first birthday in Texas, so we enjoyed having lots of family out for a party. This sweet boy is full of imagination. He needs to know how everything works, and will explain it all to anyone who will listen. Right now, Spiderman is pretty much the coolest thing ever.

He also got to play in a Blast Ball league (similar to T-ball, but for younger kids) and was sad to see the season end. Of course, for him, the main highlight was the cookies he got after each game.

Noah is two months old now. He and his crooked, dimpled grin seem to be getting cuter every day!