dy no might

John and Levi wanted to have their party together this year so we came up with a dinosaur/excavation theme.  It was rained out yesterday so we moved it to today and had to go out in between sprinkles.  We all enjoyed it anyway. And, I really really love chocolate cake!

The goods

Even Barbie went on a safari

the birthday paleontologist 

Monty Rex and his buddies

The first sighting on the tour.

The tour guide explaining the dangers of getting too close to an apatosaurus.

And another one.

The dig for a suspected two dinosaurs.  Our mento's in coke volcanos were unfortunately not a sucess.

Some of the remains.  Thank you Todd and Jodi Harmon for this gift a year ago.  It gave me the idea for this party.  

A little excavationist delicately sweeping her dino bone.

the full collection

The fully assembled bones.  The volcano cake with molten hot lava(ie red hots and hot tomalies), and a sweet little head hold.

The very excited owner of a new nintendoDS.  I really love e-bay!  It was so fun to give him something he was so excited about. 

Again, I so appreciate e-bay!  And, Levi loves the outcome of e-bay. 

Surely our kids think we're cool.   

And the after effects.

Every Saturday

sandy bottoms

After 10:00

We don't run our dryer on the generator so sometimes I line dry our clothes.  Also, I sometimes do laundry late so I have to go out to the back side of our house to hang them.  The bulbs on that side don't always work and it isn't really that smart of an idea to go walking around where you can't see but sometimes I risk it.  And, I usually freak myself out.  You know how you imagine every noise is a serial killer when your home alone.  It is kind of like that.  About a week ago I went out there and kept hearing a strange kazoo-like noise.  Of course, I immediately imagined some undiscovered species of man eating monster but the discovery was so much better.  It was our chickens.  When I first discovered it was them I thought it was coming from their lower half which was funny in itself but then I realized that they were snoring.  Who knew chickens snored!?!

The Firefly from Hell

We are now a year and 1/2 into this safari ride. They say that there is a small bought of culture shock at the 6 month mark and a more strong one at the 1 year mark. It has been funny to watch each of us have our episodes and moments of that.  We have had 2 dates since being here.
On the first which was about a year ago, Andrew and I packed up and left to go eat dinner which was not to far from our house but in a crazy location. We had to use the 4 wheel drive and off road it to get to this place and when we finally got to the top of what felt like a mountain, there, nestled among a bunch of houses on stilts(for the raining season I guess?) was a super nice hotel and restaurant complete with an enormous curved swimming pool, work out room, and tennis courts. This kind of thing always seems so crazy to me. On the way home it had started to rain but our windshield wipers aren't that great on this car so it just smears stuff around. It's almost better to just not turn them on. There aren't a lot of street lights so everything is so dark. And it can be alarming to drive here because the road rules are not the same and people drive down what we would call the wrong side of the road all the time. Or sometimes randomly the street will be blocked(with piles of rock) so you need to swap to the other side of the road but there is no warning for that. You just have to reverse until you get back to an opening where you can cut over and dodge oncoming traffic. There are dogs and goats crossing all the time. There are pedestrian (including small children) all over the side and middle of the road holding things to your window to sell. There are potholes. The people honk constantly at stopped traffic and everyone piles into 4 lanes where there should be one-two at the most. Andrew got a little tense driving home in all this and he had a culture shock moment. I was laughing so hard at him because he said he felt like he was in the game of Mario Kart and then would shout 'banana peel' every time we would see something in the road. At one point a car started to reverse very quickly right in front of us so he shouted 'Bowser!'. Then when we reached the point where the traffic always stops and there was the usual honking that ensues he made some other comments like 'Oh yeah, honk. I bet that some jerk up there just forgot to go. That will remind him. Oh good, honk some more!' I was hurting from laughing so hard by the time we got home but he really was stressed out. I have my moments too. About 10 years ago I lived in Togo West Africa for a short 6 month period with a group of church planters. It was 5 missionary families that had at least 2 children each. They proved to be really awesome people and I respected them then. But now, I have kids and I realize that I didn't have a clue what their lives were really like so now I have an even deeper respect for them.  Those missionaries were planting churches in Togo but they had no idea that their outstanding example would be of great use 10 years later to a friend living in Sierra Leone who said she had no intentions of ever doing foreign missions. When I think of them I know I can do this.
On the second date, I was crying about leaving here.  Ha! It is funny how things work out.

And I just have to tell this:
Andrew was sitting at the desk working one night when the electricity was off.  As he was typing something stung his arm.  He thought it must be one of the small ants that have declared this desk as their own.  He kept on typing and a few seconds later he felt something strange in his hair.   More and more rapidly the stinging sensation was happening and something strange and slick was getting all over him so he jumped up swatting and slapping and shouting something about a firefly from hell.   When he did, he bumped his head on the candle holder that hangs from our ceiling over the desk.  He had been too busy to notice he had sat directly under it and it was dropping melted wax all over his arms, hair, and clothes.  That never happened in America.

Nimbus

I have to make two 'announcements' I guess.   And, I decided to add just a few thoughts running around in my mind but I am by no means a bible scholar and do not wish to impart misconstrued knowledge so please understand these writings as they are pieced together thoughts from someone who  has not studied the history on the parts I will reference.  I've practically written a book here so you'll have to be quite the dedicated reader to get to it anyway.
The last few years have been some of the toughest of my life.  The decision to move to a new country was, as most people who read this blog will know, a difficult decision to make.  I worried that the move would have detrimental effects on the health of Levi and Ivey.  I was worried because they both have asthma and there aren't many options here for that.  There were times in the U.S. when we have had to take Levi to the ER for attacks that our at home nebulizer or even the pediatrician couldn't cure.  So, I felt like my decision to come was a decision between giving EVERYTHING to God or living with restless disobedience.  I chose to obey.  I am not sorry.  Levi has had struggles here but none with asthma or anything life threatening.  Ivey you can read about in the last post.  God is with us.
We have wanted to adopt for many years and for the last three we had names and faces to put on our paperwork.  The parents were in agreement for them to be adopted and we began the process to take it to court.  Andrew and I thought over the decision of whether or not to have them live with us during our time here.  What if the courts said no?  What if the embassy said no?  Would we just stay here indefinitely raising them in our home?
We didn't know but we felt like coming and living right down the street from them with them knowing that we intended to adopt (nothing is a secret in SL) that they would not understand not being able to live here.  We have learned that kids here go to stay with people all the time and that it is not strange to go and live somewhere for a period of time.  So, we made sure that they understood that it may not be permanent before they moved in.  We took that risk.  They were with us when we went to the lawyers office and with us when we went to social welfare.   That is where we learned that after 3 years of saying yes to the adoption it turns out that their mother had a misunderstanding about what it meant and that she wasn't sure that was what she wanted after all.  Our paperwork has now expired due to such a long wait here and there is no one who can renew it in this country.  We also had the surprise since being here that the oldest is two years older than we previously thought.  So even if we were to go back to the U.S. to do the home study, by the time we got a house set up for them to study he would have timed out and not be considered adoptable.  On top of that he self admitted he wasn't happy as we had been suspecting.  Months before we had begun to think that maybe this placement was not what was best for them.  We fasted and prayed about it and I have to admit that I hoped the answer would be different than I knew it was.  After sitting down with them to explain these things to them we told them that we felt it was best for them to move back to their permanent home-the center.  This way they could slowly adjust to being at the center but having us around and visiting.  We want them to learn how to live here in their own country.  There they will learn all things Sierra Leonian.  They are in fact Sierra Leonian-not American.  I believe and hope that they will do great things here.
But my heart hurts. I cried through telling them the decision. I cried the first night we went to bed with 3 beds empty.  I cried telling our cook when she asked where they were.  I cried on my first date with Andrew in a year because I was trying to make it through future planning talks.
Before we came several people asked us how intertwined this adoption and the move here was.  They were two separate decisions. We would have done either without the other.  We have been also praying and fasting for some solid confirmation on what we should do when our commitment was up in  January.  We decided.  We believe that what we came to do will be complete by December and that we can have peace about going back to the US and so that is what we intend to do.  This is also a decision met with very mixed emotions.  I am so sad that we will be leaving a people that we really do love.  I love our banana lady Fatmata who will be having her second child soon.  I love Mr. Joe at the produce stand who never ever wears a shirt.  I love the staff at TRS who give so much time and effort to help children in need.  Even on their days off.  I love Lebanese Auntie Rema who owns the supermarket downtown who was so kind to us and had our family over to her farm for dinner.  I love the Lebanese owner of the grocery store down the street who looks just like a sheik.  He gives our kids sweets and tells Isatu her latest hairstyle looks nice.  I love all the kids at the center and I really really love a certain three kids at the center.
There is so much about this that is sad to me.  Obviously, the adoption is a part of it.  I have spent years making decisions around a family of seven.   I am struggling with a disappointment that I have not yet been able to spend any time at the center.  I had assumed that it would be difficult at first but I thought that when we settled in that I would do more there.  Our home life required more time than I anticipated and so I have done none of the things I had imagined.  These last few weeks there has been a dark nimbus cloud that has settled above me on my otherwise very sunny days here on the equator.
The other day I read something that sort of stunned me.  I have read it before but not with this mindset.  It is Ezekiel 28 about the Fall of the Prince of Tyre.  God is describing this port city of what is now Lebanon.  The city had become prideful of its success in trading on the Mediterranean Sea.
As he is describing the city he is also referencing Lucifer the 'serpent of old' also known as Satan.  He tells Ezekiel to lament him and goes on to describe Satan in verses 12-19:
You were the seal of perfection,
Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
Every precious stone was your covering;
The sardius, topaz, and diamond,
Beryl, onyx, and jasper,
Sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold.
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
Was prepared for you on the day you were created.
You were the anointed cherub who covers;
I established you:
You were on the holy mountain of God;
you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
till iniquity was found in you.
By the abundance of your trading
you became filled with violence within,
and you sinned;
Therefore I cast you as a profane thing
Out of the mountain of God;
And I destroyed you, O covering cherub,
From the midst of the fiery stones.
Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty;
You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor;
I cast you to the ground,
I laid you before kings,
That they might gaze at you.
You defiled your sanctuaries
By the multitude of your iniquities,
By the iniquity of your trading;
Therefore I brought fire from your midst;
It devoured you,
And I turned you to ashes upon the earth
In the sight of all who saw you.
All who knew you among the peoples are astonished at you;
You have become a horror, and shall be no more forever.

Ezekiel 28:12-19

And my first reaction was feeling so sad.  I really did lament that loss.  I felt like God was giving me the 'I know how you feel'.   He, being God, surely knew the risk involved with creating such a beautiful and wise thing. And yet he allowed this being life and a presence in his 'inner circle' where this being would 'cover' or protect, as I am understanding it, God's holiness.  I believe he loved Satan.  And then there was the loss.  The beautiful thing changed.   No matter how difficult the struggle was, surely the loss of 1/3 of the angles in Heaven who had turned against him was a day to be mourned.  What could be more heart wrenching than losing a child or children?  The risk yielded the worst of consequences.
God always has one up on us.  There really is no situation in which he is an empathizer instead of a sympathizer.  And for some reason it made a difference to me.
And, encouraging isn't really the right word here but I'll use it for lack of a better one-I am encouraged to know that he tried again.  He has kept on creating beautiful things that have the capacity of falling apart or jumping ship.  It is a way of life.  It is life itself to love. Even if it doesn't go so well.


We all look forward to Saturdays when we get to go to the beach together but it is also heart wrenching to have to return them to the center.  We feel it is important to have this interem time where it isn't a complete break but a gradual process of leaving.  Sometimes we second guess every decision we make.

Please pray for all seven of us during this time. 

For Andrew and I that we would make wise decisions and be nurturing towards our children during this transition.
For Albert, John and Isatu that they would settle back into the center life well and enjoy being back with their TRS family there.  We will remain their forever family and do all of the things that program entails but obviously there is a lot less involvement than before.
For Levi and Ivey that they too would heal from a loss.  They mention how they miss the other kids and are definitely lonely without them.
Also, please pray for the four of us who will be returning to the U.S. which will be yet another difficult transition.
Most of all, please pray that old Nimbus will give way to the light at the end of the tunnel. We are tired of him.