To Montana via Argentina

 

I think it has been something like four months since my last post!!!

Oh but I’m so happy to be back here.

So here we go…

I don’t know. I think I got sidetracked. Busy. Working on our house in Costa Rica. Cleaning. Repairing. Restoring. Praying. Listening. Living.Traveling. Holidays. School. So here we are back in Louisiana with my parents after the holidays and next we are headed to South Carolina for a 2 month stay. But that is way ahead of the story.

So I would like to continue a bit of our history. So many great God Stories. A Good God. Too good, not to share!

In my last post, I left you in Montana. It was August 2011. We had made a trip up there to see the state and visit the YWAM base… and another place.

It was a ranch that our really good long time friends,Steven and Cameron Jones, in South Carolina had helped restore a bit, some years back.

Steven and Cameron own their own Construction Company in South Carolina, and Steven grew up in Costa Rica, which is where we first met them. And how can I describe this couple to you?

This couple.

Parents to 6 amazing kids…well most of them are all young adults now.

This couple.

Fearless. Always ready to step out and step up.

I would need a whole post just to tell their story. They have an amazing story. It’s a God story. Get to know them, and ask them to tell you their story. And your life will be greatly enriched.

Some friends are more than friends. Steven and Cameron Jones

The ranch is located in the Bitteroot Mountains of Montana and the owners of the ranch are friends of  Steven and Cameron. It was once used as a Girls home for troubled girls and later as a place for Christian Business Conferences. We only passed by the ranch, as the owners were not there at the time, so we couldn’t visit.

Anyway, while at the Lakeside, MT ywam base, we talked to many of the ywamers and prayed with a few. We were open to doing our DTS at the Lakeside Base, but after praying with one of the leaders, we felt strongly that we were to continue with the original plans of going to Mendoza, Arg for our DTS. But we fell in love with that part of Montana near Glacier Park. Actually we fell in love with ALL of Montana that we saw.

So we flew back to La with the love of Montana in our hearts and headed to the deserts of Argentina. It was exciting, adventurous, challenging, hard, and wonderful. We had made round trip tickets to Argentina to return to the US in a year. However, about somewhere into the third month or so of our DTS, we realized that we were not going to stay in Argentina for the whole year and we would not stay in YWAM either. We knew God had something different for us. Something that we had yet to experience. But we didn’t know what.

So we took about a week to get away and pray and hear God as a family to what we were going to do with our lives now! We had come to Argentina with our 6 children planning to go thru the DTS and then stay on with one of the Argentine YWAM bases and serve there for the rest of the year. And now we were unsure of where to go and what to do, having closed our business, rented out our house and uprooted our family. So we did what we knew to do….asked God.

Here we are in front of the entrance to the YWAM Mendoza, Arg. Base

The long path to the dining hall on the Mendoza Base

 

Our house and classroom during the DTS in Mendoza.

 

 

We went to Santiago, Chili for that week between Christmas and New Years (end of 2011) with our only agenda … to hear God. And we were not disappointed.

That week, God spoke to us and confirmed that we were to leave Argentina early  (after the DTS) and go to Montana!

OK…there it was. Montana again.

Wow!

Montana!

Only 147,046 square miles of land to find a place to live and do what??!

So we did what we often do when we are getting ready to do something radical……

We called Steven and Cameron (who by the way, never think that anything is radical) and told them our news and asked them if they could contact their friends at the ranch in Montana and see if there was a way we could connect with them and see if that is where God would open the door for us to be in Montana. Of course they happily said they would.

But alas, they were never able to contact the ranch owner. So we continued to pray and wait and complete the DTS.

We finished our DTS in Mendoza and took a month long bus trip in a circle to Buenas Aires, Puerta Madryn, Bariloche and on back to Mendoza while we waited for Sabrina’s visa to be renewed to the US. It was an amazing trip! One that I don’t think any of us will forget. We saw some of the most beautiful scenery…from the wide wild Patagonia to penguins and sea lions to the German/Swiss town of Bariloche (which btw, we fell in love with).

Walking the streets of Bs Aires, Argentina

A very young Sabrina looking at a penguin

Sea Lions

Puerta Madryn

Our bus broke down on the way to Bs Aires from Mendoza

Moving our stuff over to the new bus, which also had a problem. So we changed buses yet a a third time.

 

But it was that epic moment our last night (March 2012) in Bariloche when we were feeling a bit uncertain, that we decided to skype with Steven and Cameron and we heard the news that would confirm God’s word to us once again…just when we needed it. I’ll never forget it. We were staying in the guest house of the Bariloche ywam base talking to Cameron …well actually it was whining…not them. Us.

Entrance to YWAM Bariloche

Our guest house on the YWAM Base in Bariloche

 

We were home sick, a bit weary from traveling on overnight buses, and facing an uncertain future. Our plan was to fly to Louisiana to be at my parents house while we waited to see how God might open the door for us to go to Montana.

So here we were…in Argentina, changing our plans of staying in the country for a year to actually packing up and heading to the states to wait for God to show us how to go to this  north western state that was 2500 miles from my parents house, and even much further from our home in Costa Rica and very different climate-wise. We were feeling a bit discouraged and overwhelmed with it all that night….when I just politely asked Cameron how their planned trip to Costa Rica with a couple they had met earlier that year was coming along. They had a team together to go down for an outreach.

And then she told me the NEWS. That trip had been canceled. They had found out just that day that,… that couple they had met at a Jesus Culture Worship Conference was actually going to go to…

Ta Daaaaa!!

 

 

 

 

 

MONTANA

 

 

 

 

 

and waan- waa – waa -waaaan. (remember the grownups in Charlie Brown shows and how they talked? That is all I heard…at least in my head)

Something something something about planting a church something something something something.

“Wait wait wait just a minute…did you say Montana??! Are you kidding me??!!Who are these people?Oh!These are the same people you have been telling me about for the last 4 months And now you say they are going to Montana?Why didn’t you tell me earlier?You just found out today?You say you have been wanting us to meet this couple I remember you saying something about that a few months ago…And these are those people??!”

This was all blurted out in a matter of seconds as Cameron just let me babble on for what seemed an eternity.

We felt…a spark…well maybe more like a flame. An excitement. Hope renewed. Joy. Anticipation.

We had no idea who these people were. But we knew at that moment we would be with them and we would be a part of whatever they were going to do in Montana. And then we heard even more.

When we were staying at the Lakeside ywam base several months earlier, we were only about 20 minutes from where this couple was going to plant the church! No wonder we felt such a sensing we would be back. They were going to Bigfork, Montana to plant a church, 20 minutes from where we spent 3 nights the summer before. We had no idea what kind of church. No idea who these people were. No idea when they would go. No idea where we would live? What we would do?

But we knew Cameron and Steven. And we knew if they were connected with them, we wanted to be too. And more importantly we felt His peace and grace and life all over this.

So we took our last overnight bus ride back to Mendoza, Argentina and gathered up our things and flew back to Louisiana to meet this couple over Skype and hear their  story. They are Ben and Carolea Burdick and their five beautiful children. We skyped with them for over 2 hours the day after we landed in the US. They were in Indiana. And we in Louisiana. And it was love at first skype!

Ben and Carolea had been called to Bigfork, Montana actually many  many years earlier. Ben had been in the airforce and he was now the associate pastor of a church in Valpo, Indiana, but had a calling to Bigfork which of course had been confirmed to them in some quite miraculous ways over the years. But that is their story. And what a story it is! You need to hear it. If you are ever in Bigfork, stop in and come to Mountainsong Church and meet our pastors. You’ll want to stay!

Here they are …THAT couple! Our pastors now. And what an honor to be able to call them our friends too.

 

So that was it. We were going northwest. We were going to Bigfork, Montana to be a part of a church plant with Ben and Carolea and we would figure out the rest along the way. And we did. God showed us and led us. That was July 28, 2012 that we landed in Bigfork, Montana in a house we rented on the beautiful Swan River where our kids enjoyed many summer days of swimming and winter days of sledding down the hill our first year in Montana. And below is a peek at that sweet house we stayed in our first year in Montana…

That “Montana Mystery”

From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. (Isaiah 64:4)

 

 

Rich Coast Furnishings, God’s provision for us for 20 years.

Then it was early 2010.

We had just come through the adoption and now we were faced with an all out economic crisis, and our business with its 40 employees was suddenly on life support.

We were facing a big decision. Pull this 25-year-old  business back up to a healthy place or sell it.

Or as a last resort, close it down.

It was during this hard time that one day while out on the hammock in the back yard, I was having a quiet time with the Lord…that I heard Him say…. “Crossroads”.

And immediately the memory of how I had always wanted to go with Manuel and the  kids on a YWAM (youth with a mission) adventure like I had with Jared, suddenly came to my mind. It was one of those defining moments with the Lord. You know the moments of that “spark”.  Plus we certainly felt like we were at crossroads in our lives.

And the fact that YWAM has what they call a Crossroads DTS (for people who want to do a Discipleship Training School, but who are either over 30 or have families), somehow I just knew that this was what God was saying to us at the time, even though it truly seemed quite impossible.

Not only did we have a business that was struggling that we were responsible for, but we didn’t have any extra money to spend on a DTS nor airfare for the whole family. Actually we didn’t have any extra money for anything. Plus we owned a house and had animals that we could not just leave here without someone taking care of them all.

So we just began to pray about it and put it before the Lord… and wait.

Meanwhile, we needed to start making plans toward something….selling the business, or renewing permits to keep it open and taking on new clients. So it was during this time that we sought the Lord about His timing, as we knew deep in our hearts that God was up to something. We really wanted to leave that same year of 2010 to go Argentina to do a DTS and spend the whole year in Argentina after the school. It would be a big change for us, after having had a business since  we got married and only leaving Costa Rica to go to Louisiana to visit family for short periods of time.

One day Manuel and I went alone up the mountain to just pray and listen about the timing of leaving. We both felt like we heard God say 2011 and then later it was confirmed by another person. But that seemed sooooooo far away. It felt like an eternity at that time. And though we kept working and planning to sell, it was not the best time to sell a business.

September 2010, the DTS we were hoping to be at in Argentina came and went and at that time, we figured that we had probably heard God wrong on the place that we were to go, since the base wasn’t even sure if it would be having this type of DTS the following year or not. So we began to research and apply to other DTS’s in other parts of the world, such as New Zealand, since they had a family base there, and besides who doesn’t want to go to New Zealand?

Life continued, as we began to have to scale down our employees to finally just 13. I began to handle the office work while Manuel continued to work with our clients and employees. We began to talk and dream about a new style of life where we wouldn’t both be so busy all the time, tied down by running a business. And it was during one of those times when God did something pretty spectacular one night at the end of 2011.

It was one of those suddenly moments, where He just dropped a seed (thought) down in our hearts that created a great desire to just sell everything we had here in Costa Rica and move to Montana to buy some land …way, way up there in the great northwest.

Crazy, it seemed, but exciting.

And in all places, why Montana?

We had no idea.

Who did we know in Montana?

Not a soul.

Had we ever even considered visiting Montana?

Not one time.

But then later that night, we remembered that a couple of months earlier we had hosted a couple in our home, who happened to be living in Montana at the time. They had stayed at our house on their way back to Montana after having visited some missionary friends of ours. And then as we continued talking and processing this new idea, we also remembered that some of our best friends who live in South Carolina, had spent a summer or two in Montana working construction on a property that use to be a children’s home. And even we  remembered that at Christmas time, we had met an older gentleman who was visiting Manuel’s cousin, and when I asked him where he was originally from, he said Montana.

But even just those three little previous instances combined with this new Montana desire, we knew God was saying something.

So we just kind of put that thought on the back burner, since we knew we were on our way to YWAM. We figured that maybe Montana would be for one day in the by and by when we retired or at least when we were done with our YWAM time.

And a quick  fast forward to  March of 2011, we truly sensed that God was saying to us that it was time to close the business and trust Him.

Yikes!

Stop to flow of income?

Yes, we did have an income. Things in Costa Rica were starting to get better. Our business was one of the few of this type that hadn’t closed down during this crisis. We still had some clients. And actually even some new clients were now wanting our business.

Though there were several interested parties in buying the business, there had been no concrete offers. And closing the business would be no small undertaking, since we not only had investors to pay back, but we would also have to pay all the employees who were still with us a hefty severance pay.

We didn’t know how we were going to pay out our investors or our employees if we closed. We were talking about thousands of dollars. Lots of money that we didn’t have. The only thought I had, was to sell a piece of property  that we had invested in years ago, but it was in Manuel’s heart for the business to pay for the business.

But how?

The only thing the business owned at this point (since our cash reserves were all gone) was the equipment  that we used to work with and that wasn’t valued at a high enough price to pay what we owed to the investors, much less the employees.

And the idea of selling each item one by one, felt overwhelming.

Yet still, one day in early March of 2011, we felt impressed by God to set a closing date. We chose April 15, based on how much time we needed to finish up with our clients that we had already started with.

How were we going to pay the employees and investors? We didn’t know. But we set the time anyway.

 

“No eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 64:4)

 

And then…

One of those “suddenly” moments that only God can orchestrate…

About 2 weeks before our closing date, we got a call. It was on a Sunday morning. This former employee of ours said he wanted to buy all of our equipment and inventory and office equipment as well, …and what would we sell it to him for?

Well it didn’t take us long to come up with an amount. We told him a number that would pay off all that the business owed. He accepted and within 2 weeks, he gave us the total amount that we asked for.

We then bought tickets from Costa Rica to Louisiana to visit my family before our plan to head off to New Zealand DTS in July 2011.

Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Where did you get the money for New Zealand?

We actually left for Louisiana with only about $300.00…what we had left over after we paid our investors and employees and had bought 8 airline tickets to Louisiana.

We  left Costa Rica trusting that God would work on our behalf  to sell some property that we had up for sale before our DTS due date in July. And with this, we would fund our trip. We had one month before our due date.

However…

It didn’t happen.

As a matter of fact, we basically had just about run out of money which would have happened even sooner, had we not been staying with  my family in Louisiana.

The July cut off date for New Zealand DTS came and went, much to our great disappointment.

 

“No eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 64:4)

 

And then…

about 4 days later, we got an email from our realtor in Costa Rica saying that he had a buyer for our property, then only 2 days later the money was in the bank! Record time for a Costa Rica Sale. Nothing less than supernatural.

That same week, we got a letter from the base director of YWAM Mendoza asking us if we were still interested in DTS as they were going to run the school again that same year in September.

It didn’t take us too long to see in one quick swoop which direction our path was heading. We had heard God correctly the first time.

That alone gave us such joy.

We were suppose to go to Argentina.

It was suppose to be in 2011.

It was so good to see things a bit more clearly now.

But there was still…

that “Montana Mystery”.

What was that about?

 

So, as we were waiting for September DTS time to arrive, we decided to take a bit of a trip. We packed up the kids and headed to Lakeside, Montana to visit the YWAM base up there. The reason we chose Lakeside as our Montana place of destination, was because other than that property where our friends from SC had spent a summer,(and we weren’t able to connect with the owner of that place) we knew of no other places in Montana to go to. Plus it was a YWAM base. We could stay on the base for a fairly  economical price and take some time and hear what God was saying to us about Montana.

 

And He did say something…

Somewhere in Montana

At Lakeside ywam base

Our Beloved Home that we left behind in Costa Rica

But it was not what we expected.

 

 

But that, my friends will be for another day…

 

 

 

The Wonder Years

…First comes love, then comes marriage.

Here comes Sharon with the baby carriage.

One and a half years after our  December 25, 1992  Christmas wedding in front of the fireplace of my childhood home, our little family of 3 quickly became 4.

Oh and by the way, if you are thinking what I was thinking those long ago years…that a Christmas Wedding might just sound ever so romantic, think again!

As long as you are totally ok with never ever celebrating your wedding anniversary on it’s actual day, then be my guest and have your Christmas Wedding…..or if you plan to never have children; because otherwise, take my word for it, the anniversary will always take second place to children and Christmas…as it rightly should…so say 7 people in my family.

 

…And then a year or so later, we were 5.

And then 2 years more and we were 6.

And then 3 years, and we were 7.

And then 2 years, and we were 8.

And then 6 long years, and we were 9.

But in actuality, sometime during this period we increased through multiplication instead of addition.

Jared chose a lovely wife and as of just a week or two ago, they added my third grandchild to the mix.

What can I say about those years? These years?

Wonder-ful

Fulfilling.

Satisfying.

Educational.

Joyful.

Hard.

Scary.

Fun.

Funny.

Painful.

Sleep depriving.

We were busy raising a family and building a business. My life consisted of pregnancies, babies, diapers, home-schooling, adopting, preparing meals, cleaning, and trying to keep head injuries and sutures to a minimum . With 4 boys (Jared and Hazel had long had their own family and home by this time) and 2 girls in the house, life was and is never boring.

I don’t even know where to begin with the wonder years of one baby after another. There is so much I could tell, then so much of it is a blur too. I started taking tons of pictures with Jared and Nicholas. They fill several photo albums. Then by the time we got to Simon and Sabrina…well let’s just say those pictures aren’t so neatly organized or labeled. But maybe someone could do that for me, because honestly there aren’t really that many.

I had often thought during those years, I really should write a blog and fill it with pictures of our beautiful kids growing up, like those other blogs that  I would come across when I had a few precious moments to myself. But for mercy sake, really, …how do mom’s have time to write those blogs with that many kids? And I even had a housekeeper for most of our time. I think when I had those few precious moments of free time which usually took place only in the bathroom, I wanted to just let my mind clear or read a magazine…something that didn’t involve thinking or making decisions or answering “the why” question.

Well by listening to me talk, you probably would think I’m all done now raising kids. But that is far from the truth. Even though Nicholas is now 20 and on a mission in South America, and Haley is 19 and back home from a year at ministry school, and Brennan is 17 and just graduated high school, they are all still in and out of the home. Not completely out yet.

Plus Ben is 14, Simon is 11, and Sabrina is only 5. We are nowhere near DONE.

I wonder if a parent is ever done?

Yet, just not having babies or toddlers underfoot allows for a bit more time to pursue some other interest…like starting that blog that I had always thought would be fun. Or actually looking at the idea of traveling as an enjoyable adventure as opposed to a self inflicted trauma, which is what it felt like when we had 5 kids all under the age of 9.

So yeah, so much to say about the wonder years.

I wonder where they all went.

I wonder how I survived.

I wonder what things I should have done differently.

I wonder why kid vomit must almost always contain of spaghetti?

And I wonder, will I ever get to sleep through the entire night again?

No…

Really.

I wonder.

Once they are ALL gone and married and have their own houses, then can I sleep through the whole night?…let’s see, I should be just about 70 then. Sigh.

So below are some random old pics of our family. When you’re family is this big, I can’ t tell you how hard it is to get a picture of the WHOLE family all together.

2011 trip to Argentina

Jared and Hazel

Kaelan

Abby

Karissa

 

Him

So…where did we leave off?

Oh yeah…1991.

Jared (then only 11 years old) and I dropped down into the mountains of Costa Rica in September of 1991. Just in time for Rainy season. We lived up on the farm, in the central valley called Pasteje owned by a missionary veterinarian from Alabama.

Dr. Bob has a goat farm where he breeds high quality goats and then places them into small villages of Costa Rica and beyond. It’s a great tool for sharing the gospel and the people also get a great milk goat to boot.

I will never believe that it was a coincidence that I ended up working with a missionary that just happened to be a veterinarian. (remember how I was trying to get into Vet School?) It was to be the beginning of something so much more than me just coming to Costa Rica to learn Spanish.

Right away I knew that God was giving me a wonderful gift, starting with being part of a mission that was run by a vet who just happened to own 115 golden retrievers. Only God could have known that golden retrievers were my favorite breed of dog. OK, maybe it wasn’t 115. But there were certainly a whole pack of them to greet me that night when I got out of the jeep having just been picked up from the airport.

Then I unwrapped my next gift from God….fresh, cool air. Yep. Here I was in a tropical country in Central America on an amazing farm… and it was cool…might I even say-cold. I had been in several countries on the ship on outreaches…Dominican Republic, Mexico, Togo, Ghana where I literally sweated  my brains out. I’m going to tell you that it was so hot in those countries that toothpaste just poured out of the tube. And forget about lipstick. It became lip-liquid.

I had begun to ask God if there were not any people who needed to hear about Him that lived in cool climates. Were all the lost people just in hot humid places? So you can believe, when I stepped out of that jeep and was greeted with a fresh cool breeze, I knew I was in heaven…or at least pretty dog-gone close.

And it only got better. Costa Rica was green and tropical and mountainous, and  peaceful-like. I was in love.

I could not find one thing that I didn’t like about this country. Even with the garbage in the ditches, and the potholes, and the houses behind metal bars and razor wires… I didn’t see any of it. I was a girl in love.

Then there were the Ticos, the name given to Costa Rican’s because they place “ito/ita” at the end of many of their words, i.e. agua (water) becomes aguita (wee bit of water). Leche (milk) is lechita (little bit of milk).

And oh to listen to their sing songey spanish and experience their sweet gentle ways.

Love.

But there was still more to come…

I had settled into life here in this bright green country with it’s Rainy Season lasting about 8 months out of a year. My biggest challenge was how to get clothes dry before they started to have that wet sour smell that fabric gets after being wet for days. I was practicing my Spanish at every moment that I could when I wasn’t teaching Jared and the other MK’s school. Plus I was involved in the mission with it’s outreaches to nearby communities and in the jungle,where, by the way, I wasn’t called to since the temperatures were above 80 degrees!

Then that day… I met him.

We were having a goat rodeo in the plaza.  Ah huh, a goat rodeo.   And no… that is not weird.

A young guy who worked for Bob, Chompipe (nickname, meaning turkey. To this day, I still don’t know what his real name is) introduced us. I later found out that he had seen me at the goat rodeo and had  told Chompipe that he wanted to meet me and for him to introduce us, which he did that day in the plaza.

I didn’t see him for almost a whole year after that…though if you hear his side of the story, he will tell you that I was ignoring him. But honestly, I didn’t see him …at all.

Until…

I came back from a 3 month summer visit to my family in Louisiana, and Bob had found a different house for me to rent. How convenient (though again, not a coincidence) that it was right next door to him. And his father owned the house that I was renting.

So on that day that the rain came hard and the living room flooded from a big leak in the roof, Don Guillermo sent him over to fix the leak…and well folks, as they say, the rest is history. We were married 2 short months later…December 25, 1992 at my childhood home in South Louisiana, and the very next day we were on a plane right back here to Costa Rica.

I wish I had a picture of our wedding day to place here. But those are all packed up and stored away in a storage unit in Bigfork, Montana.

More on that later.

So here… my very own sweet gentle Tico-man:

~Manuel Enrique de Jesus Lobo Miranda~

 

 

 

History – The first 30 years

I want to tell part of our story.

Our story of how we got here.

Our story of who we are.

But I have tried to start this post now several times and then I get stuck.

I get stuck, because I just don’t know where to start. Do I start with my marriage to Manuel? But that really isn’t where it all began.

So do I start with college?

But then I would leave out who I was…and who I have become.

So I will go way way …way back.

I will start with Louisiana. (pronounced Looz-i-ana)

Way down south on the edge of a swamp in rural Louisiana…where I grew up with my 2 brothers, I was the middle child.  One 5 years older and one 4 years younger.

We could have been “that family” when I was growing up.

You know the one.

The one that made all that money, just because they were living in the swamps of Louisiana. No, not the ones that became millionaires  because they made some fancy dandy duck call. But those other ones who lived way down in Cajun Country.

Swamp People.

That’s where we grew up. We aren’t Cajuns (at least as far as I know). But we’s Swamp People. And my mama know how to cook a squirrel or make turtle soup. She make gumbo and jambalaya too.

My daddy went alligator huntin’.

Heck, we didn’t even need to go far to get a gator. Gators lived and breathed…and terrorized right outside our back yard. I always thought that we had a fence around our yard to keep our dogs in. But I actually think it was to keep the gators out. Daddy trapped, hunted, and fished. He taught us all to do the same. Well I didn’t do  much huntin’ or trappin’.

Actually I didn’t do any.

Didn’ matter.

I wouldn’ a  made a very good hunter. He said I made too much noise in the woods. He told me Ah talked too much. And then when Ah would try my best to be quiet. He said Ah walked too noisily. It didn’ matter. Ah never really wanted to kill an animal anyway. Mah job (at least Ah believed) was ta save every animal dat Ah come across….baby birds dat had fallen out of da nest, baby raccoon dat nearly chewed mah fingers off thru da leather gloves dat Ah would use to hold em.

Yes indeed, if only dose Hollywood people woulda thought of dis show idea some 40 years ago, Ah woulda been rich and famous. Mmm hmm.

Ah actually have ta confess dat Ah have never ever seen one entire episode of dat show. But Ah imagine dat de woulda loved our family. Ah imagine de were lookin’ for a family just like ours.

Mah mah…yes em deed. Ya see what happn’s…I just a get ta thinkn’ about Louisiana…and I start thinkn’ in de accent way way …way down south. One word at a time.

 

So yeah, we grew up with Uncle Dubba J (who is actually W.J., but I believe I was at least 18 before I realized that his name wasn’t Dubba J…again due to the accent of our family). Uncle W.J. had an alligator pen in the pasture right next to ours. When we were bored, we would try to lift ourselves up to the top of the tin fence and throw things at the gators to wake them up.

We dodged dangerous cotton mouth snakes and got caught in spider webs in the woods that the strands were as thick as thread. But somehow I survived the wild animals and my 2 brothers and made it to adulthood, went to college, got a degree in Animal Science with plans to attend Vet School. However, after my third attempt to get into the school, I said to God…”Well Lord, if I’m not going to be a veterinarian, then what else is there in life??”

I dare you to just ask God a question like that. And boy will He show what else there is in life! But don’t forget to fasten your seat belt and hang on!

Somewhere during that time of high school and college, I married and had a wonderful baby boy. I loved being a mommy and spent lots of my days just changing his clothes like  a little girl does when she has a doll. Unfortunately when 2 broken people get married, it’s really hard to make a marriage stay unbroken. And ours only survived about 3 years.

So back to my question to the Lord……what am I now going to do with my life?

Sometime shortly after that question, I ended up with a book in my hands called “Is that Really You, Lord”. It was a book by Loren Cunnigham about how Youth With a Mission (YWAM)  began, but for me it was more of a teaching on how to hear the voice of God. Up until that point, I had thought that only pastors and special people could hear God’s voice. So my world got completely rocked when I realized that anyone who has a relationship with Jesus could hear His voice.

And boy did that open up quite the world for me.

Shortly thereafter, I joined YWAM  with my then 8 year old son, Jared. We went to live on the Anastasis, which at that time was one of YWAM’S Mercy Ships. We lived on the ship for 2 1/2 years and then we went to Costa Rica.

That was in 1991.

To be continued…

That Family

Yep. This is us. We are THAT family.

No apologies.

We are the family who just traveled on 3 different planes some 4000 miles with a cat.
Uh huh, you read that right.
A- big- fluffy – cat.
Yep 4000 long – long miles. And not some little ole short domestic flight from one state to the other. But no we brought our newest member of the family on an overnight international flight.

That’s right…from Bigfork, Montana to Birri, Costa Rica. Did I mention overnight? Mmm hmmm yes indeed. Nothing like having the cabin lights go out and you just rest your weary head against the head rest, only to be jolted out of your slumber by MEOW MEOOOOOWWW….or more like RRRRRROOOOOOWWWWW!! Oh did I mention that our travel time was something like 19 hours.

Did you know a cat could say MEOW for 19 straight hours?

So come here and meet us.

We are that family.
You know which one… the one who’s kids go barefoot in the snow.

We are that family that left Costa Rica in 2011 and landed in Montana with a detour through Argentina.­­ But more about that later.

So we have now arrived back in Costa Rica after being gone for 3 long years. Has it really been 3 years? So much has happened. We have changed. 3 have graduated high school in 3 years. One grew 6 inches. Another forgot her spanish.

But our hearts are the same, yet changed. There were some parts that needed work. There were other parts that needed to just be gone. Some parts needed refinishing. And some “heart parts” are still to be revealed. But that’s how it is, right? God is so good to fix, heal, remove, and replace.  And as He works on our hearts and fine tunes them, then we are able to tune in to Him better. And that my friend makes it all worth it!

So here I will tell you our story. Little by little I will catch you up on how we got where we are today. But for now, we are home. We have called 6 different houses home in these 3 years. But here in this little pueblo in the mountains of Costa Rica, we are back in the home we built 13 years ago. Not sure how long we are here for. But that’s part of our story too.

But for now? I’m off to the kitchen to have a slice of that pound cake with chocolate icing I made this afternoon before the “eat the middle of the cake and leave all the edges” zombies get into it!

Until later…