back to the land of the living!

We are finally well! Graham is still having some breathing problems, but that’s normal for him. We joined 4 other moms at the park today for a “play date”. The kids had so much fun. Even though we’ve only lived in Texas for short while, our bodies have already adjusted to the warm weather. The temp in Birmingham has been in the 50’s and for us, that’s freezing!

Graham and his friend, Hayden Meredith!

Our time in Alabama is coming to an end. We leave to head back to Los Fresnos in 5 days. We are sad to go, but ready to be back at our home. I want to thank anyone and everyone who has helped make this trip back home great! Even though we were sick most of the time, it’s still nice to be in a familiar place while Alex is away.

Speaking of Alex, I've not heard from him in about a week but the last time I talked to him (the one and only time I’ve talked to him) he said everything was going great. God is doing some amazing things in Papua New Guinea and he is doing some awesome things in our family. Since Alex has been gone God has given me gracious amounts of patience with the kids. The first thing that Haley told Alex the other day was “dad, I’ve not gotten one spanking since we’ve been in Alabama”. It’s true; Haley and Graham have both been real troopers!

Please continue to pray for the team in New Guinea and for the other team from TETM (in La Barra, Mexico). Also, please pray for the families that are at home. While our husbands are away, satin has a way of attacking us constantly. We are always on the battlefield for Him!

Birmingham Update

After a great time at Delta Flight Haley, Mom and I headed to Troy to visit Aunt Grace and Aunt Abbie. Grace had a leading role in the play The Misanthrope and she was AWESOME! We stayed in her house and had a chance to meat Tommy’s parents (Tommy is Graces man) and we also had the “pleasure” of seeing Abbies dorm. It is so much fun getting to spend time with girls. That is one thing that I miss a lot-seeing and spending time with my sisters!

Monday night (the night in Troy) I started feeling under the weather, but I just assumed it was a cold setting in. On Tuesday Graham also stared feeling bad so I took him to the doctor and she said he just had a virus so I just needed to treat the symptoms. At that point she also listened to my chest and said I probably had the same thing. Graham soon stared feeling better but I just got worse. After 5 more days of feeling like crud, I went to an after hours clinic (on Sunday) and ended up with strep. I’ve now been in bed for a week and am about to go CRAZY!!! After lots of antibiotics and over the counter meds I’m finally coming back to life.

We only have one more week left in Alabama, yet so much to do!

so far, so good

Well we made it safe and sound to Birmingham. I am very thankful that the trip was uneventful. The kids did great flying (as always)!

Alex also made it safe to PNG.
Here is a clip from him.

Things are going well here. We are currently in Wewak. It is 3:00 in the afternoon, and we are waiting on David and Rod to join us this evening. We will finishing up getting supplies tomorrow and head to Chambri late thursday evening, early friday morning. Sometime between midnight and 3 am. We have a 5 hour truck ride to get to the river, and then we will get on the canoes and it will be 2 to 4 hours depending on the water level. I am not really sure why it could be such a big difference, but that is what they tell us. We have met several local people all ready and spent much time with them. It has been really great. Their english is much better than I expected. We have almost no problem communicating with them. I don't expect the same in Chambri, but for now it is great.

Not too much went on Friday in Alabama. Since we were up so early for the flight, we just stayed at the Sissons and rested then headed to church for Delta Flight. For those of y'all who don't know what that is, it's our churches disciple now weekend. Alex and I grew up going every year we were in the youth and it has been something that we have been helping with over the past few years. The kids and I stayed at Lee & Michelle Tindals house and as always Haley had a blast with Matthew and Justin. She is so cute to watch when we go back to church after being gone. Her excitement gets the best of her! The entire weekend went great!

We don't have too many plans for the rest of our time in Alabama. I spoke to some of the women at our home church tonight about our life in Texas and TETM. It went great. Thanks ladies for the time! More updates soon! We love and miss our Texas family!

D Day

Well, the time has come for me to head to PNG. We will be leaving Los Fresnos in about an hour. We will drive an hour or so to McAllen. We fly out of McAllen, and go to Houston,, and then on to LA. We have a 5 or so hour layover and the we move on to Fiji. We have a short layover in Fiji, and then we finally get in to PNG. Once we make it into PNG, we have one more domestic fligt to get to our first destination. So basically we will leave the apartments at 10 this morning, and arrive in PNG on 5:20 monday night local PNG time. Kinda crazy huh? I thought so to. We will be back in Texas on Monday March 17th around midnight. I doubt I will be able to add anything during this time, but maybe we will get lucky and find an internet cafe somewhere.

3 days until Papua New Guinea (PNG)

I have added a couple of things to the blog. On the right hand side you will see a list of books I have read in the last couple of months, maybe you will find that worth looking at. I will also be keeping you guys up to date with what we will be studying in class on a weekly basis.

While this week may seem a little think, I assure you it isn't. This week we have been honored to have Dr. David J. Hesselgrave with us. He was a missionary in Japan in the 50's and from there he went on to be a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School from 1965 until he retired in the 1991. From there he has probably done more than most people do in a regular career. He is now 84, and this is the last time he plans on teaching. I wish I was as sharp now as he is at 84.

Well PNG is only three days away! I have been very busy this week between class, and preparing to leave. Kelley and the kids will be flying home for a couple of weeks on Friday, and I will head out on Saturday and will return a month later on March 17th. More to come on PNG in the next day or so.

great weekend!

We had an awesome weekend!

On Friday all the moms went to the zoo. We had so much fun. Here are a few pictures of the kids and their friends...




Erin, Hannah, Isa, Luke, Lydia, Natalie
Haley, Bradley & Elaina


The girls.
We bought all the girls matching pants!




Now here is the ENITRE group. the babies are
Alaina, Lola & Graham. Elijah is also in this one, he did not want to get
in the other one.




These are my wonderful children... they could only hold still for so long.
If you can just imagine Haley’s face when she told Alex why she could only sit for
a little while, "well you see there are these pointy things on the alligators back and they kinda bump on me..." that’s her reason for crying here.



THE RODEO

Then on Saturday or neighbors the DiIulios took us to the local Rodeo. It was awesome! We went in the morning to scope everything out. We had a chance to watch the hog judging... interesting, and we also saw all the other animals that were being judged. Haley was excited to get to see a pig like "charlottes web" but when we went to the pigs she started to gag b/c of the smell, she is so like me. Afterwards we stayed for the parade. It was mostly horses, local school bands and beauty queens (or to Haley, princesses) but there was this funny group of older people all dressed in kitchen attire. It was too cute.





After going home for naps we returned and started with the fair. They had some great rides. The Faulkner's met us there and we all rode rides together. Haley and Graham even rode a few. Graham loved all the rides and Haley was kinda a weenie and only wanted ones that didn't leave the ground. Anyway.




Then it was time for the rodeo. If you have never been to one-GO! It was great. We saw all kinds of things. The kids loved it too! We saw bucking horses and bulls, cowboys jumping off their horses onto baby bulls, roping, barrel racing, the whole nine yards. It was so dark that most of the pics did not turn out but watch the video. This is just one of a billion we saw!

and last but not least, the stars of the show!

The Conclusion to conversations with confused people

My books arrived a couple of days after my 3rd conversation with my Mormon friends. I went through the books, and studied as much as time allowed. I took many notes and made a couple of charts that showed contradictions between the bible and their beliefs. My charts included specific references to where their views were stated, as some were in the Book of Mormon, some in their Doctrine and Covenants, and some that were various sayings of Joseph Smith. I also printed up all of the changes that have taken place in the Book of Mormon, that they claim haven’t taken place. I was as ready as I was gonna be, now it was just a matter of getting some time to meet with them. They came by a few times when I was out running errands so I missed them. We finally hooked up and made some time to chat. They day we were supposed to meet they called and said they would be late. They never showed up. We then scheduled another meeting; to which they stood me up a second time, only no phone call this time. Another couple of weeks went by, and they came by my house when I was sitting down to eat dinner. We scheduled another time to meet, and they actually kept their end of the agreement. So they came over, only it wasn’t the same 2 guys I had met with before. Elder Hunt was there, but they had moved Elder Fellows to another city. I can’t remember the last name of the other Elder that replaced Elder Fellows. So we have some small talk, and eventually began to talk about things. Elder Hunt start out by wondering what he is doing here, because he thinks that I don’t really care what he has to say. I kinda of found this funny, since he came anyway. I told him I was interested in discussing our differences, and reasoning out why we believe what we believe, and what is the grounding for these beliefs. So after going back and forth on some differences I think he finally had enough. And one point in time while he was laughing he said “Did Joseph Smith really say that”? At another point in the conversation, he said “I have never heard that, where did you find all this stuff”? I told him I did my research. :) So by the end of our meeting I made zero headway, other than perhaps to let him know that there are people out there who believe differently from them, and have good reasons for it, outside of a subjective feeling. He basically told me he didn’t see the benefit at all for people to sit down like he and I were doing, because it was unfruitful and pointless. I respectfully disagreed with him, and we agreed to disagree. I did 2 more things before they left. I got them to tell me their first names, Adam Hunt, and Chad ?. The other thing I did was pray for them that the truth would be revealed to them. I haven’t seen them since, but I continue to pray that they will find the truth, and flee from the lies they believe.