Entries by Anna

Hail! The conquering hero!

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It is such a wonderful feeling to figure out a solution to a problem that has been bugging you! It probably seems like a little thing and kind of stupid but not having the ability to do laundry if I need to really bothers me. Tuesday this week I got all the laundry done. Wednesday morning Ethan woke up wet and he had gotten James wet as well. :sigh: No big deal, right? We were going to a prophet's chamber and I just was hoping they would have laundry facilities. But they didn't. For some reason that really bothered me. I hardly slept at all on Wednesday night and the thing that kept going through my mind was how we were going to get it done since James was going to be busy all day Thursday and Saturday and we didn't know where to find a laundromat. Other things were wandering around in my head, too. I guess anything seems logical and worth worrying about at 3:30 AM. The same problem hardly feels like anything at 9 AM!Rolling Eyes 

 How ironic is it that I'm going to be a missionary in Africa and I've never even done laundry in a sink or bathtub? In fact, the idea never even occurred to me at 3:30 AM or at 9 AM. It wasn't until early this afternoon that I even got the idea! Idea

So now, as I type this, the first "load" is in the sink. All the filthy things that got wet will be as clean as I can get them by "washing" them in the sink and then hanging them out in the sun to dry. Thank God for our nice sunny, warm day – the first in over a week! Not only that, but I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself for even giving it a try. I'm thankful that God helped me get the idea in the first place! Not to mention the fact that this is some more GMT (good missionary training). Smug

I need to go check on my children and my laundry. I'm ever so grateful for a God who gives creative ideas! Smitten

Imagine…..

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Let's say you are aged 5 years and younger and are staying in yet another place away from home without your toys, books and things to do and are bored. What would you do? For my kids it was easy. They played restaurant! We've been on the road for the last little bit and have stayed in 5 different places in the last 5 days so it has been stressful. James and I were busily getting ready to go to our next meeting and they were busily looking for things to do. I noticed that suddenly things seemed very organized. The table in the room was covered with Ethan's special blanket for a tablecloth. James had a piece of paper and was taking orders. "What would you like to drink?" he asked. They went around the table where everyone else was sitting. Soda was the general consensus, though one of them wanted apple juice. (This is kind of funny since they don't get soda very often – only a few times in the year!). He carefully "wrote" this down and then went and got each person's water bottle and set it in front of them. Then he wanted to know how old they were – a common question we get when we go to restaurants since some of them are the right age to still eat for free! Ethan declared himself to be the ripe old age of 7. John said that Elizabeth was his girlfriend and they were both 10. Laughing Guess its time to have a talk with them about dating! Finally, he wanted their orders. Ethan wanted pizza and tacos and other things. They all wanted brownies and ice cream. Elizabeth wanted chocolate cake and ice cream and John wanted tacos and brownies. Actually, the majority of their orders were dessert foods!

The Little Things

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God is so concerned with everything that goes on in our life – even the little things. To be very truthful, the last week of getting ready for this trip that we're on right now had been stressful for me. It seemed like there was so much to do. That, and the fact that we were leaving our house again for the first time since it had been broken into. I was nervous about leaving, longing for a modicum of normalcy and just very very tired. Frankly, I had a bad attitude. So I got my attitude fixed, got everything pulled together and we left. Travel was good. The weather was supposed to be terrible but we didn't have any problems with it. Saturday as we neared our destination, James called the pastor to find out where we were supposed to be for the night. He had gotten us into a very nice hotel in Ocean City, MD. Because it was the off season we were able to be in an ocean side room with a balcony! (of course it was in the 20's that night with quite a breeze so we didn't spend much time outside enjoying it!). Sunday morning we got up and thoroughly enjoyed the sunrise over the ocean. If I'd have stayed home like I wanted I would have completely missed this!

The Grand Canyon Adventure

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One of our meetings was in Flagstaff, Arizona. We were staying only a few miles south of that city so we were within an hour or two drive of the Grand Canyon. Both James and I had always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon so we made the trip there as a family. It was a beautiful, sunny day, hardly a cloud in the sky. We left later than we'd planned but made good time so it was late morning, early afternoon when we got there. Suddenly, there it was! Dad told me about visiting it when he was a teenager but honestly, unless you've seen it yourself you can't comprehend the magnitude of it. It is truly one of the most beautiful things in God's creation that we get to enjoy!

A Light in a Dark World

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We were in a missions conference in Tucson, Arizona a couple weeks ago. The conference went very well. Friday night Elizabeth had an accident that required clean clothes. Rolling Eyes Normally I keep an extra set for her in the car but the dress that had been in there was too small so I left it out. We only had underwear in the car. So I had to take her to the prophets chamber where we were staying and bathe and change her and get clean clothes. It was about a 20 min.