Life Update

Well, as usual life has gotten busy and I abandoned my blogging. :( I keep a journal so I thought I would look back on the last few months and put in some of the major things that my sweet husband and I have been up to. Since March, our lives have been flipped upside down in so many ways. I picked up a new job in May, as the Missions Intern at our church, and also headed up a trip to Rwanda, Africa in August! In June, we lost our sweet niece Mikayla to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome at only 4 months old.

Here is a picture of Ricky and I with her when she was born.

4 months old with her twin brother Elijah.

After her death, Ricky and I were thrown into a series of meetings, court hearings, funerals, viewings, etc. The courts were involved and still are and our lives were changed forever. Her death changed a lot in our family and opened the eyes of many people involved. Sweet baby Elijah is now almost 9 months old and the CUTEST little happy baby. He never cries, and when he does it is SOOO cute! He puts out his little bottom lip and whimpers and I can't help but laugh at his sweet little face. He thinks his older brother Caleb is the FUNNIEST person in the world, and loves to be with him. I often wonder if after his sister died, he felt the absence, like twin super sense or something. It is hard to think about, and was even harder to go through. Laying in bed the night she died with my sweet Caleb, 5 years old and explaining heaven and death was one of the hardest things I have ever done. He had so many innocent questions, and did not understand why he could not see her, hold her. Now he speaks of Mikayla in heaven, when there is thunder, she is bowling. :) He speaks of her with Jesus, and being his little angel. I am so blessed to have such a loving and sovereign God that would be with me for those conversations and give me the words to say to my sweet bug.

Her death was the first time I ever questioned my God and His role in all this. I remember driving down the 51 telling Ricky I was scared, and I did not want to go through this, and I wanted to know where God was, why me. Well, my sweet and wonderful husband brought me back, and reminded me that God is SO MUCH BIGGER than me and this situation. That this, Mikayla's death will somehow Glorify Him and further His kingdom. He prayed with me, cried with me, and loved me through the toughest moments in my life...and that is why my Ricky Bob is my best friend, best husband in the world.

These last few months have been some of the toughest, but they have also brought some truly amazing moments. I had the opportunity to go with some friends, the Sanborns, to Costa Rica to care for their two sweet girls in one of my favorite places in the world. :)

You are going to have to use your imagination for this one, as all my pictures are on my other computer and I am far too lazy to go get those right now. Just think me with Izzy and Gigi surrounded by rainforest and tacky themed cabins filled with people tucked, sucked, and lifted.

In August, Ricky and I embarked on our very first Mission trip together, just 8 months into our first year of marriage. Our group of 6 went to Rwanda for 16 days and had such a great opportunity to share the gospel with so many wonderful people. Africa was great, God taught Ricky and I so much, the biggest of which was that GOD has it all under control, NOT YOU! In Africa, everything is up in the air, no commitment is concrete. If you spend your entire life gripping to YOUR plans for your life, day, week, then you will be miserable when you realize those are not what God has planned. We learned to sit back and enjoy the ride. We thought we were going to a church service, and dressed the part...only to begin heavy lifting and construction on a church wall. Simon said, " hey, we are here to serve them ,and this is how they need to be served." So church clothes and all we dove in and helped rebuild their church.

Rwanda also brought us some unexpected challenges, we thought we were just visiting a sick boy, but it turned out to be one of those moments in life that you will never forget. We pulled up to the "Neuro-psychiatric" hospital and I asked the driver if this where they take crazy people, because if so, then I may need to take a rain check. I have a serious FEAR of psych wards thanks to a scary experience when I was 15. Turns out, one of our boys in our child-led families program was there being "treated" for what they thought was malaria. However, he was not responding to traditional medicine so they brought him to this specific ward to look into it more deeply. A warning would have been nice, but that was just too much to ask I guess.ha ha. The first thing we all noticed was the big cage that the "patients" were sitting in. Abubacar is 14 years old and was very very sick. He was mentally unstable, and I will not go into detail about the hospital itself, except that it was a mental hospital in Africa. Done. Abubacar could not remember his name, my name, why we were there, and he was very obvsiously sick in his head. He had lost both of his parents to AIDS and was now being supported by this program our church runs and lives with his lifelong friend Fils. During our time visiting with him we had the....pleasure...to greet a few of the other, less stable patients as they wandered through our room and tried to sit on our laps. Yea, I was freaking out and crying. My heart BROKE for this boy, to see him so lost and confused and here in this hospital, talk about feeling powerless! We left confused, broken, upset, and feeling miserable. As a group it took us a few days to work through what we had seen, but it became so clear, that the only thing we could do for this boy was to pray. God calls us to bring everything to Him in prayer, but it is so much easier to try to fill the need ourselves immediatly. Well, in this situation, we were truly helpless, we could not help him at all and we were forced to our knees in prayer. We did not get an update on Abubacar until a few weeks after we had returned, but it was worth the wait, HE IS HEALED!!! Believe me, after being in that hospital, it is the power of Christ that healed this boy, not modern medicine. It turns out it was a rare form or malaria that had attacked his brain and was not responding to traditional treatment. How they discovered this, the only answer is God. It was a testiment to the power of prayer, God promises He will care for us if we will just lift our prayers and needs to Him, and He truly cared for Abubacar when we as a humans were uncapable of healing him.

Africa impacted us in huge ways, and it is just recently that Ricky and I are beginning to feel like we have an understanding of the trip and how it impacted us. I close my Africa section with a picture of Ricky and I with Abubacar..sweet boy. Please, keep him in your prayers.

In October God blessed my family with my sweet little tiny baby niecy Nora Catherine. She was born on 10-11-10...I know, SO CLOSE to 10-10-10. She is the tiniest little sweetest thing in the world. Her older brother Roan is pretty sure he likes her I think, ya know, sort of wondering when she will go back in the belly and leave him with all the attention again. :) But he will be the best older brother, I just know it!!!

I know, she is mid yawn, but she just is TOOO cute!! Bat Girl for Halloween, please note ALL THAT HAIR!!!

I had to give a little lime light to one of my favorite boys in the world. :)

At the end of September, Ricky and I celebrated our one year proposal anniversary. He asked me at the top of Camelback mountain so we have vowed that every year we will hike to the top just as we did when he proposed. It was super fun and I loved thinking about how much God has blessed us in the last year.

Ricky and I have had quite the year thus far, and I have no doubt that it will only get better. God has blessed me with such a wonderful husband and life and I look forward to seeing what the next few years will bring!

But I just can't help showing you our favorite Halloween yet, it is up there with a few years ago when we were Tetris pieces. Yes, White trash. :)

I leave you with a verse that has blessed us this last year, and we find ourselves constantly repeating it to eachother, reminding eachother of our great and wonderful God.

"But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me."-Micah 7:7