Desert Blooms

“The Lord is exalted, for He dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, and He will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure.” Isaiah 33:5-6

Waiting. Andy and I have been waiting for the two years since we became husband and wife. I have been waiting almost four years since I returned from CLM. We have been waiting since April when we began our tumultuous visa process.

Many times as Andy and I have talked about our waiting in the terms of a desert. Right now, it is easy for Andy and I to dream about what we would be doing if we were staying here. We often catch each other saying things like, “If we were staying here we would look into buying a house or getting a dog or finding a job or going back to school or getting involved in this ministry or...” It is easy for us to look back and long for what we've experienced in the past, a stable physical home, my own kitchen in my case, a pick-up truck in Andy's case. Being stripped of what we knew has shown us how dependent we are on things as opposed to Christ. None of these things we long for are evil inherently, but Andy and I have set up so many of these things as idols. We forget the manna and the quail God has fed us with as we journey to where He has called us. He has indeed fed us abundantly.

We also catch ourselves overly focused on the future. Once again we find ourselves focused on saying things like “When we get to CLM...” or even, “When we get back from Brazil...” Even what God has called us to can become an idol! Yes, God has called us to minister to His precious children at CLM but we are first called to glorify God and become more like Chris, regardless of where we are physically. Please pray that Christ will make us alert to all the idols in our hearts!

“He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.” Psalm 107:35

The pools and springs of our desert give way to beautiful desert blooms! Let me share just some of the blooms we've admired even as we are in our desert.

Dwelling: God has provided gracious hosts for us to live with. First Gary & Mary K who gave out of their extreme busyness and opened their home. Then there are Andy's parents who have to be some of the easiest in-laws to live with. Now we have the opportunity to live at the old church cabin that my uncle owns and offered to us to live in completely unlooked for!

Fellowship: We have had the blessing of deeper and new friendships with Brothers and Sisters literally from across the country and around the world! There are the dear friends from MTI, especially David and Janna Wilson who have encouraged us so much. Then there's the ECHO family. We are so privileged to have spent time with Scott and Martha Britton and George and Lollie, what fellowship! We were also blessed with the opportunity to attend a Brazilian church in Ft. Myers and spend some time talking to the congregation members there and being reminded of the culture and language we are going to be adopting. We are also so grateful for more time with our supporting churches here: Northfield Christian and First Mennonite.



Time with our families: Andy and were able to take my three youngest siblings to St. Louis and spend some time with them at the zoo and Grant's Farm.

Learning: We feel so much more prepared to help with the farm at CLM after our two weeks at ECHO. If we had our way we would have already been in Brazil and missed the opportunity to study there.

Self-examination before God: He has been showing us so much through this time, revealing sinful attitudes in our hearts and reminding us our identity is not in what we are doing for Him but who we are in Him!

What is This Chill in the Air?

We arrived back in Illinois on Saturday night after a mere 20 hour car ride from North Ft. Myers, Florida. After spending two weeks working in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, 70 degrees here in central Illinois seems downright chilly.

The last two weeks I have learned more information about small-scale agriculture than I ever thought was possible to stuff in my artistically minded brain, but I did find it quite interesting. ECHO is a non-profit organization that trains missionaries how to minister through agriculture and meet not only the world's spiritual needs but it's physical needs as well.

Andy and I found out about ECHO during our training at MTI earlier this summer. Andy was immediately interested in visiting ECHO because he will be helping out on the CLM farm as part of his duties. Even though he was a lot of experience with large-scale commercial farming, he wanted to learn more about small-scale subsistence agriculture. He arranged for a two week work-study program and I agreed to go along party because I didn't know what I'd do without him for two weeks and his passion and vision for the CLM farm is infectious.

We spent the mornings working with the interns at ECHO weeding, planting, constructing raised beds, fixing irrigation systems and helping with animals. We spent the afternoons studying in ECHO's wonderful library or attending seminars presented by the ECHO staff about soil fertility and water filtration. The work was hard but we enjoyed being outside and getting hands on experience.

In addition to our work and study, we enjoyed getting to know some of the interns and visitors at ECHO. The interns spend a year taking care of a specific area of the farm and learning about techniques for farming in various regions of the world. We shared a duplex with one of the interns, Scott Britton and his wife Martha and their daughter, Liliana. They were so much fun and we loved sharing some meals with them and getting to know their family. I've found that in our travels this summer, the hardest thing is getting to know our precious brothers and sisters in Christ and then having to say goodbye. We will miss the ECHO family!

Visa Update

It's been awhile since we have actually had something to report about our visas but we finally have bit of news to share!

We sent in our documents to our expediter the end of July. He spent some time looking over our documents first and getting some of our documents legalized at the consulate. After the prep work he submitted our documents to the consulate for review the second week of August. The only error the consulate found was that Andy's ordination certificate had not been legalized which was easily remedied. The staff at the consulate even commented on how complete our application was because they usually find a bunch of mistakes (!) that have to be corrected. Our expediter resubmitted our documents last week and they were sent to Brasilia last weekend for processing.

The consulate told us the processing time is 30-45 days. Our expediter will be asking each week at the consulate for us and he seemed very positive that that processing time is about accurate. Please be praying that our visas will be processed quickly and we can be in Brazil by September or October. My younger sister is currently spending three months at CLM Turvo and we would love to be able to spend some time with her in Brazil before she returns to the States in November.

We are so thankful God led us to this expediter through the recommendation of PAZ (Project Amazon). He has done a great job and we highly recommend his service if you are applying for a Brazilian visa. Thank you all for your prayers, we're not finished with the process yet but we are encouraged by the progress and we hope you as our ministry partners are as well.