HEALER- Kari Jobe

Clinging to these words today. He IS the Great Healer. Trusting in his goodness...

Need your prayers!

TUESDAY, October 19th
After visiting the surgeon today, my Mom found out that she has a cancerous tumour in her thyroid. She has had several thyroid surgeries in the past which means there is a great deal of scar tissue, making the now needed surgery virtually impossible to complete, without rupturing the vocal chords. The tumour is growing at a very rapid pace and there is now concern that if it isn't removed promptly, it may start to seep through the walls of the thyroid and into her blood stream. So essentially... this is a seemingly "lose-lose" situation. If she has the operation, she'll likely never speak again. And if she doesn't, it could be fatal. As you can imagine, the fear is very real for all of us right now, and though we're trying to keep an optimistic outlook, this is incredibly scary.

Her surgery has been set for Nov. 24 but it is very likely that they'll be shooting to do it on Nov. 3rd as the surgeon has an open day. This will be confirmed within the next few days.

Please pray for a number of things:
- pray for guidance & wisdom for the doctor as he performs this very risky surgery
- pray that the vocal chords will go untouched
- pray that the doctor will be able to remove ALL of the tumour
- pray for deep PEACE for Mom and our family

Thank-you for interceding in this way. I know Mom will appreciate all the prayer she can get!

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Friday, October 22

We could use more prayer for my Mom. She just got more discouraging news today.

The surgeon that was supposed to be performing the surgery in November has now called to say that he just doesn't feel comfortable doing it, and has decided to refer her to another specialist in Vancouver. This comes as a great discouragement because the fear is that now it will take even longer to get the surgery done. She's already been put through the "ringer" for the last 9 months, and the thought of having to go through MORE testing and waiting LONGER is absolutely defeating.

Please pray that this new surgeon will get back to her immediately, and that the surgery won't be delayed any longer. This is tough enough as it is, let alone the thought of it being put off.

Thanks & we'll try to keep you posted.

From baby to little girl...

Its hard to believe Callie is already 15 months old--- though her independent personality is starting to resemble that of a 2 year olds, more and more each day, so I guess its not that surprising that she's nearing the year and a half mark :)

She took her first steps shortly after her 1st birthday but "officially" started walking at 14 months. And now its hard to imagine her ever doing anything else. She runs around the house with such exuberance, I can't even remember what crawling looked like.

Put her in a room with other kids and she absolutely, 100% has my extroverted personality. She thrives! But as soon as she's in a room of adults, she's the most shy and quiet kid around. Strangest thing to watch.

Her vocabulary has absolutely exploded as of late. Some of her most common words are:

"Heeeello!"

"Awwwww done!" (all done)

"More"

"Peeeeez" (please)

"Tattoooo" (thank-you)

"Open it up"

"Ball"

"Puppy" & "woof, woof!" (and a whole myriad of other animal sounds)

"Happy"

"Baby"

"Mommy"

"Daddy"

"Hot" (which refers to anything hot OR cold... gotta work on that ;))

"Naa-naa" (which means nigh-night, and is what she calls her special blankie)

"Dallie!" (Callie)

"Eli" (her cousin... she just learned that today!)

"Taaa-daaa!"

"Ight!" (light)

"Shoes"

"Down"

"Up"

"Noooooo!" (we hear a lot of this one... hence the nearing 2 year old attitude!)

.... and so much more! We look forward to each new word or phrase and the hilarity it brings to the day. And the more she talks, the more her personality shines through. Its SO fun!

She still loves to sing and dance and now knows the actions to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and especially loves the "down came the rain" part. She's also a bit of a "class clown" and loves to get a laugh.

INTENSE teething has become the new and literal "thorn in our flesh." The poor girl has been an absolute inconsolable mess for the last few days and we anticipate the arrival of molars or possibly eye teeth at any time.

Her love for "naaa-naa" (blankie) has grown immensely over the last few months and has become a true vice. It has to go EVERYWHERE with us. We've recently nicknamed her "Linus" because she walks around with her blankie draped over her shoulder and looks like the character out of "Charlie Brown."

Her love for the outdoors also grows each day. Our new house is just 2 minutes away from a field of horses, cows and even a donkey. She loves to visit them and wave hello! We're also just a 5 minute walk from the Vedder River trail. Anytime spent walking at the river makes for a very happy Callie.

One of my favorite things about Callie these days is her love of music. She bobs away in her car seat when we're listening to music in the car, and if you say, "Callie, can you sing us a song?" she automatically breaks out in singing. Its gibberish, mind you, but its cute nonetheless :)

Well... that's all the time I have right now so I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of Callie and her cousin Elijah. Eli & Auntie Viv came for coffee this morning so I snapped a few photos of the two cousins. Callie absolutely adores this little ray of sunshine...

A month of much...

I have been desperately wanting to post but have honestly had ZERO free time. MTE has been taking up most of our waking hours, between class time & homework, not to mention our very busy 15 month old. But life is good and we're intensely grateful for the way God has been moving in our hearts & lives. His provision has been abundant!

Thankfully, our class schedule is into more of a routine now and we mostly have half days (with the exception of full days on Wednesdays). September truly could've been referred to as "the month of much." Much class time, much learning, much transition, much homework, much mentoring, much exhaustion, much, much, MUCH! It was full and I'll admit, felt like more than I could handle at times, but we survived and it was truly, a great month of learning & growing.

Anyway... although I have been wanting to upload some new pictures, all I can offer today are a few videos of our "busy bee." Our iPhoto is full and I need to get some pictures off before I can add more. So for now, here is a glimpse of Callie-bear these days (although these videos were taken over a month ago). This is mostly for Uncle Craig & Auntie Jen :)

I'll write more later. Gotta go get the munchkin out of trouble ;)

Last bit of summer...

Seeing as I have little to no time for posting these days, here's a link to my latest facebook photos of our last bit of summer. We were able to get away for some Esau family camping at the end of August and although it was very rainy & extremely "interesting" to camp with a 1 year old, we had a great time.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=234865&id=559605895&l=fb383270e3

Enjoy!

One week in...

We survived our first week of missions training and although we came out of the week feeling utterly exhausted, it was a good kind of exhausted. We absolutely love the people that are in our class and really enjoyed getting to know our classmates a little more each day. Most of our sessions this week were on Spiritual Authority with Randy Friesen. It was a pretty intense subject to start with, but SO good. Very informative and challenging and necessary. Spiritual warfare is something that a lot of people try to avoid or even run from, but it was important to realize the authority we have in Christ and that we are to stand firm in our faith.

As for Callie, she'll be spending Tuesdays with Grammy Glen, and then Mondays & Wed-Fri. will be with her new babysitter, Julie. Julie and her husband live in Abby and have graciously offered to watch Callie in their home, along with their 3 beautiful children. Callie is extremely social (I think its pretty obvious who she gets that from) so I wasn't too worried that she would have a hard time adjusting to full time childcare, but she did even better than I had imagined. Julie said she napped well, ate well & played well with the kids. And the real confirmation came when we arrived to pick her up after her first day. She looked up when we walked in, gave us a huge grin and a bit of a squeal and then went right back to playing. She didn't even want to leave. I take that as a very good sign and it was great for my ease of heart & mind.

So.... after a long weekend and LOTS of reading for upcoming projects, we're gearing up for another week. Excited to see what God has in store for us this week. Really trusting that He has amazing things in store for us this fall. Last week was true evidence of that.

That's it for now. Just thought I'd give you a brief update on how things are going. If you're wondering about prayer items, we could really use your prayers in the area of 'renters.' Still looking for the right people to rent out our townhouse and we NEED them for no later than October 1st, so please pray! Also prayer that we would have sponge-like hearts & minds as we take in classes each day & that we'd learn as much as possible over these next months of training. And last but definitely not least, prayer for rest & sanity in amongst the chaos! :)

The here and now...

By this point, I'm sure most of you have given up on me and this blog ever being updated. But for those that are still checking in, I finally have a few minutes to give you a run-down of our lives. Keep in mind, this is the extremely shortened version (scary, I know). If you want to hear all the details, give me a call some time. I love to share about God's goodness in our lives. :)

I'll get right to the point. Basically, our upcoming missions training (which starts tomorrow!!) and the prep needed for that, has virtually taken over our lives as of late. We found out at the end of July, that our salary during training wouldn't be enough for us to stay in our townhouse and had to quickly start the process of trying to get renters. Thankfully, we were offered the ground level suite of a house through some people at our church, so we knew we had somewhere to live, but our townhouse strata doesn't allow rentals and we knew it would be a hassle to get permission.

Turns out, it was.

First we had to write a formal letter, explaining our situation and requesting permission to rent out our house. Then after several trips to the council president's house, gently hounding them to please hurry up as we didn't have a lot of time, we ended up getting a letter stating that we would have to provide documents proving our "financial hardship." So... I had to put together our monthly costs break-down, with a signed letter from MBMSI stating our monthly salary amount, and we sent everything into our strata.

And then we waited. And waited. And WAITED.

Finally, after weeks of waiting and being left with little to no time to find renters, we got the official approval to rent out our place. We had a couple of people through to look at it, but no bites.

Thus, Sept. 1 came and went, and because we had to move into our new place before the start of training, and for the sake of the people we're renting from (as they had left it vacant, waiting for us for 2 months), it meant having the burden of not only rent payment but also our mortgage and all other utilities on top of that. At first, this was terribly stressful and we weren't sure how it was going to work. But God is GOOD and ALWAYS provides. We were able to pay the bills (through a series of small miracles), move into our new place (we spent this last Friday & Saturday moving) and didn't have to be rushed by renters who were needing to move in.

So that brings us to yesterday. We still had some significant details that needed to be taken care of before the start of training (ie: childcare for Callie this fall, cleaning our townhouse, & finding renters... just to name a few).

Well.... not only did God provide us with a wonderful lady to watch Callie this fall (just in the nick of time!), but he also provided us with ridiculously generous friends who called last night to say that they're paying professional cleaners to come and clean our townhouse for us, so that we don't have to!!!! How amazing is that!?!?! So rather than spending another day away from Callie, and having to clean til we're blue in the face, I get to be at home with my sweet girl today, unpacking and getting ready for the start of classes tomorrow. Jon went to our old place to do a bit of touch-up work and to have the carpets cleaned, but other than that, we don't have to do the rest. And that, my friends, is one of the most incredible gifts imaginable right now.

So... THANK-YOU TO OUR DEAR, DEAR FRIENDS FOR YOUR INCREDIBLE GENEROSITY! You know who you are and we cannot thank you enough.

All that to say, classes with MBMSI start tomorrow and though we've had virtually no time to even think about it, let alone prepare for it, we're excited and very ready to start this next phase of the journey.

That brings me to another big item---- We also found out in late July, that our time frame is going to look a lot different with this whole missions process. We originally thought (and had planned to) commit 10+ years with MBMSI, right off the bat. Turns out, we're going to start out with their "Jornada" program, which means we'll be doing a 3 year term, and then evaluating to see if we want to/feel called to/MBMSI wants us to, continue on. Rather than do the 4 months of training, 1 month trip to our country, and then 2 month internship & fundraising (the 10+year commitment version), now we'll only be doing 4 months of training, then fundraising, and then we're gone (Jornada version)!

So instead of being here in Chilliwack for another year and a half or so, we'll be here for approx. 6 more months and then we'll mobilize to our country. Shocking? Yes. It was to us, at first. But we're seeing that there is value in this and it will give us a chance to get a bit more experience under our belts before we commit really long-term. The other difference to our plans, is that rather than start a new team of people and then mobilize to our country, we'll be going by ourselves and joining an existing team and learning/helping them for the next few years.

All in all, it was a bit tough to swallow at first (especially because it was never presented to us before hand) but we're honestly feeling totally at peace about it and trusting that God is going to teach us incredible things over the next 3 years. We're excited to see where He's going to take us (not only globally, but emotionally, spiritually & physically too), the situations/adventures we're going to encounter, and the lives we're going to be touched by, and hopefully, in return, touch as well.

So, its going to be a crazy few months, with full-time classes & trying to fit in as much time with friends & family as possible, before we leave. But we feel confident its going to be good. I can't promise that I will be able to blog often, but I'll definitely try to keep you in the loop with where things are at. And to show you pictures of our sweet-ever-growing-mischievous-1-year-old-girl.

Thanks for all of your support!

Home...

Well.... we're back from a few days of camping with Jon's family. It was cold. It was wet. It meant a lot of sleepless nights with a one-year-old. But all in all, we had a good time and we're happy we were able to go.

These next few days hold a lot of change for our family. Moving. Preparing for missions training to start. And lots more. I'll try to update you at least a little bit, amongst all the packing I have to do. Sorry life's been too busy to stay faithful to this blog. I'll get you in the loop as soon as I can. :)

The true taste of summer...

We recently discovered that, not only does Callie have my personality, but she also shares my intense love for corn on the cob...

... truly a girl after my own heart.

5 years of awesomeness...

Jon and I celebrated 5 years of wedded bliss this past weekend (August 7th) and were blessed to be able to head to Whistler to celebrate the occasion... sans child. Grammy & "Numpa" (Callie's new name for Grampa) Glen cared for & entertained Callie-bear, while Jon and I enjoyed some R&R, just the two of us. It was amazing.

Whistler-bound...

So blessed to live in the midst of such beauty...

We stayed at the Adara Hotel. It was really cute with all its contemporary decor and the location was great-- right in the centre of Whistler Village. But I must say, for what we paid, I'm sure we could've stayed somewhere a lot nicer. Don't get me wrong... we enjoyed it, but there were just some little things that made it 'less than perfect.' We would definitely go back to the Mountainside Lodge (where we celebrated our 1st anniversary) over the Adara any day.

But as I said, the decor was right up my 'designer' alley and all in all,

we had a good stay...

Hotel lobby (from above)

Our room, as you walk in the door...

Living Room

(sorry for the dim lighting... forgot the flash)...

Bar/"Kitchenette"...

Stairs up to the loft...

Loft Bedroom...

(this includes one of the "less than perfect" items...

an overly soft bed-- to the point that I could hardly walk the next day;

and the fact that hot air rises... and the air-conditioner up here wasn't working.

Made for a "less than comfortable" few nights.)

Roof-top patio...

Bathroom...

(the brown circles in the mirror are a reflection of the shower glass--

looked pretty sweet.)

View from our living room window...

The goal of our weekend away was to relax, relax, and relax some more. And that's exactly what we did. Our first night there, we walked around the village a bit, picked up calzones from a pizza parlour for dinner and watched a movie in our room...

... and on Saturday, we did more walking around the village, watched some of the "Crankworks" mountain biking competition, did a little shopping, eating, hot-tubbing, more eating, and more relaxing. It was glorious.

Olympic buddies...

Lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory...

Post-Olympic spirit...

Crazy mountain bike action...

Celebrated our anniversary evening with a delicious dinner at 21 Steps...

... and then we changed into something more comfortable and ventured out again for a classic Whistler dessert...

Beavertails!

Mmmm.... so good!

Sunday morning we checked out, had a leisurely breakfast at White Spot in Squamish and then headed home to our sweet & very missed, little girl. Callie had a wonderful time with Grammy & 'Numpa and even got to spend Saturday at the Chilliwack Fair, petting every animal under the sun. We were so thankful to have had a great weekend away and know that Callie was having the time of her life.

So, to end the post, here are some latest food shots of our girl... she certainly does LOVE her "num, nums!"

... maybe a little too much? ;)

Lime & Warm Avocado Chicken...

I've had several people say they'd like the recipe I talked about in my last post, so here it is. I promise, it won't disappoint!

Ingredients:

* Limes

* Avocados (ripened)

* 1 tbsp. olive oil, plus more for pan-frying

* 2 tsp. chopped fresh parsley, oregano or cilantro (or 1/2 tsp. of dried)

* 1 tsp. finely chopped garlic

* 1/4 tsp. chili powder

* 1/4 tsp. salt

* 1/4 tsp. sugar

* 1/8 tsp. black pepper

* 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts

* 1 tbsp. honey

* 1 tbsp. lime juice

Recipe:

* In baking dish large enough to hold chicken, mix olive oil, herbs, garlic, chili powder, salt, sugar and pepper. Set aside.

* Score chicken breasts by cutting a 1/4" deep cross-hatch pattern (with lines about 1" apart) in meaty top sides of chicken (this helps them cook faster and allows flavorings to infuse the meat quickly). Roll the chicken in marinade. Cover and chill for at least 15 minutes (or overnight if you have time.

* To cook, heat drizzle of olive oil in large frying pan. Cook chicken, turning, until browned on both sides and cooked through. Mix honey and lime juice, pour over chicken. Remove from heat.

* Add diced avocado to pan, gently turning to coat in pan juices. Serve immediately.

* Serve with rice & slices of lime.

* Makes 4 servings.

Summer fun...

I'd really like to fill you in on what's new in our lives, but unfortunately, sleep trumps blogging. There is actually quite a lot to tell, but I'll have to save it for another day. So for now... here are some pictures of our summer so far...

With summer, come all of the best fruits.

Raspberries are just one of Callie's favorites.

Classic "sour" face...

Inhaling her "num num's"...

Tried a new recipe and fell in love with it.

"Lime & Warm Avocado Chicken"...

I'd pretty much make it for dinner every night, if Jon let me. Callie loved it too!

Let me know if you're interested, and I'll post the recipe. Its SO easy.

Cooling off in her birthday gift from Uncle Rich, Auntie Viv & Eli...

How "lo" can you go?

Callie's favorite activity...

Showin' Daddy some love...

Beating the heat in Erich & Naomi's pool...

Callie's 1st "official" trip to the beach

(I don't really count our Thailand beach time

because she didn't eat any sand.)

"This way to the beach..."

For the record, she DID eat some sand.

And also attempted to snack on this stick.

I asked her to play with it instead...

Having a snack with Auntie Hailey...

Well, that's it for now. I'm beat after another busy week, so its bed time for me. Definitely looking forward to the long weekend.

Until next time.