More culture shock

Just when I think I am "Americanized" something

comes along and hits me smack between the eyes.

This time it hit me when I walked into Target and noticed the

Easter candy. One row, got me excited because this was the first time

I have seen Easter candy in about 5 years. Then I saw another row and thought, hum.... they have really got a lot of Easter candy. After counting 15 YES FIFTEEN different rows of candy or plastic eggs I was floored. I really couldn't believe it. It was like, crazy, I mean, really crazy. I was talking to someone about this and they laughed and said, " What's funny is, I never even notice things like that."

In homeschool the other day we were talking about how the Easter bunny traditions first came about and we discovered some interesting facts. One thing we thought was interesting is that on average Americans spend 13 billion dollars on Easter candy and decorations each year. I kinda laughed at one statistic, it said that last year because of the recession, per family they spent less, they spent, $116.59 instead of $135.03 in 2008. Who are these people? What are they buying? Anyway, so that is my little culture shock moment for the the day.

I must go now because Annie is waiting on me so that we can have a tea party outside with her dolls. I will write more later! Love to all! Missy

Forgot two pictures

What we have been up to...

Annie and one of my best friends from high school, Mindy. Loved seeing you Mindy!

















This was me, gearing up for my 2 hour women's conference. I loved it! The table doesn't look that great, but... oh well.
















Annie and the Easter Bunny.


















The women at Eastway Baptist getting their delicious breakfast.

















Cousins. Marissa, Alex, Annie, Jerod, and Mason. They had fun together.
















This is my friend, Lorenda. She is here with me at seminary and she is Daphca's (Haitian baby) mommy. We have had a wonderful time together. It has been nice to have a Mexican family~friend here with us in Wake Forest.















The bottles of Purell that were donated by a lady at Eastway.
















The medical supplies that was donated by the women at Eastway. What a blessing!


Hi friends~ I miss writing to all of you. I have a request. If you know anyone, I mean ANYONE who wants to receive our monthly newsletter please have them email me or you can email me with their email address. However, I need them to explain who they are and how I might know them before I will add them to the monthly newsletter. All of our newsletter contact list members have been lost and we are starting from scratch. So, I am trying to put together a new list. So if you know of someone who may be interested in receiving our newsletter, please have them email me. Thanks!

I wanted to add some more pictures so you could see some of the things we have been up to lately. I also wanted to show you some of the ways that Eastway blessed us this past weekend. These sweet women donated medical supplies and over-the-counter medicine that I could use when people come to me for small medical needs. Like a badly skinned knee or a toothache or headache or cold. They come to me and ask me for some kind of relief and I usually give them a few ibuprofen or clean up their scrape and then tell them to seek medical attention. I am just the first stop before they head into town. So these supplies will be a huge blessing. THANK YOU EASTWAY!!

The boys are practicing French. They are saying, "Wii Wii." Ha! Jerod is our saver. He saved for a little more than a year in Mexico so that when he arrived in the US he made his first big purchase and bought an Ipod touch. He has loved having it and has now saved for another year and when I say saved, he saves his birthday money, Christmas money and allowance. So he now has enough to buy a Wii. He is such a wise man. The government could learn a thing or two from him! (sorry, I had to go there!) Anyway, Jerod purchased his Wii this past weekend and it was a great day! (for his brother and sister too) As you can see from the picture, I don't know who is more excited, Jerod, or Alex. So, that is what the boys are up to!

Annie is gearing up for the Easter bunny and asking me a TON of questions to which I don't know how to respond. ?!? :~) This is her first experience with the Easter bunny. She hasn't ever experienced this before. They definitely don't have this tradition in Mexico and so we didn't either. The boys understood and she never knew. If it isn't in stores and people don't talk about it, you don't find out about it. Plus...we didn't have American commercials. So, there you have it. So, we have visited the Easter bunny at the mall and she has an Easter basket. She has no idea why Americans do this funny thing, but she thinks finding eggs will be fun. She did ask me who the Easter bunny really is and I said, "Uh, hang on, honey I have to call someone." Such a good mother, huh? So that question has been avoided for the time. I just want her to enjoy this season, because it will be her one and only shot at it.

We have enjoyed seeing old friends, making new ones and generally being in the US and now we are all thinking about our next journey. What to buy and take back, what we will miss, what we need to do before then and how we can prepare ourselves. Please pray that we can make all of these transitions well. Love to you all, Missy

Time is flying!

Hi friends! I know I have been horrible about posting on here. I really feel like I am running 90 miles an hour all the time. Oh the joys of America. We have just gotten back from spending the weekend in the Rock Hill, SC / Charlotte, NC area. I spoke at a women's meeting on Saturday morning and really enjoyed that! We have been given the privilege of getting to know the people at Eastway Baptist in Charlotte and they allowed me to share for 2 hours on Saturday. TWO hours! Sometimes we are told we have 1 minute other times, 10-15 minutes, but TWO HOURS was incredible! What a blessing these precious women were to me. I was thinking I wouldn't have enough to say in TWO hours but.... I ran out of time! :o) Most of you who know me well are probably not surprised by this.

Then Greg was given the opportunity to share with the congregation on Sunday morning. He did some great Bible storying and told stories about our people as well. He has a gift of being able to weave our village stories into his sermon. It was awesome. We have enjoyed getting to know their pastor and his wife. She was the perfect example of what a pastor's wife should be like, she encouraged me just by being in her presence. I hope that I can do that for someone someday.

I have been so busy trying to keep up with everything ~ I have so much I need to do before we make our next move. Every weekend we have something planned. It is really ridiculous. This weekend I will have the chance to share at a women's tea at the church we have been attending. They haven't heard anything about our life in Mexico so I am going to do my best to share the most important parts about our life there. Any ideas on what that might be? I mean, to me it is all interesting but I need to pack a lot into 30 minutes. If you knew NOTHING about what I do, where I serve or the people I serve, what things would you want me to talk about? I am open to suggestions! I love you all and will upload photos soon. Missy

Home School fun!

Visit to the Washington Monument.

View from the Washington Monument of the White House.

The Washington Monument from the Lincoln Memorial steps.

The Inner Harbor view from the Baltimore Aquarium. These are our precious friends, Dave and Dottie who live in Baltimore and treated us to a day at the aquarium. What fun! Thanks Mama Dottie and Daddy Dave!

Alex waiting for some fishy kisses.

Jerod getting his fishy kiss!

Alex and Annie playing air hockey with Jerod and Daddy at the ESPN Zone. (They won!)

This is the World War Two Memorial which was quite impressive.

We were given the red carpet treatment by Senator Burr's office and this was us, sitting on his couch in his office. He wasn't in that day, but we had a great time any way!

Greg and I at the Lincoln Memorial

J and A and A outside of the Capital building.

This was after our tour of the Washington Monument, you can see the Lincoln Memorial in the background.

I love this memorial. It is sooo much bigger than you ever imagine. He is just really cool!

This was a reallllly cool tour. Fort McHenry in Maryland. I have more pictures and I will upload more, but this is a good start. It really was a great place to visit. This flag is neat because it only has 15 stars. If you ever get a chance to go here, you need to do it!!

Love my kids! This was in front of Abe again, they are so cute! Love them!!

We had a great trip this past week to Washington D.C. I quit telling you all when we were leaving to go somewhere because it is stupid. I may as well invite strangers in my house while we are gone. So, I am relying on you faithful prayer warriors to know that if I haven't posted in awhile, you probably need to pray! We learned a lot about the history of our nation and the boys were really in heaven! I have some more pictures that I promise I will add soon. We are tired but it was worth every minute of our fun filled trip! Thanks to Hillcrest Baptist we had a wonderful mission home to stay in for free. That made this trip a lot more fun for a lot less money! So, thanks Hillcrest! I will write more soon, I'm goin' to bed! Love you all! Me


Sorry about the mess up on the pictures earlier, if you saw them. I am frustrated with this blog. Every time I download pictures they come up in different places and it is a real headache to try and get everything looking right. I am confused as to how this happened. Any ideas?