15 years ago today

Hi! Well, I was going to post this yesterday but we were very busy and it didn't happen. So, I will have to tell you what happened 15 years ago from today instead of yesterday! 15 years ago from today I was boarding a plane named AirJamaica. I was starry eyed and madly in love with my husband of just about 15 hours and we were on our way to Jamaica for our honeymoon. Oh the memories. We were laughing yesterday over a very nice lunch, (just the two of us)about him bringing me all the way to Mexico to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. HA! That little booger. I told him if he had laid out the plan for me 15 years ago that I would be living in a dusty, dirty, village in the middle of Mexico 15 years later I may have re-thought things. I am so glad we can only see today. I love my life here and love that we have had many fun adventures. I just needed a little push to get me out of my comfort zone! Okay, maybe it was a BIG push! ;o)

I love all of your comments about the pictures it is really helping me! Please keep voting and help make that all important decision! I wish I had all of you with me when I have been at a photo studio!

Please continue to pray for us as we have everyday filled up on our calendar. Tomorrow I will be having a special time with all of my friends. We are having a movie and a manicure in my house! I wanted to do something special for them all one last time before we leave. I will be sure and take lots of pictures!

I sent out our Newsletter yesterday, so if you would like to receive it and didn't let me know and I will make sure you do! Blessings! Missy

Vote for our prayer card photo!

Photo number 84.


Photo number 96.


Photo number 108.

This is number 111. (We didn't actually take that many photos!)

Hi friends! I am asking for prayer as I am not a very good time manager. I remember in elementary school I always got a 3 on mangages time wisely. 1 was best and 4 was worst. If that tells you anything. I think Greg might think the teacher was being nice. I think I may have adult ADD and I really have a hard time focusing on something for too long. Especially when I have 3 children that like to interrupt me every few minutes. So, I am looking around this house and I am thinking, "Hmmmm.... I am leaving 2 weeks from today and it looks like I have done NOTHING to get ready." Can you pray I will have some good time today to pack? People in the village continually come by to see us and that has thrown a kink in the packing process as well.

Yesterday we had family photos taken and we are thinking about using them for a new prayer card. I am going to post all 4 that are in the running for our prayer card and you can vote on which one you like the best. Click on the photo to enlarge them. That will be one less thing I have to worry about. Love to you all! Missy

Where is my mother-in-law?

Last week I was so busy with other things that laundry got the best of me. Last night I was folding this HUGE pile of laundry and I said, "Annie, where is Grandma when I need her most?" Grandma (Greg's mom) always does our laundry when she is visiting and we LOVE it! Annie said, "Mama, you know Grandma lives in the United States and can't always be here to help you." I laughed and she said, "But Mama... she looked at the big pile and continued, you do need her help!" So, Grandma, if you want to make one last ,quick trip, come on!!

A day at church

Little boy going to church. How cute is that?



Matthew 6:26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

I caught this mama bird giving these babies their food. It was quite interesting as she kept swooping in and out throughout the entire church service. She didn't care if we were singing or praying or preaching. All she cared about was giving her babies their food. What was even more interesting is that the people in the church weren't bothered one bit by their chirping or her swooping above their heads. So neat!



Inside of the church before many had arrived.


I taught the children the same story Greg taught and then they colored a picture of Jonah and the whale.

Afterward we went to someone's home to eat and this precious lady was doing laundry. She allowed me to take this picture so you could see how her washer works! ;o) What you don't see is that it that it had just hailed and the water was freezing!

The walk from church to where we were going to eat lunch.

We all laughed as we sat down to eat and it started to hail. The hail was falling through holes in the roof and bouncing on the table. The kids thought it was awesome as they tried to catch each ball of hail. I tried to capture the moment, but the hail was too small for my camera to see.

Sunday lunch, fried eggs, salsa and chicken, fried fish and salsa, yum!

This is the family I mention below.

The couple on the right is the pastor of the church we attended and his wife.

Hello everyone! Today we visited a church in another village to say good~bye to them. It was a great visit and we were very encouraged. Greg told the story of Jonah. It always amazes us that most of them have never heard the story of Jonah. Afterward we were so blessed when one man came up to Greg and said he has felt called to be a pastor but wasn't sure what to do. After hearing this story he said he knew he had to accept this call and he was ready to go to a seminary so that he could study to become a pastor. He asked me if I could encourage his wife as she wasn't very excited about his decision. I told her I wasn't very excited about the calling to be a missionary at first but once I realized that all God ever really wants is our obedience, I was okay with that decision. Obedience is never an easy thing to learn! By the end of lunch and hearing many of our stories of how God has alwasy provided for our needs and how He has never left us, she too was excited about her husband being a pastor. Really great day!

Okay, now to answer Amy's question. Do we have to leave? Yes. Why do we have to leave? Because. :o) No, just kidding. We work for the International Mission Board and they require us to take a respit from the field after being on the field for 3 or 4 years. We chose to stay for a 4 year term. The amount of time we take in the states can be different, however we are able to take up to a year if we have been on the field for 4 years. Greg is required to take some seminary classes and because of that we needed the full year for him to be able to complete his studies.

We are also required to go to different Southern Baptist churches and share with them what we have been doing the past 4 years so that we can raise support for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. This is an offering that is taken up in Southern Baptist churches once a year at Christmas time to support all of the IMB missionaries all over the world.

Our plan is to return to the same house we are in right now, to the same village and continue our work here after our time in the states is over. We have arranged with the owner of our house to leave our furniture and all of our things and pay to store our things for the year. Hope this answers your question.

Baby Esther

Read my post below the pics first, so you will understand more about the pics. Thanks! ;o)
Okay, I promised more pictures, so here are more pictures! This is Jerod and Alex playing checkers at a friend's house.


Are you wondering what this is? Well, in our villages it is very normal to have your baby way over dressed and even if it is 80 degrees outside, they cover their babies up like this. I am amazed that more babies don't die of SIDS. I mean this baby is completely covered. Look below!

I pulled back the blanket so you could see there really was a baby underneath!

This is baby Esther's big sister, she is so proud of her new sister and Annie just loves to play with her!

This is their little flower garden. Isn't it cute? They make do with what they have and it always makes me think, "Now why haven' t I done that?"

This is their kitchen. This is the kitchen for 4 adults and 5 children. Now try and complain about your small kitchen! ;o)

Annie and her 2 friends. Don't you just love the plug hanging down from the roof?

Jerod shooting marbles.

This is our friend Luisa's ( the mom of the new baby) mom. She was washing dishes and I just happened to catch her in the act. All you need is some rain water and an old orange bag (you know the green netted bags oranges come in) and wala you have a dishwasher. :o) Oh, and if you have a little soap that might help too. If you have some.

This is me and Luisa. She doesn't like to smile, I don't know why, she is very sweet, but doesn't really like to smile. Anyway.. that is Luisa.

Of course this is precious little Esther. She gave me a half smile.

Today we went to say good~bye to some of our friends. They just had their 5th child 2 weeks ago and we wanted to see this little blessing before we left for the states. Her name is Esther.

How precious! While I was there I tried to capture some moments that would interest you.

Many of you have asked us how long we will be in the states and the answer to that is that we don't really know. It will be between 10 and 12 months. Others have asked when we are leaving. We are leaving our village on June 17th and heading to Puebla, Mexico for a week. From there we will fly to Charlotte and then we will eventually arrive in Wake Forest, NC where we plan on living.

My friend Katie asked me how our children are going to handle the transition from simple life of playing marbles and checkers to the fast paced life of the US. Well, I don't know that either. I am a little concerned about that as they really like the simple life. We are going to try, try, try to keep many of the same traditions we have here. Like, on one night a week, we have movie night where we pop homemade popcorn and watch any movie they want as a family. NO interruptions. Now that isn't always possible, the NO interruptions part but, we try. We eat dinner together as a family every day of the week and oh how I want to make that a priority. I know many of you are rolling your eyes. But... if I don't try, it won't be a priority. That could help us. Anyway, that could be our biggest prayer request in regards to the children.

Okay, if you have any other questions, please ask!!

Graduation pics!

Jerod receiving his diploma from Principal Greg.


Alex receiving his diploma from Principal Greg

Annie isn't quite sure what she is receiving, but she is happy to get a picture with a sun on it because her nickname from her daddy is "Sunny" or "Sunshine"

We were at Sams once again and I had to take this picture. I acted like I was taking this of Alex but since I think that 95% of you are women, I thought you would get a kick out of this picture. Look at this woman behind Alex, she is sitting in the restaurant area of Sams PLUCKING her eyebrows. Now I can understand putting on makeup, but PLUCKING YOUR EYEBROWS??? Gross!!! Click on it to make it larger if you don't believe me!

Here is Annie with Uncle Mark as she calls him. She absolutely thinks he hung the moon!


Yay, no more school! So, today being the first day I didn't have to get up and do anything I thought oh how nice to be able to sleep in! NOT! 7 am the phone rings, "Brother, I wanted to see how the meeting went last night?" Okay I am sooo happy that our new leader is excited about our new church and all that happens there. Prisiliano (new leader) couldn't be there last night and so he decided he would call at 7 am this morning, yes the first day I could sleep in, to ask how our study went last night. Wasn't that nice of him? If you think I am writing with dripppping sarcasm, you would be correct! ;o) So, anyway, our study did go well, but I just wish we could have shared this with him at, oh say 9ish! :o) Well as Greg said as he was wide awake then too, "I guess it's time to get the juicy worm." I for one, prefer the crusty, dry ones, but that is just me!

So, I thought I would share some pictures from our graduation ceremony. We were very proud of our children. They did very well this year. Jerod continues to excel in Math, although he doesn't really love the subject he does very well at it and Alex is an absolute wiz at Geography. He amazes us! I gave him a blank map of the US and he handed it back to me 5 minutes later completely filled in. Then I handed him a map of the world and he handed it back to me about 20 minutes later with about half of it filled in. Oceans, seas, countries I have never heard of filled in , in the appropriate places. Anyway, it's a gift. So, we are proud. Just had to brag a little since we don't really get to do that very often. Oh, Annie did very well too!

We had a quick one day visit from a friend of ours who lives in Puebla, Mexico. His name is Mark and he came to do some work on our storying project. It was a short and sweet visit that as you can see from the picture, Annie thoroughly enjoyed! (as we did too) I am sure we will be busy little beavers this week and I will do my best to fill you up with bunches of pictures that will interest you! Love to all!

Last Day of School!

I took this from the window of our car, so it isn't the best picture but it gives you a good idea of how they travel, and how the mountains look around us.


In the large city about 40 minutes away, we eat at restaurants that have play places like this. It is very common to have some kind of swing set or trampoline or something at almost all of the nicer restaurants. Annie is going to miss that. She met this little boy on the trampoline today and they became fast friends.

This is a man passed out on the sidewalk in front of our house. This is something our children see all the time. It doesn't even seem strange to them anymore. Annie thinks this is just part of life. She asks me why they drink beer if they know it will make them not be able to walk or talk. She says that they should know that it makes them act funny and do bad things. Most of the men who drink here don't drink casually, they drink until they can't stand up anymore. So sad.

Okay, is it possible that I am more excited than my children that tomorrow will be our last day of school? I mean, man am I ready to be done. I really love to home school, but I am really ready to be done for a while!

I am going to concentrate over the next few weeks on taking pictures of things we see and don't realize may interest you. No one gave me any ideas of what pictures they want to see, so I guess I will just have to use my imagination. Some of them are kinda sad, but they give you a good idea of what we see everyday.

Please continue to keep us in prayer as we are starting to realize how hard saying good~bye is going to be. We are going to struggle with this for quite some time I am afraid! Love you all!