Adjusting?

Here is a picture of the church we went to on Sunday. The sanctuary was on the second floor and I guess class rooms are higher. It’s all open to the inside, so it gets chilly when the wind blows through and warm when the sun comes out. It's much bigger than this but I couldn't quite get it all from this position.

We are slowly adjusting to the time changes. Today after breakfast the kids and I slep off and on for several hours. Joel went to take care of finances and travel stuff. After lunch we headed off to Nockamutt (sp?). They compare it to a wal-mart and I’d have to agree. You can almost anything there. We found Pringles and Oreos and Dara wanted marshmallows for some reason – so we got that too. Then there was a man selling popcorn so of course we had that too.

Notice the movie advertisement behind Dara that is now playing – "Night at the Museum 2". It’s funny to think that it’s probably still showing back home too.

This was a fruit/vegetable market (I also saw that you could buy boots). We didn’t go through it. It’s amazing how dirty it all is. Some of that is from the dirt that is everywhere, but most of it is from people just dropping their trash on the ground. I told Joel, “We’re not in Kansas anymore”. What I wish I could convey in the pictures is the smell that is everywhere. I’m not sure what it stems from completely (not sure I really want to think on it too long), but Dade has very little discretion in commenting on things – we’ll need to work on that.

This is the majority of what you can see of the Mayfield Guest House which is where we are staying.

There is this gate that is closed unless a car is coming through – people can just walk through the little door in the gate. There is a guard who watches it all the time. We have felt very comfortable letting the kids roam around and play on the play ground. There is also a little play room and then a bigger room with a tv and videos. They seem to have thought of everything. We left our laundry in a bag with a note on it this morning. They were washed by hand and hung to dry on a line. And they just now brought it back - folded! It’s kind of weird to be served so much.

For example, Dade wanted toast this morning (which we had seen yesterday morning) so I got up to get him some. There was no bread by the toaster so I came back and sat down and told Dade there wasn’t any this morning. Next thing I know I looked at the toaster and realized a light was on. So I assumed that someone else asked for bread and I started to get up to make Dade some. One of the gentlemen serving us noticed me getting up and shook his head “no” and motioned for me to stay seated. He had to tell me twice since I wasn’t sure he was motioning at me. Within a minute they had brought Dade some toast. The same thing happened with water. I got up to get some and the shooed me back to my seat and came and served us. As this will take some getting used to, I made sure I learned to say “thank you, very much”.

This is a picture of our room.

It’s a mess but maybe it gives you an idea of what it’s like. We were able to buy a little fan so hopefully it’ll be a bit cooler tonight.

I think that’s it. Except, the flowers here are beautiful. They have bougavilla (sp?) everywhere in many different colors. Hibiscus are also very prevalent.

God is Faithful

I read I Corinthians 1:8,9 this morning. “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord is faithful.”
You have no idea how much I needed that word from our loving Father this morning. I was standing and singing in church this morning (a wonderfully beautiful service) and wondering how I was going to help the kids adjust (they didn’t eat breakfast today or lunch and dinner on the plane). God just wrapped His arms around me and reminded me that long ago we gave those kids to Him. It was like He just whispered to me, “Dara and Dade are Mine. I will take care of them.” Then I asked what about me? And His answer was the same, “You are Mine. I will take care of you too.” I couldn’t keep the tears from falling then or now. God is faithful.

Fast forward with me to this evening (my battery died and after the fan incident I was leery of plugging it in)…the kids both ate a big lunch and dinner (fried chicken and then grilled cheese with tomato soup – I do believe they make comfort American food here for a reason). Joel went with a friend of our (whom we’ll be serving with next year in Tanzania) to buy a “high” speed wireless USB port device. It works pretty well – well enough to call back home even if it is very digitalized. We’ve pushed our two sets of bunk beds together and plan to sleep with the window closed and not use the mosquito nets. We’ll know in the morning if they got to us anyway.

These pictures hopefully show that our kids are having fun with the other kids here. Yes, Dara could be wearing shorts if she wanted to, but once in an outfit this girl does not like to change.
We are surviving. They are both making new friends and feel very comfortable here on the compound. Breakfast is served promptly at 7:30 our time so I’m off to bed. I’m making this in Microsoft word so I hope this posts – we’ll see. Thanks for all your prayers.

Well it didn't post from word so I copied and pasted - which lost my pictures. So I'll ramble a bit while I try to insert them. Hopefully, it will go fast enough for me to get all three of them. So I'll ramble in the mean time. (my 'E' keyboard key is sticking so if you notice that I'm missing some 'e's please forgive me) I'll try to take more pictures tomorrow of the guest house in which we're staying. The rooms seem to be designed for 2-4 people. We have two sets of bunk beds with mosquito nets attached to the ceiling and intnded to be wrapped around the mattresses at the base.

okay - the pictures are loaded - goodnight!

We arrived!

We finally arrived in Nairobi! With all of our luggage! It's night here and the internet connection is veeerrryyyy sssslllooowww. I don't know if this will even post. We'll see. The kids are having a bit of a rough time (as to be expected) and we're all quite tired. The little fan that we so carefully packed "sparked" when we plugged it in. The room smells a bit tarred and Dade is fussing "it stinks in here!" We're tired and just want to shower and get this post out. We'll tell more later. Thank you for your prayers - please don't stop!

Soon

Soon (45 minutes) we'll be leaving for the airport. God is so gracious to want to use us. My stomach is finally feeling knotted. I was going to take pictures for my dad, but it's raining. Thanks for your prayers, Dade is feeling much better. He's in that state of feeling good enough to whine easily (which is much better than lethargy). Hopefully, I'll get to blog in London - if the internet is easily accessible.

No more news on the house.

We love you all!

Hiccups with the house

We just got a call from our realtor. The lady who was buying our house was waiting for the sale of her house (that was scheduled for tomorrow) in order to buy ours. Her buyer just lost his job and backed out of buying her house. She loves our house so much that she has asked us to extend the contract for 3 weeks and is going to pursue someone else who had offered a cash deal on her house. Please pray that this will all go through - my comfort comes when I acknowledge that God is not caught by surprise by this. He is still in charge!

Upate on Dade: He started running a bit of a fever this morning and a very sweet young mother here drove us to a doctor this afternoon. After waiting for a very long time (more than 2 hours), Dade received the diagnosis of bronchitis - in it's early stages. He's now on antibiotics (which were free from a store up here!) I am so glad we found this out before we left on a plane. God's timing is good.

Update on camera battery - arrived late this morning via fed ex! My in-laws drove to the airport last night to get it to me this morning - thank you so much!

Getting serious

I feel like we're finally getting down to business as missionaries. The roller coaster is sitting at the top of the hill! We are up here at Pearl River, NY after several hours of flying today. The kids did great, and we are so thankful for portable dvd players. They make the world a happier place. :)

One of our pieces of luggage weighed 81 pounds! So we had to pay double for it. Joel looked at me as we were checking it in curbside in Dallas (at 7:15 this morning) and asked if I knew of anything that could come out of it. I gave him the famous "are you crazy?!" look and said we would just have to pay it. Thankfully they didn't charge us for our duffles being over 50 pounds. But when we got here to Pearl River, the man in charge of luggage (I am quite positive that is not his title) said that we'd have to lighten the load. Our choices were to do it here or at the airport.

So...we spent a good bit of time doing just that. It's amazing what you can do when the motivation is strong enough. We weaned a lot - an entire piece of luggage (the 81 pounder) will be shipped back to Arlington tomorrow (I'll try to weigh it before it goes and let you know how much it is - our international weight limit is 70 pounds).

We also thinned out the kid's backpacks which almost toppled them over today. They'll be pleasantly (?) surprised when they feel them in a couple of days (hopefully they'll understand when not all of their toys and books made the cut).

The other neat, God thing was this: Joel was trying to make sure we had all batteries charged and asked me to get the camera battery charging. When he reminded me the second time, I actually did it. Low and behold! The charger wasn't there...the battery wasn't either! I had the same plan as Joel, but charged the battery back at his parent's house. And, sure enough, the battery was still charging there tonight when I called. :) Thankfully UPS is super fast and I am confident that we can get it here before we leave on Friday. I'm so glad he wanted to charge batteries tonight vs. tomorrow night when it would be too late. God really does take good care of us.

Well, I'm off to bed - thank you for all your prayers. Dade only coughed once and didn't have any problems flying. I'm the one whose ear has not been right since we made our initial decent into Charlotte (where we had a 40 minute layover). Please pray my sinuses clear up before we leave and the kids do well tomorrow while we are busy with meetings. Thanks again!

It's hard to say goodbye

It's not easy to think that tonight (which is almost over) is my second-to-last night in Texas for the next 13 months or so. It'll probably be awhile before we post pictures on the blog - hopefully we'll have time and internet speed during our 2 days in NY.

We've had sweet times with family and friends. Yet there have been so many we haven't gotten the chance to visit with. Next time we'll start saying "goodbye" when we get home because then MAYBE we'll get everyone. What do you think moms? :)

Please be praying for the kids. I'm not sure if they are able to process what's going on and I'm not sure Joel and I are really understanding it all either. It's a crazy excitement to finally get started and this is mixed with a feeling of wonder at the unknown and a sense of sadness that comes with missing those we love. It's all hard to process.

We're going to make Charlotte (Joel's mom) our power-of-attorney tomorrow so she'll be able to close on our house for us this Friday! God is so good! Joel prayed that we'd get to keep the house until we left - he thinks maybe he should have been more specific - like maybe until we were ready to leave Texas. :) Good thing God is so smart, We are so grateful He has everything under control and we can trust Him.

Last prayer request before I go to bed - Dade has had this congestion/cough thing going on and I have a sore throat - please pray that this won't make travel miserable - or better yet, that God will take it all away. Thanks! My next post will probably be from Pearl River, NY - love y'all!

Dara & Dade's Going away Party

We had such a great time last night with the water party. Thank you all for coming and sharing your time with us. You will all be missed. (for those who couldn't make it - we will miss you too!) :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUSXQjFk96g

enjoy!

The Joel not everyone knows!

Here's a video of Joel wallowing in the mighty Canadian River! Many of you know Joel fairly well, and some of you may know him very well. But few of you have ever seen him like this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY_pL3oz-Qc

The video is so shaky because I was laughing too hard to keep the camera steady. Once Joel was dirty enough he went off chasing the kids. He's too fast to catch completely, but you'll get the gist of it. Enjoy!

p.s. We are hoping to close on the house tomorrow (Friday) but it will be a miracle if it happens that fast. I figure, God is big enough so if He wants it to happen it will! We'll let you know.

Update

We're still having a great time out here with my family. We've had storms, card games, basketball games, fishing, nintendo, puzzles, painting, and good visits. We're filled up with good memories.

Our house is being inspected as I write this. It's been such a neat story of how God works. We've actually signed with lady #3 and she loves the house! Lord willing, the inspection and appraisal will go well and we'll be able to close on June 19th - 11 days after we signed!

Dade Michael Skinner

Today, 6/06, Dade turns 6! He is such a gift to us and we are privileged to be his family. Yesterday Tiffany, Joel, Dara, and Dade took a slip 'n slide and added Dawn dish soap. It apparently makes you slide much better.

Here's a few pictures of Dade as he has grown up.

Funny

God really is funny. That almost seems sacrilegious, but I don't mean it to be. He has His perfect plan and that's what we pray for. The lady with whom we signed the contract backed out. She's getting back together with her husband. We would obviously want that for her and wish her the best. We will be signing the second offer tomorrow morning (as long as we can receive the fax her at Boys Ranch). How great God is to provide for us in this way.

There was even another offer made but they wanted to close in July and the one we will be signing would like to close on June 19th. Please keep us in your prayers. Thanks!

Pray

I realized today that we haven't told everyone that we have signed a contract on the house! On Tuesday night we were presented with 2 (!) offers for the house. God is so cool. The appraisal and inspection will take place within the next 6 days. Please pray that it will all go well.

We're out here in Boys Ranch with my family and we'll be here for the next 9 days or so. Out here there's nothing to do but relax and play. It's the calm before the storm - a new, exciting and scary storm. Please pray for good quality time with everyone. We'll let you know what happens with the house.

I'm quoting Joel, "Do you think if I sit here long enough this stuff will just disappear?"

This is Joel writing now, because Jill left this blog unfinished and I will need to shut down this computer soon. I then told her that I figured enough people in the Bible have done stuff by faith and watched as God provided. I guess I was just wondering if I had enough faith to make it all move to storage, my parents house, or magically get packed into luggage. Jill then reminded me that God won't do our part - I was just hoping that the packing and moving might be His part as well. Glad I can provide the comic relief in her life!!!!

Wrapping Up Work

I'm a few day delayed in writing this. I wrapped up my final day of work on Friday and it has been non-stop moving and packing since. I know I'm unusual in both this economy and generation in the fact that I have had the same job since college. Jill has asked the question quite a bit - how do you ever really wrap up 13 1/2 years of work? The last week was a blur of getting stuff squared away and wrapping up loose ends. And yet, no matter how much you do, you still have these nagging feelings that you've forgotten something or left something undone. I made lists, walked Dad and Susan through different procedures I do (or did), finished up some last minute invoicing, rebuilt a couple of AS400's and redid a PC for future use. Susan left at 4:00 and Dad left a little early to take Dade to a movie. I had the last hour by myself. God must have known I would need that time to process all the emotions. I cried a lot and prayed even more. One of my prayers lately has been that we would finish strong (in our jobs, at ministry, etc.). I can only hope that when it comes to the office that I finished strong. I get emotional writing this. This was my first day at home and it was a struggle to not get in the truck and go by the office to see how things were going. Pray that I will make this adjustment with grace and pray for all of us with all the changes ahead!!!!