Jesus Film update

For those of you who read my ministry newsletters, you might recall that The JESUS Film has been a major undertaking of late. And by "of late," I suppose I mean for nearly three years now! The Zanaki and Kabwa people groups now have the film in their own languages, as of earlier this year. The Simbiti and Jita people groups will both have it before too much longer - they will start recording next month.

I was quite excited to receive a recent update from a colleague in Musoma about what has been happening with the Zanaki and Kabwa film. Back in August, an organization called Life  Ministry did some evangelism/church planting/Jesus Film showing training for Christian leaders from these groups. Exciting stuff! They equipped them with generators, projectors, and a way to transport these things - motorcycle carts, so now these leaders can travel around their areas to do evangelism and church planting through showing the film. Hooray! I haven't heard a progress report on how it's going, but I'm just excited to know that things are continuing and these films are being used to spread the gospel in people's heart languages!

Fall Fun at Vale Wood Farm

"Baby Ben" - a calf with a perfect 7 on his face

They were squealing, "Cow! Cow!" as they ran up to this big picture

Exploring straw. Fascinating stuff if you are under age 2.

Don't like sandboxes? Try corn boxes!

My very near and dear friend Shannon and I met up today for some fall fun. We started off at the sunken gardens of St. Francis something or other... it was a monastery across the street from St. Francis College in Loretto, PA. Anyway, it was kind of wet and not the right season to properly enjoy it, but we could tell it would be smashingly gorgeous in the spring and summer. We plan to go back next year to enjoy it once again when there are flowers and waterfalls.

Next we went over to Vale Wood Farm (http://www.valewoodfarms.com) and weren't quite sure what to expect there, but it was fabulous! As you can see from the pictures above, it was quite the farmy day for our little ones. Joel and Zarya were just barely old enough to really enjoy it, which means we can keep going back for years of more fun in the future.

In addition to games (everything from corn slingshot launches and hay slides to a table with toy tractors on it), there were piglets, goats, chickens, peacocks, and a calf with a 7 on his face. Apparently if you are a football fan, you immediately think of some Pittsburgh Steelers player who is #7 and named Ben, but to me and Shannon, it was just cool that little Ben the calf had a 7 on his face, and to our toddlers, it was just ridiculously exciting to see a calf up close. We appreciated that they also had picnic tables for us to eat our sack lunches, toilets (you'll recall I'm quite pregnant, so this was a must), and lots of grass for running around. We didn't even get around to the adult or kid hay  mazes or go on a hay ride farm tour, but should we have had older kids who didn't require getting home to take naps, that would have been fun, too. Our kids were more at the corn box stage, and that was fine with us. Shannon and I got to talk and visit while they dug around in dried corn. And corn is just as much fun as sand, but a whole lot cleaner.

We finished things off with teensy weensy ice cream cones, and of course I felt compelled to buy milk, ice cream, and yogurt in the dairy store because it looked so fresh and good.

All in all, a very fun fall day!

Visit from Nammie

Andrew's mom came out to visit us earlier this week, and Zarya soaked up every minute of attention from Nammie! It only took her an hour or so to figure out that while parents might sometimes be too busy to read your entire library to you, grandmothers aren't. Let's just say that this first picture was enacted about six hundred times during the course of five days.

Although the pessimists who run weather websites predicted rain during Wendy's visit, we enjoyed lots of crisp, sunny days. We went up to the Amish town in the north of the county and did the tourist thing one day, went to our favorite park (pictured here) another day, and enjoyed our other favorite park the following day. Our town might not be a major metropolis, but we have some very nice parks here! Of course Zarya thought spending multiple mornings at various parks was a great way to show her Nammie her new town.

Other grandmotherly treats for the adults included her making us an apple pie and spending her final evening here babysitting while we went on a date. Months ago we'd been given tickets for a fun event, but weren't sure how we were going to make that happen. However, it fell right during Wendy's visit, and voila! Off we went all by ourselves, knowing that Zarya was happily being read to, fed, bathed, and put to bed by a very capable person.

It's a long trip from Oregon to Pennsylvania, but we're sure glad that Wendy took the time to come visit. She didn't even appear to have any jetlag!

What I miss... what I don't miss

Passion fruit in my backyard

Beautiful views of Lake Victoria

Fresh tilapia and chips

Are there things I miss about life in Tanzania? Most definitely! Are there things I am happy to have left behind? Of course! I was happy to be there, and I'm also happy to be here in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of perks in both places, and I have found that I really like both locations.

What I miss:
-Fresh, cheap tropical fruit
-Cheap phone plans
-Interaction with the translators
-Missionary women's Bible study
-Being near a large body of water
-Never wondering what the weather will be
-Not having to have seasonal clothes (see point above...)
-Fresh fish caught within sight of where you're eating it
-Ease of obtaining drugs (j/k... I mean not having to get a prescription to buy medicine)
And I could keep on going, but those are the ones that are coming to mind right now.

What I don't miss:
-Mosquitoes, snakes, lizards, cockroaches, millipedes, ants, etc. in my house
-Sweating year-round
-Dust
-Shopping, working, interacting with officials, and going to church in Swahili
-Being a day's drive from the nearest reliable hospital
-Errands like getting a driver's license renewed taking all day
-Being the center of attention all the time
-Power outages, water outages, internet outages
-Stores running out of basic things and not knowing when they'll have them again
-Having to decide whom to help and whom to deny, seemingly constantly
And I could keep on going here, too!

6 months / 27 weeks pregnant picture

This is me and Jerod. We're both growing. :-) I'm at 27 weeks, which is 6 months. In fact, I'm due three months from tomorrow, so I guess that means I'm entering the third trimester!

It's a little funny and sad to realize that when I was pregnant with Zarya, I always knew exactly how many weeks along I was, what fruit her size was comparable to, what developmental things were happening, etc. But for poor #2 kid, this is like the third time I've had to check my calendar just to remember how far along I am, and it wasn't until writing this that I realized I've now hit the third trimester.

We'll see how I do at remembering to take pictures of him, weigh and measure him, write every first in his baby book, and all of those things that I have done so faithfully with Zarya. I was a second child and never felt like my parents forgot me or thought I was any less amazing for not being the first, so hopefully I'll follow in their footsteps, and Jerod will grow up oblivious that I didn't keep exact track of him in utero. He moves around enough these days that I certainly don't forget he's there, at least!

Kids Bible memorization music

Back in the day when I was a sharp-minded youth, I was very good at memorizing Scripture. Really, anything I memorized before age 15 is in my mind to stay, especially if I learned it to a song. Anyone can learn a song, but sometimes memorizing a passage of Scripture seems like a lot of work. I can still sing verses I learned in some Sunday school class eons ago. They are stuck in my head forever, and that's a good thing!

Our family has a morning tradition of lolling around on our king bed after Zarya wakes up. Andrew has usually been up for over an hour by that point, but even he comes back to bed to hang out with a happy, wide-awake Zarya as she drinks her sippy cup of milk, and me as I gradually become coherent after being jumped on by a toddler. Thanks to Zarya's obsession with music, we always have a CD playing (we're a little old-fashioned on this - we have iPods and listen to Pandora and all, but the technology hasn't made it upstairs yet). We started out with a little kids' Bible-based songs CD, which Zarya loved, but it kind of drove us adults batty after a while. What I didn't like is that the songs were close to Scripture, but not quite. It was like memorizing it just a bit wrong for all the verses, and the tunes were catchy... obnoxiously catchy.

And so my great search for the perfect accompaniment for our mornings began! I wanted something that was straight Bible verses, quality music that adults can appreciate, and fun enough for toddlers. Here's what I found:

This was the winning one for us. Zarya LOVES that there are kids singing the songs and saying the verses (along with Steve Green), and the tunes are a nice mix of bouncy and serious. Andrew and I recognize a lot of the songs from our own childhoods, proof that these CDs aren't exactly brand-new! But they don't sound dated, and it's not like the Bible gets old. Great stuff for toddlers on up through elementary years, and the parents don't go crazy listening to it, either. You can have a listen at: http://www.christianbook.com/steve-green/hide-em-in-your-heart-2/5099921378522/pd/CD78592?event=ESRCG

Many friends have recommended Seeds Family Worship to me. I am really impressed with what they've produced - this picture is of their "Seeds of Courage" CD, but there are also many other albums with names like Seeds of Faith, Seeds of Praise, etc. I have friends with whom I was in a Bible study, and often when we came across a verse, they'd burst into song, thanks to having listened to Seeds music. I think these albums look pretty great for families with kids who are preschool age on up, and they are definitely on my wish list for the future, when Zarya is just a little bit older. You can listen here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_20?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=seeds%20family%20worship&sprefix=seeds+family+worship%2Caps%2C232

So if you're thinking that learning verses set to music appeals to you, that's what my research unveiled!

Side note:

Available for a mere cent here: http://www.amazon.com/Word-God-Speak-Shelter-Various/dp/B000JJS7JI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-1&keywords=word+of+God+speak+Shelter

I have this album and like it, but it didn't quite fit into this blog post because it's for adults, not kids. The reviews are not amazing, but my personal opinion is that I enjoy it!

Garden Bread Recipe

It seems every time I make a Facebook post involving food, at least a few people request the recipe. And since I just wrote about baking in my new kitchen for the first time and included the detail that I made carrot/zucchini spice bread, I thought I'd better put the recipe here so I'm ready for those requests!

It's actually a recipe I call Garden Bread. As with everything I make, I use recipes as suggestions and vary them a bit every time. But this is what I generally start with as a base for my variations:

4 cups grated zucchini and carrots (whatever percentage of each you want)
2 1/2 cups sugar (sometimes I use part brown and part white, sometimes all white)
1 1/2 cups oil
4 eggs
1 Tbls vanilla
6 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 Tbls cinnamon

Variations: Add 1/2 cup of cocoa, add chocolate chips, or add cloves/allspice/nutmeg (I just shake in a bit of each).

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients, then combine the two. Pour into three or four (depending on if you prefer bigger or smaller loaves) greased loaf pans or three dozen greased muffin tins or some combination thereof. Bake at 350 - generally it takes at least 50 minutes for loaves, and 20-something minutes for muffins.

And if you think it sounds ridiculous to make that much at once and your freezer doesn't have space for loaves to lounge around, just halve the recipe and you'll have a more reasonable amount.