Reintroducing Our Kids

As we are planning our upcoming furlough/home assignment and will probably see many of you, we think this is a good time to reintroduce our kiddos.

Judah is 10 now (how did that happen??!). He is still an active, athletic kid who loves to build things, play with animals, imitate any superhero imaginary scenario, run around and explore, and tease his sisters. History and science are his favorite parts of school, and he's competitive and loves games. He plays daily with our neighbor, Kharis, who has been at our place nearly daily since we moved here, and because of that regular interaction Judah is pretty good at kid-level Indonesian.

Elly is 7 now and alternates between tagging along with Judah's latest adventure and being the ringleader in imaginary play with Hope. She is a bit of an introvert and likes her own space. She's decorated her room with her artwork and organizes everything but doesn't feel it necessary to actually play with the toys that she organizes! She loves to listen to audiobooks and stories, and is very articulate and clear perceptive. She loves to help me cook and gather flowers and chase butterflies.

Hope is nearly 5 and is incredibly good-natured, always following mom around with giggles and snuggles and smiles, face framed by a mass of incredible curls. She loves to play just about anything that anyone will play with her, matching her brother in fierce mock battles or playing My Little Ponies with Elly. She is often narrarating her imaginary world at top volume while mom is homeschooling her siblings. She just learned to swim and is a bundle of joy.

Our kids are doing great in the way they have bonded together and in the way we all enjoy our family life. They have steadily worked through homeschooling and we've established a rythm of family church at home during the pandemic. They are growing and strong and imaginative and fun. They've done so well at processing through the pandemic and the deaths of our neighbors.

This past term has been very different than our first in that we haven't had other missionary kids to be peers for our kids from the same language and culture. They're returning back to the USA having been quite isolated culturally, and being in the USA will probably be alternately delightful and stressful to them. We'd love your prayers for them as they adjust and grow and grapple with new and different things. They are still at the age where kids often transition more easily, but still it's a total immersion in a world they don't know well. We have a lot of medical and academic challenges that need to be addressed and assessed, so we anticipate lots of appointments and offices. We really pray that they will have some really sweet time connecting with extended family that we miss so much when we are overseas, that they find some friends, and that they are able to have some roots and connections in the US culture so that they have some sense of ownership of their passport country.

We don't yet know what we'll be doing academically for them while we are back in the USA, it's something we've been doing a lot of research, prayer, and communication with people back in Dallas about. So, we'd appreciate your prayers for our kiddo, their relationships, their spiritual growth, and for academic growth over the course of this year.