Well, I have not been keeping up with this blog like I had hoped or planned. :) It makes me laugh now when I was so ambitious and said I wanted to try to blog every day for our first year here, and now I am feel accomplished if it is once a month!! Here are a couple of updates on what is going on in our lives over here in TZ.

The older three kids are on summer break for the next few weeks. They will be attending Hope International School again starting in the fall. Brian and I prayed a lot about doing home school next year, or sending them back to Hope, and feel so much peace about them going back to Hope. It was a step of faith for us, seeing as we have not raised any of the funds needed for them for school next year, but we are trusting God to provide all of our needs. The kids are so thrilled to be going back to Hope, and can't wait to see all of their friends and teachers again. Brian will be serving as the campus pastor again next year, and will also be serving on the school board. We are looking forward to an amazing year!

Having the kids home for summer break has been a big change of schedule for us. It is not like America here, where you have multiple options of things to do with your children. We have one playground here, and that is about it. I have never been more thankful for a creative husband, who is very gifted at thinking up new and creative games and such to keep the kids entertained. It is actually not even warm enough to go swimming here right now! We are so surprised at how cold it gets here during our "winter". When it is in the low 70's here, it is freezing for us! It is funny to us how acclimated we have become already! :)

One of our main ministries here is working with New Life Foundation. We go out there usually five days a week. On Tuesday and Thursdays Brian will work with the kids teaching them dramas that they will be performing on the streets, in the juvenile prison, at local churches, and things like that. On Wednesday Brian teaches on the Holy Spirit to grades 5th, 6th, and 7th. On Fridays we are out there bright and early at 7:30 so that Brian can lead chapel for all the students there, which is somewhere around 450 kids. On Saturdays we love to just go and play with them and work on building our relationships with the kids. They are some of the sweetest kids I have ever met in my life. They love our kids and spoil them. It was amazing to me when we were there one day last week, and I felt the Lord bring to my mind when I had {multiple times since being here} cried out to Him that I just wanted my kids to be loved on like they were at home. Looking around I realized that these kids are doing that to my kids. I know my kids feel so loved by them, and it just overwhelmed me in that moment, these kids that we are ministering to, are ministering to my heart each time we are with them.

This last Sunday, church was led by the youth. The kids did a great job presenting a drama, and sang some song with motions as well. The seventh graders performed the drama they had been working on so hard with Brian, and did a wonderful job! We were so proud of them!!

 

We are absolutely LOVING being in our new house! It is amazing to me to watch it become not just a house, but really our home. It is such a safe haven here. People ask us all the time how we are doing and how we are adjusting. I cannot believe we have been here five months now! Time has really flown by! The kids for the most part are really enjoying it here. On occasion they will really miss family at home, or get upset not understanding things, like why they can't just go to the store to get a baby doll they are really wanting. They are learning amazing life lessons though, and Brian and I honestly could not be any more proud of them. I {Mandee} am adjusting much better as well. I still miss home like crazy, and still struggle a lot with dying to my flesh here daily. I am relying on God to show me what it really looks like to "consider it pure joy my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds" I am learning so much during this season of my life. It is honestly a pretty painful time of learning, but I love that as Christians we truly have hope through all things!! I have joy in knowing that I am being made stronger daily.

 

We cherish all of your kind emails, words of encouragement, and prayers for our family! If you would be interested in joining our monthly support team, please send me an email at mandeeloudermilk@yahoo.com

We are so thankful for all of our supporters, we literally could not be here without you. We are humbled month after month getting our reports, and seeing people sowing financially into our family and the work we are doing here. We love you all!!!

 

Visiting the Masaii {{in pictures}}

 

 

 

 

 

Birthdays!

We celebrated Kayden turning SEVEN while at language school with some amazing new friends!

 

A week later we celebrated our Sopheroo turning FIVE! For the next couple of weeks her and     Emmersyn were both five, and Sophee thought that was pretty cool!

 

 

May 9th was actually Brian's 30th{!!!!!} birthday and our sweet friend here watched our kids so we could go have dinner together. It was a nice night just the two of us. We were telling our server about how in America when it is your birthday they will come and sing to you, so a group of the servers surprised Brian and brought him some ice cream and sang to him. It was really sweet of them!

Then two days later it was Emmersyn's big day and she turned SIX years old!

 

 

We went to a tea garden about 25 minutes from where we live, and Em got a really nice birthday cupcake from the owner. It was a fun day together!

 

 

The very next day was Mother's Day. It was an emotional day for me, which I was not expecting. I was pretty emotional all morning, so Brian let me stay home from church and have some time to myself, which was so nice. Then he came and picked me up after and we went to a picnic at one of the churches in town.

 

 I LOVE LOVE LOVE our four precious gifts from God. I feel so blessed that He has entrusted them to us. We had a nice day together as a family, and Brian had a table made for me for our new house. I need to get a picture of it, it is beautiful!

Better late than never with pictures, I am going to try to play catch up with the blog over the next couple of days!

Here is a quick recap of what we have been up to the past couple of weeks:

 

Brian is the campus pastor at our kid's school here in Moshi. This is Brian teaching chapel on Friday last week.

 

 

We had one of Kayden's best friends from school come stay with us Easter weekend. We had so much fun with him and were so sad when it was time for him to leave. It was so funny watching him observe things while he was with us. He kept asking me what lots of things were, for instance he brought me a package of Kleenex and when I showed him what they were for he laughed and laughed. Luka has had an extremely hard life, and yet he is one of the sweetest, most obedient, kindest little boys I have ever met. He thought dying Easter eggs was pretty great too! :)

 

 

On Easter Sunday we had a wonderful service at a church in our town here and the kids did a program that consisted of them singing songs and reciting verses they have memorized. It was so sweet!

 

 

 

 

Lots and lots of work being done getting our house move in ready!

 

 

 

Brian taught some of the youth a human drama that will be performing in school and churches starting this week. They are doing a great job, and the drama is very powerful!

 

 

Brian has preached in three different churches the past four weeks. Just this morning we went up into the mountains so he could preach. The drive up there was actually one of the scariest moments of my life. It is pretty steep in some places and it had rained the night before, so the mud was very slick. We kept sliding backwards and I kept thinking we were just going to roll right down the mountain. It didn't help that we had nine grown adults and six children all squeezed into our car. We were full to the max. Thankfully we made it though, and had a great service with our brothers and sisters in Christ

 

I do not have any pictures of us going to the orphanage we went to this weekend, but that is by far one of my favorite things about being here. I love being able to love on these children who have no parents, and pray over them, that they would feel their Heavenly Father's extreme love for them. I truly consider it such an honor.

 

We are getting ready to head up to our language school two weeks from today. We are very excited for the help with the Swahili and have heard great things about our school. We will travel about an hour to get to it and it just so happens within the three weeks we will be there Brian, Kayden, Emmersyn, and Sophee will all have their Birthdays! So we will have lots to celebrate while we are there! We plan on staying there the entire three weeks and will live on the school grounds.

 

So there is a little bit of an update on lives lately. Along with all of that we are still adjusting to life here in Moshi, and just every day life of being of family of six, with four small children. We LOVE it here, and feel so honored that this is what we get to do with our lives. Thank you all so much your support!

I woke up this morning so excited. We were taking all four kids and going with our friend and her daughter to our first orphanage since being here. One of my very top excitements about coming to Africa was to have the honor of loving on sweet orphans here. One of my dreams for our future would be to have our own baby/children's home, but I am getting ahead of myself now. :) So we woke up today, had breakfast, everyone showered, and headed off to the orphanage. The one we went to today is actually just up the road from where our new house is located. We were all really excited as we pulled in and we explained to the kids what we thought would be happening and to prepare them, as they have never been anywhere like this before. As we walk in and are being shown around my heart starts to melt already. We walk into one room and there are about eight one year olds all in a row in highchairs getting fed at the same time. I wish so badly that I could have taken pictures, but out of respect with it being our first time there we didn't. Then we got the tour of the rooms, kitchen area, and play area. The line of boys came out of their room and they all started running straight towards me, so I bent down on my knees and they ran right into my arms. It was the sweetest thing. Then they got taken to the big play area. Then it was the line of girls with the same thing happening. They see me and start running for a hug. I am a complete puddle of mush by this point. We go with the girls to play with all the kids in the play area. It was a complete mob. I wasn't really prepared for it. I was holding two kids and had about four at my feet crying because they wanted to be picked up. It is heartbreaking as you see that all they want is love and to be held. As soon as you pick them up they stop crying and start smiling and laughing or snuggle right in. I notice that many of them have wet shorts {with urine} but there is no way I can put them down and stop loving on them. I remember reading Heidi Baker's book and reading about her holding the kids with lice, scabies, urine soaked, and wondering if I would be able to do that. Well, in the moment it didn't even cross my mind that I was now covered in urine. They were just precious little kids that needed love, cuddles, and snuggles. Kayden was thrilled beyond what I could have imagined! He kept saying Mom this is so amazing! Can we take all of them home? Mom I love them all so much! Our girls though were very overwhelmed. The kids kept touching them, trying to lift up their shirts, pinching them trying to get their attention, and the girls didn't understand. So we decided it would be time to go, we knew it wasn't fair to our girls as they just couldn't understand and were so overwhelmed. So we all left, and the screaming and crying began. It was more than I could take. I just broke down and started crying. Seeing all these precious kids younger than most of my kids, screaming and crying because you were leaving and they just wanted love from you was so hard.
My friend that we went with and I plan on going back every Saturday we can, without children, to love and spend time with the kids. Brian and I got the head of the orphanage's phone number and are going to be calling her this week to get the information we need to set things up so we can start fostering some of these children if possible. It is a home for children under the age of five, so once these precious kids hit age five they have to go somewhere else, and they have a hard time finding places. Brian and I are very excited about dreams we both are starting to have for our future here, involving many children. It will be so exciting to see over time how God will allow us to pour into these kids lives.
I have so much to blog about and will be playing catch up this week. The internet has been very unreliable lately so I am hoping this week it will be good and I can update everyone on what we have been doing! We love you all so very much!

{ONE month!!}

I can hardly believe it has been one month since we first arrived in Tanzania, and what a huge difference a month can make! The first couple of weeks here were hard, and I would even say hard is an understatement. :) I am so thrilled to say though that I have seen and experienced God's grace and peace in such a deep way over these past couple of weeks. Once I worked up the courage to fully submit myself to His will for my life here in Africa, everything started to change. I was able to sleep soundly and on my own at night {I had been taking sleeping pills to help me the first few days}, joy and laughter were making appearances in my life again, my heart was open to be excited about the work we will be doing here, I started embracing relationships with new friends here, and so on and so on. I feel like a completely different person than the girl that was here the first night. I am SO thankful to be on the other end of that first major transition of adjusting here! I am realizing {even daily still} that just because our family is here, in Africa, doesn't mean we lost our family and friends back in the States. Those relationships will always be there, and it has been amazing to see them even deepen with us being here. Even typing this my eyes are full of tears of thankfulness, as I am truly amazed at the work He has done in my heart. He is such a good and loving Heavenly Father.
This past month has flown by! It has obviously been a month of adjusting for our family. Our older three children are attending a school here called Hope International. The school has been such a blessing to our family and the kids are loving it there! Sophee and Emmersyn attend for a half day {this year} and Kayden is in school for the full school day. They are all thriving and making new friends here. It is such a blessing as their Mommy to see them doing so well, and fitting right into their new lives here. I am so proud of them. They struggled with the food when we first got here, but we are finding things that everyone likes, and they are doing much better now. Our little Harper Praise is LOVING it here. I could have never even imagined how much she would enjoy being here. She loves to play outside all day, and loves here one on one time with Mommy while the older three are at school. We found a play group with a lot of children her age and have gone one time, and she really enjoyed it. The only thing Harper isn't super crazy about is that when we are out in public the Tanzanians will just come up and try to grab her right out of my hands. It is just a cultural thing here, but she wants nothing to do with it. She has learned to stiffen her arms up so they can't grab her, and they get the point.
Brian has been asked to lead chapel at the kids school every week, and is very excited about it. I often wondered  why God would take Brian out of his youth and children's position at our church, when that was so obviously one of his major gifts, but doors are opening here for him to just jump right back into working with youth. I love seeing him in his element, working with precious children. He has also had a couple of drama practices, where he is teaching the youth one of the human dramas we did back in the States. The youth are doing a great job picking up on it and they hope to be bringing it to the streets in town very soon. I will for sure try and get a video of it!
Last Sunday Brian preached at a church in one of the villages right near us. It was so great to be back in a Africa church! Next weekend we will be heading to another church, where Brian will be preaching as well. We are also working a lot on our house, and hope to have it move in ready by the time we get home from language school, which is mid-May.
So there is a quick update on what we have been up to this past month. We are working on a newsletter right now, and hope to have it out in the next couple of days, and it will have more details about our home project, and more details and pictures of what we have been up to.  Thank you all so much for you love and continued prayers!

My {first) African Birthday

My birthday was a week ago, but I thought this post was better late than never. It is amazing for me to look back over the past few years, and remembering always thinking that my next birthday might be in Africa. Always wondering what it would be like, and what we would do. I just remember the morning of my birthday waking up and thinking, " I am in Africa." I felt so blessed that our time has come and we are here. On the same hand, I was a little bit sad because I knew the day would not be spent with our family and friends at home. I was a little unsure of what the day would hold. We woke up, got the kids ready and took them to school. After we had picked the girls up from school {Kayden stays a full day while the girls are only a half day right now} we went out to lunch to my favorite restaurant for pizza. Don't be fooled when I say pizza. :) It is good, but nothing at all like Pizza Hut! :) My dear friend here, Mary, had just delivered her third daughter via C-section earlier that morning, and her husband called me and asked if I would like to come up and see Mary and the baby as a birthday present. Um, of course! If you know me at all, you know I have an extreme weakness for babies, especially little newborns. It was so nice to get to see Mary and meet sweet Naomi. It was also very interesting, and a little sad, to experience my first trip to an African hospital.

Once I was home from the hospital it was time to head over to our friends house for dinner with them. I had already guessed by then that Brian was throwing me one of his "surprise" parties { I am pretty sure he has thrown me one every year since we have been married :) } and sure enough it was.

It was a great night with our new community of friends. Of course my fun loving husband had some games planned that were fun for everyone.

Brian had even picked me up cake from a bakery in town.

 It was a great night and I left feeling so blessed for so many reasons. It is still so surreal to me sometimes that we are actually here. I have spent the last seven years of my life wondering when it would be, and it is here. God has been so good and faithful to our family, it honestly blows my mind. This past month has been the hardest time of my life, and yet at the same  time some of the best and most precious times of my life. I will be posting next time about what we have been up to this last month, and how I have personally seen God's amazing grace overflowing in my life. Love from the whole Loudermilk crew to YOU!