A day in the life of {{Harper Praise}}

Oh, how I love our Harper Praise! She bring so much joy and laughter into our lives every single day. This time of her life has been especially fun as we watch her personality really explode right before our eyes! Last week I took pictures of her throughout the day to try and capture what a day might look like for our feisty little three year old. {.... and yes even though she has on three different outfits this was all the same day.}

 

 

Helping Mommy make some zucchini bread for breakfast.

 

Harper loves Mama Jackson. She was helping clean out the horrible smell in the fridge which was a result of a four day power outage.

 

...... then she moved onto cleaning the cabinets.

 

Next, cleaning her shoes. This was when outfit number two came in because she drenched herself during this process.

 

Playing baby dolls with her older sissy's.

 

Then playing with her real life baby doll, her little sissy. Kamila was having none of it though.

 

This world is not my home.....

Hebrews 13:14 , " For this world is not our home, we are looking forward to our city in heaven, which is yet to come."

When I was in high school I was in a traveling singing group called Sounds of Praise. One of the songs we used to sing had these words, " .. this world is not my home, I am just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue." This song has played in my mind on repeat almost since my feet hit the ground in Tanzania. I have struggled this past fifteen months way more than I would like to admit. I have been surprised at the level of selfishness I have seen come out of my heart at times. I remember reading somewhere that being a missionary is kind of like fasting everything from your old life all at once, and I have to say I agree almost completely with that thought. I have had to lay down idols that I never even knew existed in my life. I have struggled with insecurities that were hidden deep in some secret chamber of my heart that have since been forced out. I have told myself repeatedly that moving back to the States is the answer, then everything will be right and good once again.

Well, we have purchased our tickets for our first furlough home. Initially I was over the moon about it. I would cry literal tears of joy every time I thought about being home with our friends and family, surrounded by all the comforts I knew and loved. As the time gets closer to going home though, new emotions are coming up. A sadness about leaving Tanzania for four months, this place that I am beginning to realize we have new roots at. The other day I asked the kids what they were most excited about doing when we went home. Sophee was very confused and asked me what I meant, that we were already home. God really used that moment to show me that Tanzania is "home" to our family for this season. This honestly doesn't sit well with me at times though. How can this place where I feel like such an outsider all the time be home? A place where no matter where I am my skin will always set me apart from the group no matter how long we are here? And yet we are going back to America soon, our other "home", and I am nervous about not fitting in there either. What will it be like when we go back? Time has passed there too, peoples lives have changed and we haven't been there to see it/ Will we fit right back in, or will it be awkward? Will it really feel like "home" when a chunk of our hearts are in Tanzania now as well?

Then I am reminded time and time again that this world is not our home. I have a deeper understanding of this verse than ever before, I feel. I look forward with such great anticipation to the day when I will be in Heaven, and will feel at peace and rest completely. Until then, I will joyfully enjoy both homes we have here on Earth. I will choose to see it as a blessing that we have amazing friends and family in two places and that we get to see God working among two different nations.

Let me tell you about my{{ BeSt FrIeNd}}

These past couple of weeks have been super emotional for me. I have burst into tears too many times to count just at the thought of my best friend in the States and her precious family. A week from Friday their family will be legally adopting their two sweet, precious, amazing, adorable children. I dream of being able to be home for the adoption { literally, I have dreamt about it every night for the past eight days } and if we had the money for me to fly home I would be there in a heartbeat, like tomorrow. I am still holding out a glimmer of hope that God will move a mountain and somehow it will be able to happen, but if it doesn't then I figured the next best thing would be to pay my best friend a little tribute on the good ole blog.

Amanda,
You are one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my entire life. You are faithful, gentle, loving, full of grace, patient, so kind, loyal, and so much more. I admire you and watching you walk out your life with such surrender to God gives me such encouragement in my own life. I have watched you enter new and sometimes scary territories with doing foster care, and have seen you and Andy thrive and build a precious family all because you were both willing to take a step of faith and trust God with your lives and futures. You {and Andy!} are the most loyal friends in the world. You are always willing to help Brian and I out, whether it be sitting on your kitchen floor with fifty pounds of raw chicken needing to be made for VBS, painting the outside of our house in the FREEZING cold, moving from our house to our mobile home, our mobile home to my parents house, and the grand finale of packing into the morning hours for our move to Africa, Brian and I always know you both are there whenever and for whatever we need. You are so much more than just a friend, you are truly my sister. I know the relationship between our families is a unique and very special bond. Two families that are more like one big happy family, the Louderyes. :) Thank you for always being just a phone call away and listening to every one of my silly little problems like what I was going through was the most important thing in the world. I miss game nights, park dates, Papa Murphy's BBQ chicken pizza, late night runs to DQ and Casey's, doing garage sales together, watching our kids play together, and so much more. I am so blessed to have you as my sister. I can not ever express how proud of you I am. I miss you every day. I am so incredibly happy for your family and cannot wait to see pictures from the adoption. I remember the night B and G came to your house, and look at them now. They are thriving, loved, happy, beautiful children! I love you and can't wait to see you again!!

One Year Later AND Glory update.

Wow. Although it has been the hardest year of my life, I made it. It has been a year full of tears, growing, God's amazing grace, small victories, and watching God's mighty plan unfold right before my eyes. He has literally turned my mourning into dancing and turned my sorrow into joy. His ways our so much higher than our ways. I have seen it time and time again. Looking back over the year my heart is so full of thankfulness for where we are, and that this is the life we get to live. I remember when we first moved here and were living with our friends before our house was ready. They ate Tanzanian for lunch every day and I remember how terrified I and my kids were of the food. We would not touch it, let alone take a bite of it. Now I laugh looking back at that. My kids and I are now eating Tanzanian food every day. I know to some that may not seem huge, but trust me, it is! I also laugh looking back at the first time we went on a walk with the kids on the dirt roads here. We were all literally tripping all over ourselves, and the kids all had scraped up knees and tears by the time we were done. I used to not be able to breath when Brian was driving us around town I was so nervous, and when we went by the police check stations I thought I would pass out from fear. The unknown of our everyday lives was just too much for me to handle most days.
I am not the person I was when I stepped off the plane a year ago. It is very hard to describe the change that has occurred in me. I feel stronger, yet am more aware of my weakness apart from Christ than ever before. As I deal with the heartache of living away from family and friends, deal with culture shock daily, and just all the small details and hardships of living in a third world country, I cannot help but fall more in love with Christ as I lean on Him alone to lead me.
This month alone has been so full of opportunities to trust Him with every situation and have joy all the while, even when I cannot see what the next step is. An example of this would be concerning our Glory girl. Glory is the precious baby girl we met when we first came to Tanzania last year that both Brian and I fell in love with instantly. This past year we have taken the trip to visit her multiple times, watching her grow up and taking any chance we get to spend time with her. We have wanted to adopt her from the moment we laid eyes on her, and have fought an uphill battle to pursue this. Recently we found her birth mother and set up a time to meet with her and her grandmother. There is a major background to this story that I won't go into details about, but trust me when I say it has been an emotional ride with many ups and downs, tears and confusion. At our meeting with them we found out that Glory's bio mom was in an abusive situation and needed help. They were very excited about us wanting to adopt Glory, but b/c of the background we could not just go and sign rights over without first getting her cleared through the police. Brian and I cried with her and told her that we would pray about how we could help, although at the time were unsure of what to do. On the hour and a half ride home from that meeting I cried the whole way, deep cries from my heart. Even though this woman had made some horrible decisions that could cause me to resent her, I was overflowing with compassion for her and her situation. I also cried as I felt the Lord begin to prepare my heart for what could happen. What if we did help her bio mom get out of this horrible situation and she decided she wanted Glory back? Would I be able to handle this? Would I still help this woman? Did I love Glory enough to lay down what I wanted for what is best for her? I cried and cried as I knew that we loved her enough and no matter what, we wanted what was best for her.
A couple of weeks later (which was just this weekend) we were back in Arusha so that our family in town could meet Glory. We went and they met her and of course fell right in love with her. While at the baby home she is at we talked with the social worker who told us that her bio mom was in major distress, and the situation had worsened. We decided right then to call her and go pick her up and bring her home with us. So we did. When we went to meet her she also had her mother with her. Surprises like this are a very common thing in our lives here. :)
So we all piled into our car and started the trip home, on the way picking up one of my dear friends to help translate for us. That night I made them both dinner (which they told me they never were allowed to eat lunch or dinner where they were before, and I believe them after watching them eat that meal) and we sat down and had a good conversation with both women. They expressed such thankfulness for us coming to get them, and wondered how did we know that they had been praying for so long for someone to save them from the situation they were in? During the conversation with them {through my friend translating} I heard something that didn't settle well with me. So I had my friend ask Glory's bio mom if she was wanting to keep her now? She told us yes, she was wanting to keep Glory. I had to excuse myself from the table and went into the bathroom and cried. My friend who had been translating came and hugged me and we cried together. My fears of what could happen were coming true. Don't get me wrong, I was not mad at her at all, my heart was just breaking. We have gotten so attached to Glory and love her with such a deep love, as if she is already ours. So after our talk we took them to a hostel down the road from us to stay for the next couple of nights. The next step is to meet with our Pastor here to see how we can help get everything worked out with her bio mom and where we go from here. This morning we picked them up for church and during worship I just stared at her bio mom and wept. I am so full of love for her, I know it has to be from God. I have no clue what will unfold in the near future concerning all of this, but I have such an overwhelming peace that God is in control and will work all things for His good, and I choose to praise Him through it all. Whether we have the incredible blessing of adding Glory to our family or her rejoining her bio family and helping them to flourish as a family, it will all be worth it. Right now this is what stopping for the one looks like for us, and I am so thankful it is our Glory girl.

A bunch of randomness......

My mind is not functioning right now at it's fullest level, but I just wanted to jot down a few things so I will always remember these small glimpses into this season of our lives.


* We have some mango trees in our backyard that our producing a ton of mangos right now. So much that our workers take some home with them every day, I have been chopping up and freezing a bunch for smoothies, the girls eat them like crazy, and our friends come over and fill up buckets to bring home with them. Even as I am typing I can hear some of the mangos dropping onto the ground.

*One of our biggest goals for the new year is to be much better at communicating with our supporters at home. We have set the goal of getting a newsletter out every six weeks, and so far are sticking to it! :)

*We are gearing up for a three day conference in an amazing church in the village this weekend. It is going to be incredible, we are so excited to see what God has in store!

*Next month will mark our one year of moving to Tanzania. This is very odd to me as some days it feels like we have been here ten years, and other days it feels like I should wake up back in Iowa. The days of just packing the kids in the car and driving to Target seem like a lifetime ago.

*My mother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law will be here in less than a month!!! We are so excited for them to be here!!!

*Being an adult is hard sometimes, and sometimes I make mistakes. I am so thankful we are surrounded by such amazing, loving people who are full of God's grace.

*Tomorrow is one week with our precious Kamila Love. Kamila means "perfect" and we thought the name "perfect love" was just right for her. Whenever I say her name I am reminded of the Bible speaking about perfect love casting out all fear. She is such a fun, sweet, giggly baby.

*Everyone is asking us how Harper Praise is handling not being the baby anymore. She is doing incredible. It is as though she literally grew up over night once we got Kamila. She loves her role of big sister and tells us often that she is a big kid now. Harper is talking like crazy and so full of life and love.

*Last night at two in the morning I was up with Kamila. I had just fed her and had her laying on our bed, changing her diaper. I had just put a good amount of diaper cream on my hand and the power went out. When the power goes out here it is pitch black, like throw your senses off for a minute dark. I couldn't grab a flashlight b/c I had a hand full of diaper rash cream, luckily Brian was quick on his feet to action.

*We have two toilets in our house. The one nearest our room we cannot use at night because it becomes overtaken my massively huge ants. A couple of nights ago I counted twenty of them in there. Some times it catches me off guard that this is normal to me now. :)

*Today at school Sophee's teacher asked all the kids what the hardest part about being a kid is. Her response was "keeping the mosquitos away from her new baby sister." Poor girl, we are working her too hard obviously. :)

A look into our possible future....

 

 

Please join our family in prayer during this season, as we find out if we will be blessed to call these two precious girls our daughters. We are ready for some good news and are full of peace and totally trusting God!

A love that multiplies....

I had shared a few weeks ago how our family was starting the foster/adoption process here in Tanzania. We also have some exciting news on two little girls who will possibly be joining our family, and I would like to tell you a little bit about them. I was telling my friend last night I feel like I have guarded this information for some reason and I am not sure why. She told me it was probably because I didn't want people to think we are crazy, and it made me laugh because she was dead on. I am ok with being crazy though, because when you really think about it the love of God is a completely crazy thing!

The very first month we were in Tanzania we had to travel a little over a hour to go to language school for three weeks. I remember driving down the road our school was on and we drove right by a baby home called Cradle of Love. I recognized the name from seeing it on Facebook and told Brian I would for sure be visiting it while we were in school. I think it was the next day I walked to Cradle with Brian on one of our breaks from studying. We met the amazing director at Cradle, who has since become a dear friend of ours. I spoke with her about my passion for babies and was so thrilled to have met someone with such a kindred heart towards babies as well. She took us around Cradle and introduced us to many of the babies, whose ages range from newborn to three years old. In one of the rooms we met a little girl who at the time was about eight months, and her little life story broke my heart. I remember instantly telling Brian that I thought this little girl was our daughter. She was very shy, sullen, and didn't like to smile much. :) I don't remember what they told us her name was, but I held her and fed her and felt a connection with her I cannot explain. I was sad because I also knew that in Tanzania adoptions are not easy, in fact they have a reputation for being a horribly long and drawn out process. You also have to live in Tanzania for three years before you are supposed to be allowed to adopt. So here I am holding this little girl who I instantly fell in love with, knowing there is nothing I can do about it. The next day we went to see her and I found out they had started calling her Glory. I couldn't believe it. I had very much felt the Lord tell me a couple of months ago that we had a daughter named Glory waiting for us in Africa. When we met this little girl that was not what we were told her name was, and then it was. It was more confirmation for my heart. Language school continued and I tried to get over to see Glory every day. Then our three weeks were up and it was time to head home. It was heartbreaking to have to leave Glory for Brian and I, not knowing when we would see her again or how the future would play out. Over the next few months we were in contact with the director to see what we could do, if anything, to get Glory in our custody. Once we were in our new house and settled we began the process of fostering and told our social welfare there was a little girl in a baby home we were wanting to take in. The told us it would be fine to take here in once we were approved. We have seen such favor with how fast things have moved for us, and we are just now waiting on our background checks from America to be completely approved. My heart was still uneasy though, I was not comfortable taking Glory in without knowing for sure that she would not be able to be taken away from us. We want to have every single last detail in order, and because of Glory's background it is a little complicated. So yesterday we went to Arusha to meet with the social worker there who is in charge of Glory's case. He told us that he is going to look into what he needs to {as far as looking for Glory's birth mom} but he thinks that we should be able to have her in our custody for sure. I cannot explain how exciting this was for Brian and I to hear. We had been told multiple times that we would not be able to adopt Glory for one reason or the other, but Brian and I have both felt very strongly from the beginning that this precious little girl was ours, so we continue to press on. God is so faithful! There are many other details to Glory's story, but maybe another time for those. We love this little girl very much, as do our four kids. They love Glory and talk about her often. They have spent a good amount of time with her, and very much want her to be a part of our family. So will you pray with us please? That over these next couple of weeks we will continue to get good news and everything worked out for Glory to come and live with our family?

Then there is baby girl. We got an email from our friend, who is the director at Cradle of Love, while my parents were here about baby girl. Her story was very different from Glory's and at the same time equally heartbreaking. The email my friend sent said they were getting a newborn baby girl whose rights were going to be signed over, would we be interested. It is VERY uncommon for a family to just sign rights over in Tanzania, as shame is a huge thing in this culture and would be an ultimate shame for sure.It also makes the adoption much easier when the rights are just signed over. So we waited to see if the family actually brought her to Cradle, which they did. The aunt and uncle had been caring for her and they were the ones to bring her. They both agreed to signing their rights over and us adopting her, but we need the entire family to agree. So the entire family is getting together on Christmas and will be deciding whether or not they will allow us to adopt baby girl. We went and met her yesterday and she is absolutely precious. She was born on October 10th, so she is just two months old.

Now, I understand where some people may think we are crazy. Taking in an 18 month old and a 2 month old while we already have four young children at home?! We had always wanted to adopt two children at once, for many reasons, and now it looks like that may be happening, and YES we are a little crazy. :) This is who we are though, and we are 100% positive this is a part of our families call being here in Tanzania. So will you please pray for our growing family? We know and fully trust that God is in control and that brings us great peace. It amazes me to see something we have been talking about for over ten years now, to finally be playing out. God's timing is so perfect and He already knows every single member of our family. It is amazing to walk out this journey, as it builds our faith and increases our trust and joy in Him. We will keep everyone updated as we find out more!