May News

Gabriel and his buddies at preschool! Gabriel LOVES school!

Senor Riley...budding seven year old, and brilliant individual! He's learning to read and write Portuguese before speaking it! Odd eh!?

Little Lily...the princess! She is one original cookie! Her personality has emerged oh so greatly and she is a very independent little lady. She also is very sweet!

Okay so many of you are probably wondering…Where are those Riley updates, and why have they been so few and far between! Well to put it in a nutshell there’s a song from my childhood that goes:

“He’s still working on me, to make me what I ought to be.”

Basically this can really be our motto right now. There are so many ways that we think we’ve reached our masterpiece and then the Lord goes and challenges us to see things in a new way and to again let go of those things that we like to hold dear in our lives that we’d rather not give up to him, and then it’s like the prodding starts and settles in until the Lord causes anguish to overcome and then finally….we give it up to him and feel at peace! Why the struggle!? Why are we so much like the Israelites at times when they were wandering through the desert and God was caring for them in such awesome ways, but yet they had to grumble and complain?

We are finishing our year well. The gathering of our things are coming together. We priced everything and will be having a sale in a week at our home.

We recently had someone ask us, so what are your plans when you return. We honestly do not have anything yet. The Lord is preparing us for what he has. My heart was set on working in a specific district, and when the Lord closed that door firmly, it was like He was saying, “You need to wait on me.” That’s where we are at. The Lord made it very clear to us this year that the time is right to return. We are praying for the right places to come along for Nathaniel.

Recently, the Lord really prodded me to be willing to home school the children. This was something that I had always thought I would never want to do, but as I’ve considered it more I am willing and actually quite excited about it if the Lord makes it a possible opportunity!

So the news here is we are beginning to live in a shell of a home. We said good-bye to our dog (a very hard thing for the kids), and now we are gradually separating from all of our things and living with just the bare essentials. The Lord has answered many prayers in providing people to purchase things that we need right until we leave, and we will be able to continue to use them until it’s time to go.

Please continue to pray for us. We are definitely very excited, but there are moments of insanity as well!