So….What Did You Do This Year?

Sometimes people would ask us how our vacation was going.  Wow, if missionaries get a year off for vacations, I want to be a missionary.  Sounds good to me.

We would just laugh.  We’re actually looking forward to getting back to Tanzania so that our lives can calm down.  

Here are some statistics from this year:

6 ABF presentations

5 Children’s presentations

6 Sermons

4 presentations in schools

4 recruiting presentations

8 Life Group presentations

7 Types of other presentations

32 Meals with guests in our home (and so many more on our list that we didn’t get to!)

21 Meals in other people’s homes

And that doesn’t include the 8 weeks we spent on the road and the dozens of meals we received then.

10 Churches visited

Gil attended two men’s retreats; I attended two women’s retreats.  I attended a regular Mom’s Bible study; Gil went to prayer groups.  We all had doctor and dentist appointments.  We led the college group at Faith Community, including taking them on a retreat.  We attended Family camp, I took a trip to Washington, and Gil was the speaker at a youth retreat.

We met with multiple missions committees; we met one-on-one with people interested in missions; we attended many church events at various churches.  I wrote dozens of thank-you notes.  We regularly attended our own Life Group and took them through When Helping Hurts.

We put together newsletters and reorganized our mailing lists.  Gil prepared sermons, prepared our presentations, and prepared youth and college talks.  He audited three classes at The Master’s College and read and studied literally dozens of books to prepare him for our next season.

We put 30,000 miles on our van.

Our kids did soccer, gymnastics, basketball, Awana, ballet, art, and piano (not all of them at all the same time.)

Many, many, many weeks, we had something happening every single night of the week.  In fact, it was so much the norm for our family that if we had an evening at home that was just us, the kids thought it was weird and would repeatedly ask who was coming over.

Oh yeah, and homeschooling.  That little thing.  It’s probably a miracle that Josiah learned to read in all this.  (But let me tell you….I’m glad we homeschooled.  There’s no way we could have traveled so much and kept the kids up till 10 on a regular basis with traditional school.)

Two weeks from today, we move out of our apartment.  In five weeks, we leave the country.  We’re on the home stretch.  It’s been incredible and amazing and life-changing for all of us…..

But we’ll be glad to get home.