Other | Amy Medina

Taking Inventory

On November 6, 2009

Trying to pack. Bought lots of wooden gifts. Trying to find clothes to pack around the wooden gifts so that they won’t break.

Stared at the closets. Here’s what I found:

Sandals, sundresses, shorts, short-sleeve shirts. Hmmm. Even for California in winter, not going to work.

Grace: two pairs of pants, one sweater. No closed-toed shoes.

Josiah: a few pairs of long pants, one jacket.

Amy: 3 pairs of pants, 1 long-sleeved shirt, 1 jacket, 1 pair of Keds.

Gil: lots of pants (of course), one sweatshirt, one jacket.

Can you tell we live in the land of eternal summer?

Now, before you start worrying about your winter-deprived missionaries freezing to death, my best friend Anne has already been on it, and has quite a collection of clothes for us to borrow. We’ll be fine. Grace will have to sport the socks-with-sandals look for our overnight layover in London, but she’ll be so thrilled that she finally gets to wear socks, that no one will mind a bit.

My main concern is how exactly I am going to pack all those wooden gifts without any padding. Or newspaper. Or bubblewrap. Any ideas?

Even Better Than the First Time

By Amy Medina

On November 5, 2009

In Other

So remember that Beach House we discovered a few weeks ago when our friends were staying there? We immediately asked to make our own reservation, and got really lucky that the owner had a cancellation and could get us in last weekend.

We took our youth group leaders and student leaders (the ones who could come on such short notice) and it was totally fabulous. This place truly is the most amazing vacation spot I have ever been to.

The front room and kitchen. This picture is taken from the porch. The entire wall of the house opens up into the porch. The pictures just don’t do it justice….

Matthew and the flying Josiah. He loves this. “High! High!” he kept saying, which is pretty significant considering this is the child that is afraid of ants and lizards.

Homemade dough-boys on the porch at night. Doesn’t get much better than that!

Amazing afternoons….unfortunately I was reading a very dry book on Paul’s theology for one of my classes….a novel would have been much more enjoyable.

God’s artistry and Gil’s talent.

But the best part was yet to come.

On Sunday morning, when we were having a little worship service, one of the workers came up and asked us if we wanted to see the “kasa.”

“What’s that?” we asked.

He didn’t know the English word. “A type of sea creature…”

We figured he was talking about a type of sea food that the local fishermen were trying to sell to us (as on previous mornings). “Nahhh…” we said.

Then one of our friends with us looked thoughtful. “I think ‘kasa’ means ‘turtle’,” he said.

“WHAT?!?!” we all screamed, and took off for the beach.

It was true. Something we have ALWAYS wanted to see, but is practically impossible to time right…was right on our doorstep.

A sea turtle nest was hatching. Totally and unbelievably incredible.

Baby sea turtles display the amazing handiwork of God. Once they hatch, they “somehow” know not to come out until it is night and high tide. They “somehow” know that they are supposed to get to the ocean, and “somehow” know how to get there. Their mother is gone; they are on their own.

The person looking after this nest estimated there were up to 200 baby turtles in there. He opened the nest so we could see some that morning, and then we stayed until night time so we could watch them make their long journey to the ocean.

We cheered them on, all the way down the beach.

Ah, the Splendor of God!

Oh Visa, How I Love Thee

By Amy Medina

On November 4, 2009

In Other

“I just don’t get it…why is everyone making such a big deal about this little piece of paper?”

Our family on International Day (with the visa!). Usually we have trouble figuring out if Grace and Josiah should represent Tanzania or America, but seeing as how I picked up the visa on that day, we figured we should all be American this year.