missions

It’s that time of year when all over the world, Mission Leaders (formerly called Mission Presidents) for our church make a giant switch. The new Mission Leaders are trained and make their way to wherever they are assigned to take the places of those who have served for three years.…

Last weekend Dave and I got to go with Grace back to her mission stomping grounds: Austin, Texas. Gosh, there is something about Texas, and we got to experience it with our Texas girl. We packed our three days chock full of everything we possibly could. We visited all her…

Yesterday Grace gave a homecoming talk at church to wrap up her mission experience. I sat there in the audience and beamed up at that girl. Marveling at how she has matured and how her light shines. Don’t get me wrong, she was pretty awesome before, but yow, a mission…

There are a lot of things you don’t know you’ll get with motherhood. I mean, you have a basic idea of the sleepless nights, the beauty of cooing babies, the joy of the first steps taken and the first understandable “mama” from the lips of your own child. But no…

Grace is home. And it’s the best thing in the world. I have more to say about that than I can even grapple with right now, will get to it all soon, but for now this: This last letter of hers was supposed to post this morning and never did,…

Someone wise once said, “Making the decision to have a child — it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” (Elizabeth Stone) And OH! how I feel that! My heart is multiplied walking all over creation it seems these days!…

When Max and Abby realized that they were going to be in the VERY SAME CITY as Grace at Christmastime, they got permission to go see that sister of theirs. And they were so excited with anticipation. All three. Ok, really all nine, because ALL of us were pretty excited…

On September 15th, Grace hit her one year mark of being a missionary. ONE WHOLE YEAR!! In fact, almost 13 months now! (But who’s counting?…ha!) In some ways it feels like she’s been gone forever and ever, and in some ways (thanks to FaceTime each week) it feels like we’ve…

(Missionary Monday on a Thursday :)) My favorite sister missionary had a birthday over the weekend. Just look at that little light-glowing girl over in Austin! I haven’t done an update on her in a while. So let me tell you what she’s up to, because she is HALF WAY…

It’s so funny to think about how much anticipation we built up to talk to Max while he was out there on his mission. We based so much around those two calls we got per YEAR: the internet connections, the timing, how to set up the screen so everyone could…