Had a chance for a few minutes online. A picture of a plane as promised, Em (more to come):
We had a safe trip down and a good reunion with Dave and Debbie (they appreciate the licorice, Carolyn!). I'll post plenty more pics when I get back. We're really excited about the trip and still would love your prayers as our freshmen are going to be really stretched in how they view their lives in the world as a Jesus-follower.
Our team will be leaving for Jamaica later tonight. 37 freshmen and a five staffers. We'll be in the school doing devotions and VBS-ish things in the morning and late afternoon and then several work projects during the day. We'll be back next Saturday and I'll have some spectacular pictures (I hope) to share. I'd appreciate your prayers for kingdom-advancing work, safety, protection and provision. This is the first over-seas missions experience for many of the students and we hope that it shifts their trajectory in life even more toward the Lord and his good dreams for them.
A few pictures from "The Great Snow of 2009"...
DAY 1: Emmaleigh ate snow and Hannah cried.
The "snow bunny" in our backyard. This was just before Hannah's gloves got wet and immediately froze to her hands resulting in an immediate retreat indoors.
DAY 2:
We went to Jon's (brother in law) dairy for some sledding hills. Em and Carolyn:
Hannah, who loves to try anything, would've been on the sled (aka, hamper lid) all day. Em, on the other hand, took a great deal of convincing to try the tube, or anything else.
Eventually the cold won, and we took it back to the house. We have almost as many pictures of these two days as we have from the two months previous! The vast majority have one of more of the girls in some state of crying. Neither of them really like to be cold...
In other news, just before we got 4 inches of rain followed by several inches of snow, we framed the floor to the living room. Impeccable timing. The rain and runoff slid off the subfloor into one of the unfinished spots and collected between the new and old block foundations. Jon saved me with a sunk pump at a pivotal time. And its all dry this morning! Praise the Lord!
So, a few pictures of the girls:
In the box that Carolyn's birthday gift came in. The packing peanuts were all over the house for a morning before we packed it up and put it on the front porch!
While working on the living room (pictures to come) the dining room was a storage room. The girls table from their room was reappropriated to breakfast duty. Here're the girls eating some waffles and strawberries.
In the driveway with Hannah's Christmas car; they love pushing each other around in it.
And finally...Em outside pointing to the stars. She came inside and asked me to, "build me some stairs, Daddy, so we can go get a star. I can't reach them. Yeah, it would be so great."
PART 1: The progression of Haircut #1...
"party in the back", the smile, confusion with the distracting toothbrush, WAILING, and finished product (aka, no mullet).
PART II:
I came home today and Carolyn told me to, 'look at the last picture.' This is it.
You are looking at the bottom of our kitchen trash can with a stack of DVDs that Hannah put there for safe keeping! One of her new favorite pastimes is shoving all sorts of random household items into the trash--remote controls, cell phones, cordless phones, toys, clothes. Unfortunately they don't make child-locks for those things. Who knows what we've lost without realizing it yet. Quite a challenge!
So, here's the first COMPLETELY finished room. The hall bath...we're pretty sure Emmaleigh and Hannah think it's their new playroom.
And, after two full day and help from Mom, Dad and Sister Hemingway, the kitchen ALMOST done...
Would've done some before and after, but we keep forgetting to take the 'before' shot!
As promised, though perhaps a bit late (!), Carolyn, Caren Dilts, and I went to Jamaica to scout out a new mission trip that we're taking there over Spring Break. Each year the freshmen ministry (Freshley) has taken a huge team over to a YWAM base in Montego Bay. This year the sign-ups were so large that we're having to take two trips. Caren and I will be leading a trip with a little under 40 freshmen with a few of our staff to a rural, mountainous, and very poor region around the small town of Mandeville. The other group will take about 60 to MoBay. We'll still be working with YWAM: local school devotions in the morning, 3 work projects during the day, an after school program for the school at the base during the afternoon, and some community-building for the team at night. We're VERY glad that we went down early, since the whole trip--atmosphere, projects, arrangements, etc.--are completely different from the trips we've taken in the past. It should be interesting. The trip itself was a lot of fun, too. Dave and Debbie Alexander were the YWAM staff that drove us around to scout out the work sites, schools, and other opportunities. It was good to be with them and I think the trip will be a real success.
This is a picture of the gate in the middle of the base and the great house on the hill. As with a lot of properties in Jamaica, this one was once a plantation. This house was really hit hard by Hurricane Ivan and lost one of the rooms on the front left as you face the house. If you keep going down the road around to the left, you'll get to the chapel, the dorms, and the primary school past that. We actually stayed about a hundred yards back behind me as I took the picture in this little house...
where we saw this sunset the first night...
Here are a few more pics from the trip:
Dave and Deb Alexander, our missionary contact at YWAM Mandeville (candid!).
Another shot of the base. The gate in the middle of the picture is the same as above.
Where the boys will be showering while we're there--not exactly the lap of luxury! The whole base actually doesn't have running water (and neither does much of the countryside). The government gets much more money from electricity, so they ran the lines but not the pipes. Most of the water on the base is collected rainwater, supplemented by water delivery trucks every so often, and gravity-fed into the sinks, toilets and showers. Most people thinking of Jamaica see the white sand beaches, but reality for most of the country is that the people are seriously impoverished with little hope of economic or social recovery. Most children are born out of wedlock and will have little to no contact with their fathers. The impact of slavery and the racial tensions that resulted are still an extremely powerful force (socially and spiritually) on the island.
Anyway, we'll begin our Sunday night team meetings in just a few short weeks leading up to the trip over the break. Christmas post to come...