We're grandparents!
Dear Friends,
What a lot of excitement we've had lately! Our son Nathan got engaged to Katelyn on January 16. They are planning a July 3 wedding at an Arboretum in Dubuque, IA. (See attached picture)
Then on January 20, we inaugurated Graham Matthew, our first grandchild, into our family - 7 lbs 7 oz, 20.5 inches long. Proud parents - Matthew and Rachel. (See more pictures from this happy Grandma!)
Rachel had a rough delivery. After getting one set of stitches, she was bleeding too much so the doctor came back a few hours later and did more stitches. They were considering going into the OR, but thankfully, the bleeding slowed and by the next day, Rachel began feeling much better. She has still been rather sore and stiff, but they are really enjoying their
new baby. Tomorrow (January 26), I will fly to OKC to meet this precious little one. What a joy to see God's gift in person!
Meanwhile, I've set up a meeting on February 4 with as many of our TCK(MK) Advisors as possible - we have about 40 people who provide care, support, resources and training to our OMF families - some from their sending country and some on the field. Please pray that we will be able to connect well and begin thinking through vision of how to move forward. Some of our TCK Advisors are very experienced and resourceful and passionate. Others have been "assigned" this job in addition to ministry they are already doing and really have no idea how to help the families in their area. I am hoping to set up mentorships and networking between the more experienced and less experienced TCK Advisors.
Also, today I spoke with the International Child Safety Officer of Pioneers, another large missions organization. They have some wonderful child safety resources and we are looking into how we can share resources. In addition, we are considering how members of several missions orgs can form a task force to work on developing training materials for families before they go to the field, on the field and on home assignment. Hopefully, these would be materials that a number of missions organizations can use instead of each one creating its own trainings. This would save a lot of time, money and energy, and hopefully improve the quality of the trainings we can provide.
By the way, if you have children at home or if you have grandchildren or friends who have children, I highly recommend the movie https://www.childhood2movie.com/ and/or https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ourkidsonline/408674272 These movies reveal the big gaps between parents and children these days due to the smartphone and the cyberbullying as well as sexual solicitation that endangers our kids these days. We parents are often very unaware of these issues because we didn't have smartphones when we were growing up.
I also highly recommend https://axis.org/ Their stated vision is "Connecting Parents, Teens & Jesus in a Disconnected World - We give parents and mentors hope by being your guide through culture into conversation around Jesus." This group of young people does lots of research into TikTok, Instagram, computer games, teen idols, sexting, and all of the other things that today's kids experience. They then provide "culture translation" tools to help parents understand the culture and language of their kids and have ongoing conversations that bring the gospel into these situations. I'm learning so much!
On a different note, last week Scott applied to pastor a nearby Evangelical Free church. We are waiting to see how that unfolds, and whether this is how God is leading. Also, the last 2 Sundays I took Nuansee to Thai church in Bradenton - about 20 minutes from my house. She seems to be connected there now and plans to continue attending. I've begun to get to know other members of the church, a number of whom are young Christians and have a lot of brokenness in their lives that they have only just begun to work through. It is a joy to connect with the Thai again, but boy does my brain get tired after an hour or two in Thai! Seeking God to know if I should continue in this ministry as well.
Thanks for praying,
Jennifer
