Home again, Home agian

Tyler and I have finally come back home to AK. After being gone for over 2 weeks we are glad to be back home and back into a normal routine.
Our world wide excursion was phenomenal. The whole trip could not have gone better. We had a wonderful time ministering in South Africa and a great vacation visiting Jessi in the UK.

I don't know where to begin to tell of our time. So how about the beginning -- SOUTH AFRICA! With a team of 7 from Chapel by the Sea we headed over to South Africa to put together some Children's Missions Festival for about 10 days with James and Ella Embree (full time missionaries in South Africa).

The highlights of the Africa trip:

1. Getting to be in South Africa (this was my first time anywhere south of the equator)
2. Eating Curry Chicken almost every day
3. Meeting believers who live on the other end of the world from us and feeling at home with them as we share the commonality of our savior.
4. Playing and teaching Children every day (though sometimes very exhausting it was a blessing each day to work with the kids)
5. Seeing God move in the hearts of over 100 children and bringing them to salvation and impressing on several children the desire to pursue missions in their own lives as they grow older.
6. Getting to watch Tyler race a Cheetah
7. petting a baby Jaguar
8. Eating Giraffe for the first time (and actually it was surprisingly really good)
9. Having tea or coffee several times a day everywhere we went
10. Experience and seeing firsthand the greatest hospitality I have every experienced.

This shot list only begins to tell you of what we experienced while over in South Africa. Our biggest priority while over there was to encourage and help the Embree's in their ministry and it was a success. The Children's Missions Festivals went smoothly and as planned and Tyler was able to help polish up the Embree's Ministry update video for them.The Lord was truly working through our team and in the churches that we ministered to while we were there. It was amazing to see how well our team worked together.


This is a picture of Marlon and I. He is 3 years old and I got to teach him and the other preschoolers on the last two festival days. He was one of two orphan children that were there. I wish i could have brought him home with me. By the end of the festival he was calling me mom instead of Auntie Laura and always reaching out to be picked up when i was in the room.

A little note about the Hospitality that i mentioned in my list. I have never seen such generosity from anyone before. Every house we went to in Africa was an amazing experience. One night Tyler and I stayed with the pastor's family in Pretoria and the Pastor and his wife (pictured below with their 2 children) give up their room for Tyler and I to sleep in while they slept on the floor in their living room. There was no way that we would change their mind about giving us their room. I was blown away by their generosity.
I have tons of other stories and way more pictures then I can share. The short slide show below will give you a glimpse of the highlights of our full time in Africa. This short Mission trip gave me a new excitement to look at full time missions with Tyler and it reminded me of how Great our God truly is.

"And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you" Psalm 9:10

World Traveling

Well Tyler and I head out to South Africa tonight. We will be working with a missionary family, the Embrees, which our church supports in South Africa for a few weeks with a team of 6 other people. While there we will be running some children's ministry programs and encouraging/supporting the Embrees.

Our travels don't stop there however, from South Africa Tyler and I head out to London to visit Jessi, Tyelr's older sister, for 5 days. After London we fly to LA to visit my Grandparents for one day (and i get to see my mom who will be down there at the same time) and then it's back home to Anchorage.

Please remember to keep us in your prayers as we minister in South Africa and for travel safety as our team flies down and as Tyler and I depart for the second half of our trip.
Come back to see pictures and updates on our trip when we return.

See ya'll in 3 weeks!

We love our pup

Yawkey is the newest addition to our home. We have had him for several weeks and are having a blast playing with a puppy every day. We are happy to say that he is almost fully house trained (just a few "presents" are left every so often to remind us that he is still a puppy).

Thankfully Yawkey is great around people, children and other dogs. With everyone in Tyler's family having animals it was important that we got one that would get along with others.

He has occupied all our spare time and loves to play from the time we get home until he falls over with exaustion.


You may notice a trend in our circile of frinds if you ever come up and visit. Once we decided to get Yawkey the Payne's and the Slaymaker's decided to get a Boston Terrier as well. So there are lots of new puppies running around when we all get together.

Camping this summer with them should be fun and intersting.

Summer = Camping

Summer has finally hit Alaksa! Besides the numerous amounts of extra people summer brings (good old tourist season) it always brings the start of outdoor activity, my favorite being CAMPING!
Memorial day weekend was our first camping trip for the summer and we had a blast. We went out to the Kenia area and camped at Clam Gulch. We were able to drive right out onto the beach with the pop-up and camp along the ocean. It was great to hear the waves on the shore and to look down the beach and not see one other person.

We had to be quite bundled up since the wind would not let down until Monday morning but we managed to have fun anyway.We filled our time with claming (though no success in finding any clams that we actually kept), roasting numerious amounts of hot dogs, staying warm by the fire, and playing some card games in the shelter of the pop-up. This picture camptures perfectly the mood at the table during our 3rd round of "Nuclear War". Poor Tyler was being bombed form both Kyle and Natalie with no sympathy or compasion for him.
He tried to form some aliances with them but they had both played one to many times when those so called "aliances" had been so easily broken.

It was a great start to the camping season and a fun trip which we'll have to do again next year. We couldn't have had a nicer start to the summer and the camping season. And our next trip Yawkey will get to come on.

Yawkey

Well we are happy to announce that we are adding a puppy to our family! That's right, Tyler and I are getting a little Boston Terrier puppy the end of May. We have decided to name him Yawkey (after the street that Fenway Park is on in Boston) and are having him brought up from Seattle the end of May. He will arrive here in Anchorage on May 26th so we are getting our house ready for a little puppy and excitedly waiting for May 26th to arrive. Here is the one picture that we have of Yawkey which we saw and immediately fell in love with him (ignore the arrow at the corner of his eye this is our computer mouse, since the picture is on our desktop the mouse showed up on the photo):
More pictures to come of course once he arrives up here.



Just to give you an idea of what he might look like as an adult here is a pictures of his father...quite a nice looking dog if you ask me so we hope Yawkey takes after him.

The Big Pile-Up

Things seem to piling-up at work, home, outside and everywhere. Just a week and a half ago we had this outside: and the snow kept falling to accumulate a total of 16+ inches. I thought spring was just around the corner but looking outside I guess I was wrong.

At work we have secured several new contracts so I have been working through this stack on my desk:
I thought that I could get a stack of new hire paperwork like this off my desk in a week but then another new contract came in and there was yet another stack covering my desk. I am happy to say though that I can finally see my desk now and things may slow down for a week ; at least I hope.

The newest project that Tyler and I have been working on has created a pile-up on our kitchen table. We have been putting together a church cookbook for a fund raiser for our mission trip to South Africa this summer. I have actually found the project a lot of fun to put together and enjoyed using some creativity to create the design and layout of the cookbook. I am happy to report this overview of our cookbook making endeavor:

2+ weeks of typing out recipes from contributors
1 hour at Kinko's
6 bumps/creases in the laminating
1 paper cut
6 hour "House" marathon
2 Taco Bell Dinners
3 other fast food dinners
1 Frozen Lasagna
4+ hours at the church copying
1 cookbook that didn't work
99 complete "Simply Delicious" Chapel by the Sea cookbooks ready to sell!

It's nice to have our kitchen table back and finally some time to try some of the wonderful recipes that are in this new cookbook. We are both looking forward to some relaxing evenings and some good homemade meals again.

April Showers?

So I looked out the window this morning and noticed that our "April showers" were a whole lot different then I had wanted. That's right we are getting snow showers. They say maybe 7 to 10 inches today and more to come tonight and over the next few days. I guess we have a ways to go before spring hits Anchorage. Time to pull out that winter gear one more time.