Yikes!

Hard to believe but two weeks from today we'll have already been on the road to Mazatlan for a couple of days! Time has really flown by but we have managed to get everything checked off our "to do" list that we needed to get done. Stuff is packed, people are set to come get the last of the furniture, and the truck has had its 60,000-mile check up. Retirement and deferred comp accounts are ready to roll, wills are done, address changes made and utilities all set to be shut off!

We have some dinners out with friends and family, goodbye parties at our jobs, a last meeting with our small group from church, farewell service at church, good-byes to everyone here and those we'll see along the road too. We hope to have lunch or dinner with James and Paula in Mesa and meeting Pastor Ted and Karla, we will even try to make Gola's 90th birthday in Nogales...not sure if we can make that one or not, but we'll try.

Can't wait to meet Darwin and Mary Ann and Gracie who are already serving in Mazatlan! We are looking forward to meeting our host family and to language and culture learning from them. We are excited to get settled into our new location and set up house in the coming weeks. We also can't wait for Tom and Lidia and Cristina and Gracia to arrive in Mazatlan...it will be good to see them again! And a planned WMPL reunion to include our fellow briefing course grads Nate and Amy Lindquist!

Plus friends Arlie and Pat and Richard and Ginny will all be visiting Mazatlan in January and we hope to be able to visit with them there.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!!

Praise report

Thanks to all of you for praying for the work that needed to be done on the house after the buyer’s inspection! All the work is now complete and we are proceeding to closing! Praise God!

Last Sunday Greg and family came down for dinner and while they were here he did the corrections to the breaker box that needed to be done. Handy to have a kid who is a licensed journeyman electrician! Another praise!

Then yesterday, we had a whirlwind of activity at the house, starting at 8 am with the arrival of the chimney guy. The buyer’s inspection had indicated the fireplace damper wasn’t closing properly. But after a thorough inspection and testing the chimney expert declared it to be in perfect working order! Another praise!

At 9, the contractor came to inspect the master bath floor as they buyers inspector had detected moisture in the toilet area. Full inspection revealed the wax seal had begun to fail, there was a recent, tiny leak, no damage to the floor at all and just the wax ring replaced! Another praise!

The appraiser arrived a little after 10, a great Christian guy! We chatted about the house and the mission while he did his inspection and measurements and then he was off, freeing us to do a little shopping before our Thrivent guy arrived to finalize everything before the move. Another praise!

Then at 3 the furnace guy arrived to do a full inspection, and the furnace passed with flying colors, the concern about “water” noises by the selling agent are just normal noises for a super high efficiency furnace such as ours. Another praise!

We then proceeded to pick up our sister-in-law from work and transport her to her car, which was being repaired in Lacey, 10 miles north of us. Then off to more shopping and we closed out the day praising God and celebrating with a dinner out at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

We serve and awesome and wonderful God. He is so good and we are so thankful!

Twelve days…

I am a short timer now, only twelve working days left for me!

And what an interesting day I had at work today…I found I’d been deleted out of the system and was no longer employed! Seems a tiny typo obliterated nearly an entire year of my career and it took all day to get it fixed. My boss entered my termination date as January 23, 2006, but somehow on the way through the chain of command to human resources it got changed to 2005. Oooops. In a heartbeat all my connection with my agency was gone, all my leave was wiped out and I wouldn’t have been able to use my key card in the morning to get into the building. Since I’m the only one who starts at 7…it would have been a chilly wait for my first co-worker to arrive! Everyone thought I took it all very well, and in the scheme of things this was nothing, a blip, a hiccup.

Considering eternity, we are all short timers here on earth. Our entire lives are just a tiny blip, a mere hiccup in the great expanse of time. But what we do while we are here DOES matter in the scheme of things! God has a plan for each of us and we have a finite amount of time to do the job He’s set before us. He wants all people, all nations to come to know Him and worship him. It’s our job to make Him known, to share our amazing, loving Father with everyone, whether that’s across the world or across the fence. That’s way more than a blip! It’s a giant tidal wave of joy that changes the world in a positive, wonderful way one person at a time. Time is short, better get busy!!

Our house is sold and we’ve given notice on our jobs!

Praise God, we have a signed deal on our house and we are thankful! The inspection was last Wednesday, and the buyers came back with a list of eight things they wanted us to agree to do, and our realtor advised that we should offer to do four of them, so that’s what we did. He called us today to say the buyers had signed off on the four items and that we’ll now proceed to closing! We are excited that this went so smoothly and KNOW that it was because of your prayer coverage during the process.

We also gave notice on our jobs today, official notice anyway, they’ve known for weeks that we were leaving. It was a little more emotional than I expected it to be…

In about a month we’ll be on the road to Mazatlan. We still don’t have a family to stay with, so please keep that in prayer. We’d like to stay with someone for a month or so to begin learning language and culture, and we’ve been praying about a couple from the downtown Mazatlan church who are considering hosting us, but haven’t heard what their decision is yet.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support as we prepare to leave for Mexico!

Our first snow!

Winter is trying to get a jump start here…we woke up this morning with one or two inches of very wet snow! You folks in the east and Midwest will laugh, but our schools started two hours late in Olympia, and many school districts in the surrounding communities actually closed because of the snow! Here’s a photo I took of our pond while I was out feeding the squirrels and blue jays:



Our pond in our first snow of the season.

We have much to be thankful for…

Wow, we had such a whirlwind weekend last weekend, the house was shown several times and we had folks from Ralph’s office coming by to pick up furniture and we were trying to shop for Nick’s upcoming 2nd birthday and our contribution to the family Thanksgiving dinner at Greg’s house. Felt like we were gone all weekend long!!! The last time the house was shown, we simply drove out and got a u-bake pizza, came back and parked around the corner until the people left because we had run out of things to do and places to go, not to mention we were both tired and worn out! Still in all that we were thankful that the house was being shown so much!

We praise God for the abundance of time with the grandbabies this week via Thanksgiving day at their house and then Nick’s birthday party next Saturday. This is a really hectic time of year for most families and having Nick and Ralph’s birthdays in December adds to the opportunities for get togethers for our families and also tends to squeeze the calendar a little more.

I had this week off from work (another blessing) and have been working on my Perspectives lessons quite a bit. I’m being blessed by this course every time I dig in and I’m really enjoying working with my instructor too. I’m thankful I have the ability to take this class online!!! The classroom courses are all too far away to attend, and I would have missed the opportunity this class provides! Thanks to Carmen and Pat for recommending that I take this!!

Among our many blessings this week, we got an offer on our house. It was interesting how it came about because the buyer’s Realtor had indicated that his people were “serious”. Then they proceeded to make a very unserious offer. But we countered it anyway, as that seemed to be what we should do. We were quite sure we were on target with our counter offer, but they countered again with another unserious offer. When our Realtor called with the second offer we just told him no, it didn’t seem right to us. He was shocked that we didn’t want to counter their counter but we just said to tell them thanks, but no. The next morning he called us and was quite surprised because the potential buyers had done something that he almost never sees, they went back to an offer they had already rejected and accepted it. As our friend Julia would say, had to be a God thing!

So now we are in a period where they can have the house inspected and still change their mind about the deal. We ask your prayers for a smooth inspection process…by the end of next week we’ll know if we have a deal or not. If everything runs smoothly we could be closing on January 6th and on the road to Mexico within a couple of days after that!

We serve an awesome God, now there’s something to really be thankful for!!!!

Sunday musings…

A really quiet Sunday, a very unusual thing of late…and though I tried to rest as much as I could I found I couldn’t resist packing a bit more, and checking on a few things and generally trying to cross a thing or two off the “to do” list. Time here seems so short, and really at this point we are as packed as we can be and still function day to day in the house, but there’s also an urgency to get to Mexico and begin the work God has for us there. Which is why I find I can’t sit still, even on a day when my fibromyalgia has kicked up with a vengeance.

We had a farewell kind of evening last night…the celebration of our recently widowed brother-in-law Ronnie’s 55th birthday. His older daughter hosted the dinner at her new house and cooked her first family event meal. She did a fine job too: steaks, baked potatoes, salad and pumpkin creme pie for dessert. But during the evening I kept thinking: this will be the last time we do this for a while…we need to savor the time with these guys! By the time the next birthday in that end of the family rolls around next spring, we’ll be living in another country.

Our house hit the market on Tuesday and the Realtor expects it will sell within a month. He cautioned that the once “red hot” market here has slowed considerably in recent weeks so we shouldn’t expect it to sell instantly as many homes have over that last few months. We remind ourselves that the house will sell when God ordains it and not before. We are content with that. His timing is perfect and will suit us just fine. We’ve been praying that another Christian family will buy it.

I have just a three day work week this week because Veteran’s day falls on my regular day off so I get Thursday as well, and I plan to dedicate it to getting a couple of my Perspectives lessons off to my instructor. I have a lot of the reading done, but need to buckle down and do the exams and essays for what I’ve read so far! Friday we have appointments with our Thrivent guy and a lawyer, trying to clear up any loose ends before we leave the country!! Then on Sunday, we’ll host our small group from church at our house. Another farewell kind of evening I’m sure, even though we’ll continue to see them at church and will have other gatherings at the other homes, but this will be the final one at our place. It’s sinking in that we’ve begun our good-byes.

Soon enough, we’ll begin our hellos too: a new country, state, city, home, new fellow-workers, new neighbors and friends, new language, new culture…lots of “new” in our immediate future. Exciting stuff.

Redefining “decluttering”

As we continue to declutter the house in preparation for listing it next week, we find that we are also decluttering our hearts and minds.

Our present world is fading away, and Mexico is coming into view. We are starting to pay more attention to our Spanish (or lack thereof), picking out words from the conversations of others and from TV. We’ve continued to visit with our fellow workers, the Jacksons and the Lumppios, talking and praying about what our lives will be like in just a few short weeks when we’ll all be working together. The freedom of a simpler lifestyle is becoming more and more apparent each day. It is an amazing time of transition.

Greg called last night and it seems he’s finally getting some peace about our move. He told us that as a family they have committed to learn Spanish, and that they have decided to simplify their lives as well. A very big step for them. (Didn’t have the heart to tell him that in simplifying OUR lives, we are contributing the clutter of three boxes of toys and books to THEIR children’s lives!)

I also think back to Briefing Course this past summer and to our reading of the life of Hudson Taylor, in my mind the ultimate “declutterer”. How the lack of clutter in his life allowed him to focus on the more important things that God had for him to do. Our lives are refocusing on what God would have us do in His name in Mexico…

Praise notes

As we continue to prepare we delight in how the Lord is meeting our needs day in and day out and how easy it has been to make the decisions to part with things. And the house is looking better and better every day thankfully!

We’ve given many, many things away quite joyfully! Ralph took all of our excess movies to work and his co-workers were thrilled to peruse the stack of videos, and the movies were all in their new homes by the end of the day.

We unearthed some Canadian cash that we never converted back from our last trip there, buried on the desk since July 2004. We stuffed that into an envelope and mailed it off to a young couple who were in our Briefing Course class. They are off to Mongolia tomorrow!! Now there’s a BIG adventure with the Lord!

In all the little scraps of things I discovered a tidbit that I tore out of a World Vision magazine (we sponsor Tania in Bolivia through them). Titled FYI: Feeling poor? It challenges you to go to www.golbalrichlist.com and see how your salary stacks up against your 6 billion global neighbors. Quite eye-opening, go ahead and give it a whirl!

And one of my co-workers has asked us to speak at their church! We are very excited and hope to get a date from them very soon.

Our big praise this week is that the Lord has blessed us with a great vehicle for Mexico. The guy from church who’s been looking for us called us yesterday with several to choose from, but he liked one in particular. A low miles, like new (really!) 2001 Ford F150 SuperCrew pickup. It seats six and has a canopy so we can load up the bed when we move. We are picking it up tonight, and the dealer took both of our cars in trade giving us more than fair money for both of them, plus we got the truck for below book, including the tax and license. Only God can put that together…we are so thankful for the answered prayer and for Bruce’s faithfulness to prayerfully seek a vehicle for us!!!

Since we’ll be a one car family as of tonight I’ve asked to tweak my work hours a bit so Ralph can drop me on his way to his job…looks like that is going to be okay, so we’ll be officially carpooling together as of Monday!

We are so thankful for your prayerful support as we continue to move through the preparations to leave for Mexico to serve the Lord. Your prayers sustain us. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

Another week closer

Time is flying by for us. There is so much going on, and on so many different fronts, that only the Lord can keep it all straight!

I was sick with a bad cold over the weekend and Monday and Tuesday, so I didn’t get much done in the preparations. But now the summer clothes are all packed away, and the winter ones have been gleaned down to just what we’ll need this winter and the rest have been donated.

The books have been sorted from two overly full bookcases down to two boxes that will go with us. We’ve also given quite a few away to family and friends, and the rest I’m preparing to sell, either on Amazon or half.com. Ralph’s youth ministry library has gone to our niece Amy, who’s studying to be a youth pastor at a Bible college in Portland, Oregon.

The prayer card is done and we’ve had several people take a look at it to make sure we don’t have any glaring errors before we print it. The photos my cousin Donna took of us turned out great, in fact one of them is the photo that’s been added to this blog. We are thankful she’s such a gifted photographer!

The roofer came out and certified our roof as good for at least five more years, so we won’t have to replace it after all, we praise God for that! We have a guy coming Monday or Tuesday to clean the gutters and remove what little moss there is on the roof and the chimney.

I’m off to Women of Faith in Seattle this weekend with the women from our small group at church. While I’m gone Ralph has promised to sort through all of our CDs to narrow them down to what we’ll take and what we’ll give away or sell. Should be an interesting process, I didn’t realize how many we have accumulated over the years.

Thanks for taking the time to catch up with us…stay tuned.

Prayer Update

Thank you for all your prayers regarding our upcoming move. We are praising God for his answers and thought we should bring you up to date:

• we are looking at a January departure date
• coordination of the move with the Lumppios seems to be the way to go
• we’ve abandoned the idea of buying a truck to share for the move and will just take our own vehicles
• we are no longer considering buying a car in Mexico
• we can get the tourist visas we need right at the border

We are still praying about:

• a sturdy, reliable vehicle for us to use and one of the guys from church is keeping an eye out for us (he works for the local Ford dealer PTL!)
• formal approval/acceptance by the national church in Mexico
• when to list our house for sale
• replacement workers for both of us on our jobs

Thanks for continuing to pray with us!!

Progress…

October 1, 2005

at least we hope so!

Our Realtor came by on Friday to do the initial walk-through of the house and garden so we can do any work that might be needed before we list the house. Good news: nearly everything is ship-shape, with a couple of caveats. The roof MAY need replacing and we’ll have someone come out and make that determination this coming week. He’ll either certify it has five more years of life or will get us an estimate of what it will cost to replace it. And our very pale carpet is showing its wear as well, so that may be an issue too. But, he also said the market here is so competitive now that these things may not even come up. We pray they won’t.

We’ve got boxes all over the house with the names of various folks so as we sort stuff things going to them go directly in their respective boxes. We need to “de-clutter” as much as possible before we list the house, and the sorting and giving are a big part of that.

Mike at my work will sell our collectible things on eBay for us, so I’ve got to take the pictures and get the descriptions together for him. We are thankful for his help on this!!

During a break in our rainy fall weather this morning my cousin Donna shot a roll of film of us in the Japanese garden downtown and tonight we are working on our prayer card using one of those photos. Hope to get them done this weekend.

Oh, and I’m working on Perspectives too!!

January seems so close!

Officially missionaries with WMPL!

September 17, 2005

We are settling back in at home after four days in Minneapolis. We had our interview with the Home Council on Monday September 13th and they accepted our application for missionary service! It’s official: we are missionaries again and are prayerfully preparing for our departure for Mexico after the first of the year. Thanks for all your prayers!!

Thanks for your prayers!

Now that we are missionaries for WMPL, we have a lot to consider over the next few months and would appreciate your continued prayers as we sort through all that must be done over that time. We are in the process of praying and mulling over many things:

• departure date
• shall we coordinate our move with the other couple who will be serving with us?
• shall we try to find a cheap used truck or cube van to be able to bring along a bit more stuff for both families?
• we need to find a reliable, durable, low miles van or suv with good ground clearance for us to use in Mexico and sell our other two cars
• we are also considering buying a car in Mexico
• smooth processing of our visa applications
• formal approval/acceptance by the national church in Mexico
• my completion of the Perspectives course
• sorting/selling/packing our personal stuff (a much smaller pile to take if we go by car rather than share a truck!!)
• selling our house
• replacement workers for both of us on our jobs

You are such a faithful group of pray-ers and we appreciate that so much. THANK YOU!

This is who we are

We are both native Washingtonians. Ralph was born and raised in Centralia, Washington, I was born in Seattle and raised in both Seattle and Tacoma.

We’ve been married since June of 1972 and though we have no children of our own, we are close to our three adult nieces, Billie Jo, Julie and Amy. Additionally, we consider Ralph’s Little Brother, Greg, to be our son. They were matched by Big Brothers when Greg was just eight. He’s now 31, been married to Darane’ eight years and they have two fabulous children that we grandparent. Savannah is nearly five, Nick is 18 months.

We presently live in Olympia, the state capitol. Ralph is a customer service specialist for the Department of Health and I’m a web developer for the Department of Information Services.

When we have spare time we like to spend it spoiling the grandbabies, visiting our local farmer’s market, antiquing in either Olympia or Centralia, reading, listening to music or watching movies. We also enjoy going to the beach and visiting garage sales. I also spend some of my free time working on our family histories.