School

It is hard to believe that Nathan is old enough to be in school! How could this happen?! Well, one way is that in Ontario school officially starts a year earlier than in a lot of other places. Junior Kindergarten (JK) starts at age 4 and continues with Senior Kindergarten (SK) at age 5. In Minnesota, that's called Preschool and Kindergarten. 😃  (By law, they don't have to officially start school until they're age 7.)

First Day of Homeschool, Sept 4

First Day at VK Greer Public School, Sept 7

 We really weighed all our options for schooling and in the end have settled on what has been a really wonderful combination. I'm homeschooling Nathan 3 days a week with a reading program and other bits of writing, math and experiential learning. And he's going to the local public school 2 days a week. (We started out with 1 day a week.) So far both experiences have been super positive. I was away at the Summer Planning Meetings for Nathan's first parent-teacher conference last week. David reported back to me that the teachers jokingly asked if they can send some other kids to be homeschooled so they can learn to read like Nathan.

He takes the bus to school! That was a surreal moment the first day! 

Big Brother and Little Brother...not sure which one was happier for Nathan to go to school!

The obligatory first day photo

Might as well get Daddy in on the excitement

A few neat things have come out of sending Nathan to school:
1) Luke gets some much appreciated and desired one on one attention...super helpful for potty training!
2) We've finally connected with our neighbour's grandson who is in Nathan's class!! Yay for having a neighbour kid to play with!!!
3) Nathan's experienced neat things we wouldn't have been able to do at home, like monarch butterflies hatching in his class, building towers with all different types of blocks, group skills, gym class and having pigs in their school garden for a couple weeks.

A few neat things about homeschooling:
1) I've had the privilege of seeing him progress from letter sounds to reading some stories! It is incredible!
2) We've got to go on lots of neat field trips during our travels like Historic Fort George, the Butterfly Conservatory & Niagara Falls with cousins, Swimming lessons on Mondays, Bethune Memorial House in Gravenhurst, the Bracebridge Fall Fair, Morrison Meadows Fall Festival, Nathan went camping with Meema & Papa and 3 cousins, attending AWANA Cubbies, Muskoka Steamship Museum & Discovery Centre, the Camp Good News Lakelands Retreat and going to the CEF Ontario office in Brantford during staff meetings.
3) The boys can still travel with us on our journeys for CEF.
4) Reading more books aloud together - we're in the middle of "Stuart Little".

Seeing Niagara Falls for the first time, Oct 20

I'm SOOOO enjoying this year! The classes are split classes for JK/SK at his school, so we can potentially continue this style for another year without too much issue. The hard thing will be figuring out what to do after that!

Mysteries Inc. - In Search of the Truth

One of my favourite aspects of ministry with CEF is seeing the Summer Ministry come together. So many people are involved in making it happen that it's really neat to see the impact across Ontario (Canada, North America, etc.). Our little piece of the picture includes North and Northwest Ontario. It is crazy how we work all year, practically, for 2 weeks of Training and 5-6 weeks of Summer Ministry.

**Below I'm including pictures of: Summer Training, then 5-Day Clubs (week 1), Camp Good News (week 2) and then more 5-Day Clubs (weeks 3-4).

 David demoing the Day 1 program with Isaac, his intern, at Summer Training.

Preparing the students to teach a Bible lesson.

 It's exciting to see the teens go from practicing to trees, to teaching "real" kids that can learn about Jesus.

 We had some extra Summer Missionaries sign up at the last minute so we were able to partner with a Cathy from our small group who runs "Back of Beyond" a horse farm. As a result 2 weeks of ministry was quickly implemented. How neat to be able to learn about horses and Jesus! 

 Irene & Abigail made great detectives for the skits. 

Camp Good News 

 Can you tell who this crazy person is? David enjoyed his role as Prof. Fernberger during a game at Camp Good News. It was one of the few times that week that he got to be crazy and have fun instead of dealing with camper issues. Being the Camp Director isn't quite as much fun as it might sound like sometimes. 

 Slip and Slide Fun!

 Bunnies came to visit for an elective!

 Nathan loved being at Camp Good News all week! He joined in as if he was a camper for everything except sleeping this year! He cried so hard when we had to leave camp.

 I had fun leading a Baking Elective a few different days. Luke tagged along with me for the week. He's quite different from his brother in that he kept asking "Go home?" all week. So interesting how different our boys are. 

 Camp Good News - Trillium Lakelands - 2017

We were super blessed to have David's mom and Aunt Darlene doing the cooking and some mentoring.

 Our Summer Missionaries went back to 5-Day Clubs for weeks 3-4.

 Nathan loves getting to join in at the 5-Day Clubs that he gets to visit with David or I. 

(He's on the far right, during small group.)

 "Thinga-ma-Bob" and "Detective Lou King"

 I love seeing the kids learn the Memory Verses. There's actions for each day and neat repetition games that help them learn the verses. I had fun teaching them to Nathan before Summer Training. It's so amazing what even young kids can learn!

We've been challenged by the CEF President Reese Kauffman to get kids praying for God to allow children in North Korea to learn about the Lord. How cool to see that in action!

Please be in prayer for the children that have heard about the Lord over the last 4 weeks and for those that will hear next week. 

March Break Camp 2017

These are a few of my favourite things... pictures from March Break Camp. It was a neat week of ministry. We were down to the wire and unsure if we'd have enough female counsellors but the Lord provided speedy police check processing and we had exactly what we needed. Two of the girl counsellors had attended our programs as kids! 

 One of the bonus things this year was being able to still go on the frozen lake (usually it's warmed up too much to be safe). This allowed for some neat activities.

 Nathan thoroughly enjoyed himself at camp and was always playing or hanging out with some of the kids. He was spoiled by getting his tube carried up the hill by the "big kids". He even begged to sit in all the chapels. Most meal times he would be at one table, I would be with Luke at another table and David at another table. He's growing up!

 Luke liked camp as well but did enjoy sitting in his high chair watching everything from a safe distance. Some of the times I would look over to him happily sitting there with his fingers in his ears - taking it all in, but blocking out a little of it.

 What a joy to have 23 campers attend!

 I really love this picture. The ice waves on the shore were so neat to see. They had a group game on the lake around sunset that I let my boys stay up for. The kids all wanted to pull Luke in his sled and this photo captures that. The funny part is that he bailed a minute later because he always wanted to pull the sled, not be pulled.

 As a mom, this is one of my favourite pictures. Luke was pushed out of his shell a bit by lots of loving girls that were ready to surround him at any moment. It was neat to see the joy he brought to them and they to him. One girl hasn't been around babies much and claimed to hate all babies but by the end of the week had determined Luke was the first baby that she actually liked. LOL. 

 A highlight of camp was "ice sailing"! The teams worked to rig a sail and they actually worked since the ice was frozen smooth and there was a good wind.

 What a rare opportunity to have such good ice - the last time that happened was about 8 years ago. 

 One elective group went exploring and geo caching. 

 Board games are always a great time for connecting and hanging out.

Since we did a full week of overnight camp with a mixed age group this year (instead of dividing them up for shorter days) they had time for a hike to a nearby park.

 The kids tried out a new team game that David had Isaac make as a full sized version based on a board game version he saw our nieces in Minnesota playing.

 I had fun leading a baking elective one day while the boys had their nap/quiet times. What a neat bunch of kids! I divided them into 3 groups and they each made a batch of chocolate chip cookies - all the same recipe, same ingredients, measuring cups, etc...and each batch turned out different. What an interesting science experiment it turned into!

The focus of the Bible teaching time was on Elisha which was neat. One boy who has attended one of the monthly Slingshot Saturday program for about 4 years and some camps gave his life to Jesus! Please pray that he and his family will get connected into a good church and will grow and his mom will be saved!

Here's the link to the highlight video I made for camp:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQDSBVx85a0 

You Done Working Tim?

Every day Tim worked at our home office over the last 13 months, every time Nathan saw him he'd ask "You done working Tim?". Every trip for coffee or water or for lunch break, it was the same question. I think Nathan was always hoping it was lunchtime so Tim and Daddy would be around.

 This picture was Tim back when he started with us. He sat on that rug to work the whole time. We finally put the office chair away since he never used it. In reminiscing we realized just how much Tim helped David with all the administrative work. Many, many things happened that wouldn't have without his work - including our Summer Camp and the Fall Retreat.

 Last Christmas Tim was living at our house. He lived with us for the first month of his internship...poor guy. He even lived through it, though I'm not sure how much therapy it will take to recover...especially the whole hanging Christmas lights incident.

A lot of our time with Tim was during work time but we did get to do some fun things. We even managed to get him to go ice skating with us. This fall we discovered a cheap rock climbing night at the Bracebridge Sportsplex so we got in some Tuesday evening climbs.

 We realized Tim was fully accepted as part of the family a few weeks ago when Luke hurt himself and David picked him to comfort him. Instead, Luke reached over to Tim for a snuggle.

 The kids at Slingshot Saturdays in Gravenhurst, Orillia, the Good News Club in Huntsville and the Camps have really enjoyed hanging out with Tim. We almost had a riot on our hands last week when he announced it was his last time there.

 Nathan and Luke (and the other kids) have enjoyed watching the antics that David and Tim have found themselves participating in - like searching through flour for candy.

 After 13 months we realized that Tim was so much a part of our normal background that we had never even gotten a family picture with him. We managed to get him at the farewell dinner that his room and board hosts had for him on Friday.

 We've all enjoyed our time working with Tim and will miss him.

So Nathan, Tim is now "All Done Working" for his internship. He finished up for Christmas and then will be going to Maine to take a Wood Turning course for a few months. In the fall he hopes to go to Bible School. He's not sure yet where the Lord will lead him. We hope it will be back to CEF!

We thank the Lord that He is sending a new intern, Isaac from February through August, otherwise David's not sure how he would survive. We hope this will be a good experience for everyone as well!

Looking Up

Our first Lakelands Retreat was a super amazing time for everyone!

Things have been looking up lately, picking up speed it seems. Maybe it's having a toddler and a preschooler who can actually play together for more than 1 second on their own. Maybe it has to do with Luke being able to say more than 30 words at 19 months and has found his sense of humour, rather than the ear piercing screams of yesteryear. Maybe it's the fact that I get to be more involved with CEF ministry again now that I'm back to work part time. Although balancing those two things may be the continual struggle.

One of the unexpected events that I was able to be directly involved with was the Lakeland's Retreat (for kids from Muskoka, Orillia and the Kawarthas) a couple weekends ago. My role at camp since having kids has always been "mom" while David does his role of working with camp. The boys and I get to join in for pieces of things here and there, like meals, a few games and songs. However, this time there was a sudden shortage of female counsellors while there was enough lead staff (Yay for Tim our intern putting the weekend together!) It was really strange but neat to get to hangout with the 13 girls - playing games, being in chapel, leading small group discussions, eating meals together, attempting to get them to quiet down to sleep, walking to a park, riding the zipline at the park, having campfire together and so much more packed within a weekend!

My two biggest highlights were:
1) I got to present new 60 day Wonder Devotional books to two girls that had completed theres after I gave a challenge to be in God's Word at camp this summer. Then, one other girl told me she had completed hers but had forgot to tell me and would love another book. "I loved the book! It was so cool!" she said.

2) Seeing a girl that has been on the fringe socially be embraced and loved by the other kids was wonderful. She'd brought a Robert Munsch story collection to read so I encouraged her to read to the other girls while we waited for a couple to finish getting ready for bed. I was so proud of all the girls as they listened respectfully to the children's story. I told her she could finish the other half of the story the next night and so the whole next day she kept asking me "When can I tell the rest of the story?" That night her confidence was so much greater as she read louder and showed the pictures proudly. The other girls cheered her on and got in to the story. It was such a sweet thing to see a healthy and loving place for her to blossom.

Teacher Trainings!!!

What a blessing to be a part of a new training course we've re-formatted and put together called "Foundations". We did a trial of it in Bracebridge over two weekends. The students who completed the course did a fantastic job!

 They were pushed hard and fast to learn, practice and present a Gospel tool (the Flipper Flapper) an evangelistic Bible Lesson and a Bible verse! What a wonderful, God-loving group with giants hearts for kids! The exciting part is that basically all of the students are already connected to a Slingshot Saturday or Good News Club! The other lady who isn't, teaches at her church and shared the Flipper Flapper with her class the day after learning it!

A part of our great group!

 David and I also had the chance to teach at weekend 1 of 4 at TCE 1 (Teaching Children Effectively) in Toronto. 

So neat to meet the 5 students who are excited to reach the kids in their areas of Toronto. Please pray for them as they finish the last 2 weekends and implement what they've learned in starting the CEF/church partnered programs they've committed to start.