Praise God for Board Meetings!

This week/weekend the Missionary TECH Team Board is here! The week or two before the board arrives, there is a nervous tension in the air.  Things start getting tidier, the rules get a little stricter, the refrigerator gets... bleach-e-er?

Anyway, all this happens, and it made me wonder if the Board was to be dreaded because people dreaded those last two weeks. (Side note: Matt and I were NOT here last year for board meeting.  We went to Judson to represent TECH Team.)

Let me tell you that Board meeting week is anything BUT dreadful!  The board members are SO loving! They've walked around and greeted all of us as their arrivals were sporadic. Several of them spoke in our chapel times this week, and the Team was more encouraged than we've been in a while!  The Board is excited about TECH's ministry and where God is bringing us in the future, and sometimes that excitement slips away from those of us at the office.  PRAISE GOD FOR BOARD MEETINGS!


A couple is staying with us at Stone House, and I got to meet them just this morning.  They are the kind of couple you wish you were related to, you know what I mean?  Their last name is Ellison.  Please ask God to bless their stay with us and their time with TECH this week.  They are a treasure!

The Board... the only picture I have of them... :)

Matt's New Animation

 

This animation is Matt's second at TECH.  It is of the Missionary Village Ministries outside of Longview for pilots-in-training who want to be missionary pilots.  Check it out!  

(NOTE: In order to do this animation, each building needs to be designed then rendered.  It's a very long process... The peeps at TECH are very proud of/ impressed with him.)  :D

Something I Noticed...

 (A Note From Molly)


Right now, honestly, I feel a bit overwhelmed. We've been working on the house every night, unless we've had a meeting at church, and the house is coming along--- though not a single room is TOTALLY finished.  It's a HUGE project that we're in the middle of, and there is a learning curve involved (though Matt is incredibly skilled!).  We've traveled up north three times in two months, and we're going back to Elgin next week... I just finished unpacking two nights ago.  Meanwhile, we've gotta get the house ready to move into SOON.  Matt wants to be out of Stone House by April.  (How we can do that amongst all this traveling, I don't know.)

Matt let us rest Saturday evening after supper, instead of working, which was such a treat!  Also, last night we quit working around 8:40 to get some things for the house Wal-Mart, and we went home to relax afterward.  THAT was also a treat!  :)  Those moments, I think, are helping me get through the other days with long hours.

I guess you could say I'm behind in a lot of things at home... catching up on laundry, cleaning, organizing, packing to move; it's tricky.  Meanwhile, I feel like I'm living in chaos and can't quite escape it.

It's been a hard couple months.  You know that I just posted info about Grandpa Christy.  He passed away two weeks after Larry passed away here at TECH.  I'm emotionally drained.  I used to feel upbeat, but I don't smile as easily as I used to.  I still smile though.  It's just harder.  And I definitely feel the need to smile... it's not pretend... it's just hard.

Something I noticed, though, is that last year around this time I felt the same.  Psychologists say depression comes in cycles.  Maybe they're right... 

Something ELSE I noticed is that I didn't blog much last winter, just as I didn't much this winter.  But something tragic happened last year in February, and I didn't even blog about it.  I didn't blog about most things last winter because of my depression... maybe I wrote more on my OTHER blog, but I didn't post here.  My grandpa Johnson passed away.  I can't even begin to describe how sad I was when I realized I never blogged about him.  My sister, Sarah did.  It was beautiful.  She blogged numerous times. 

Do you ever realize (much after the fact) that you have neglected to do something, and because of that you may have hurt people's feelings?  I feel like I did that by not blogging about Grandpa.

Matt and I made a trip to Minnesota over Christmas with our family to see him.  We also were able to make it to his funeral early February last year.  I can't believe I didn't blog about any of it.  I was sure that I had blogged... but maybe I just thought about what I WOULD say.

I hope I can write about Grandpa HoJo soon.  I'll try.  Each of my sisters had a different relationship with him... I'll only be able to write from my perspective, of course.  I just have to get through a couple of things here first.  :)  Grandpa's post will take time, because I'll want to have some fun picture to share with you.

Prayer Requests

My sister brought it to my attention that we hadn't updated our prayer requests for a LONG time!  If you are on our prayer team, please click on the "Current Prayer Requests" tab, OR click here!  :)

Thanks, Sarah, for noticing!!!

And thanks, everyone, for praying for our ministry at Missionary TECH Team!  We are grateful!

Grandpa Christy

The last two months has spun by us.

Matt's grandpa passed away in January. We had just spent several days with him in Iowa, when we traveled up North last month.  We drove back up to his funeral on January 30th... Nine days after Larry Wiklund's funeral.

If you didn't know Matt's Grandpa Christy, I wish you did.  I have a suspicion that he is a LOT like Matt will be in 40-some years, if that's Matt's lifespan.  This is how I knew him, which I didn't know him as well as I wished:

- He would smile as I spoke and encourage me if he thought I was being hard on myself.  

- He was one of our faith-supporters, and he faithfully went to church a few blocks from his house.  

- He never interrupted.

- He worried about Grandma when he found out he was sick. 

- He had a garden and nurtured MANY indoor plants.  He got a kick out of his Christmas cactus that bloomed twice!

- I remember when we pulled out a bunch of old photos last March... a year ago now.  He was so excited to talk about the different things that everyone was doing in those photos.  Grandma and he both seemed to have a great time remembering together with Matt's mom, Char.  I was so glad to be there, observing.  Not many people have moments like I had watching them.  I feel lucky.

- He'd give plants away to Matt and me, and he'd give us thorough care instructions.

- He worked for many years in a grocery store, and he also took care of others' crops.

- He told me he would really like to be my grandpa a couple years after Matt and I got married.  No one had ever told me they wanted me to be a part of their family before... I felt very special, and I cried a couple minutes afterward.  (Fortunately we were just pulling out of their driveway.)

- He really liked his bird (a love bird) named Peaches.  He talked to her like she was his granddaughter.  It was so cute... and she loved him too!  She'd sit on his shoulder.

- He was stubborn.  He would do exactly what he thought was right and stand up for it.

- He wasn't fancy, nor did he try to be anything he wasn't.  He claimed that he was a simple kind of man, and I really liked that about him.  I wish more people would be as brilliant as him and shed away life's unnecessary complications. 

- He had spent some time in the army... even in Germany, I think.  He talked about several adventures while we were in the hospital visiting, one of them being how he met Grandma through letter correspondence! I think their love story should be turned into a movie!  He talked about how proud he was to tell everyone he had a girl waiting for him back home.  That makes me smile.  He served as a cook, and Matt said he could crack more than 5 eggs at once!  I think he told me Grandpa would do all the egg-cracking for meals up until a few years ago.  :)

- Grandpa liked a good conversation.  He liked to sit and talk, but sometimes he'd just listen.  And he seemed to like it.

- Grandpa and Grandma came to visit us in Longview with Dan and Char (Matt's parents).  We did several different things, but I remember Grandpa getting excited about the boat trip on Caddo Lake.  He thought that was spectacular--- and it was!  He reminded us afterward about what the guide had taught us about the birds and plants... it was neat.

- Matt said that he used to always eat Grandma's oatmeal cookies for breakfast!

Of course no matter where I stop in talking about Grandpa Christy, I won't be done. There are always more things to say.  I think what I've put may have given the right impression of who he is... maybe.

I just wanted to mention him.  We've been going through a lot in the past two months, and it's all hard to process if we don't take a step back and look at it all... here's just a glimpse, I guess! :)

UPDATES!

So much to say--- so little time!  Stay tuned!  We'll be adding information about the follow sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat topics:

- Our three trips up North in the past 2 months
- Our House updates
- Spiritual changes
- New and excited jobs here at TECH!
- Missionary TECH Teammates... lots of changes going on.

... and more! 

Stay tuned!  Same scrappy blog!  Same scrappy bloggers!