Please God, not Africa!

I have to admit that Christmas here is just plain weird. I mean, we're Canadian, right?  So for us, the Christmas season is evidenced by things like cold, snow, candles, fire in the fireplace, cozy blankets, hot chocolate, lights, trees... Celebrating Christmas with the heavy dust of Harmattan falling from the sky rather than snow, and sweating buckets rather than shivering....well, it didn't seem very Christmas-y. But it was a lovely Christmas and I mean that.  We enjoyed many festive events in the days leading up to Christmas: a Christmas movie night, Christmas cookie delivery and carollers (seriously, a group of young missionaries knocked on our gate and serenaded us with carols), a children's Christmas play written by our own MK teachers, and more. Oh Christmas tree. When I was in Lome in early December, I found a little tree.  It took about 4 minutes to decorate it, but with that and some Christmas music playing, it was beginning to feel a little like Christm

We’ve been in Togo for exactly one month today.   And you know what’s even crazier than that?   It’s exactly 4 years ago tomorrow that Kylie hurt her foot – and to think of all that happened after December 16, 2012 and now, here we are, by God’s grace, back in Togo and Kylie is healed.   How incredible to look back along the path and see how God worked on our behalf!   We weren’t sure we’d ever be able to come back here and look – here we are. So it’s been a quite a month.   Man, if you could just pop over for a cup of coffee I could tell you story after story, some funny, some not-so-much.   Since you likely aren’t popping over and I don’t drink coffee anyhow, let me tell you a couple… Furniture Shopping in the Middle of the Night Our house here in Togo is great.   It has three bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living/dining area and a kitchen.   I’ll show you photos some day so you get an idea of what it’s like. The one thing we don’t have much of is actual furniture.   It’s

We made it! We're here and we're settling and things are good. Here's what's been going on since we left Canada last week... We left London on Monday morning after a very difficult good-bye.  It was hard.  Really hard.  We took at bus to the Toronto airport and from there flew to Paris, then from Paris to Niger, then Niger to Togo.  Amazingly, our trip was completely uneventful. Everything was smooth sailing, even all 18 of our bags and rubbermaid totes made it.  We were very grateful - and still are. We arrived in Lome as very weary travellers but were greeted at the airport by our dear friend and co-worker, Anna.  She and Parico, our Togolese driver, helped us get all our stuff into the van and took us to the Southern Baptist Seminary compound to stay in their guest house.  Sweet Anna had pizza and chips and cold drinks waiting for us when we arrived. The next morning we began our shopping in Lome.  This is the capital of Togo and has an abundance of stores

Two weeks from today we'll be landing in Lome  - it's so hard to believe that we're that close! Here's where we're at: 1. God has supplied 100% of our monthly support and in fact, we are now over-supported!  Amazing.  Thank you to all of you who have generously and sacrificially supported us - we are so grateful! 2. We've moved out of our house.  We moved out last Thursday and our renter moved in the next morning.  She is a lovely woman who intends to stay for the full 2 years - what an answer to prayer! 3. We received our travel visas!  We're all good to enter the country. 4. We are living with my parents - bless them! It's not like seven people have moved in with the two of them and totally taken over their entire house or anything. We're so grateful to be able to bunk with them for these 2 weeks and finish up some of the details and errands before we go. 5. Flights are booked and our Robert Q shuttle comes to pick us at my parents hous

It's October the 18th and we leave in less than a month! Our tickets are booked, our house is a mess, and I think I might be losing my mind. This is where we are attempting to do school. Kind of. We move out of our house on October 27th which means we have 9 days to get MUCHO work done.  You can see from the above photo that the packing is in process but I'm not sure the word PROGRESS is an apt description of how we're doing right now. One of those "one step forward, two steps back" things.   We do have tickets booked to fly out on November 14th.  Super exciting and crazy at the same time.  I can't believe we'll be in Togo a month from now. I know these next few weeks are going to fly by. Please pray for us as we try to complete the long list of things that need to be done before we go.  From travel visas (which are in process) to moving in with my parents (Bless them!!), there is still a lot, a lot, a lot to be accomplished. Okay - shor

Three things to share with you: 1. The packing has started.  Our house is a mess with boxes and totes everywhere. We signed the lease for our house and we move out on October 27th.  That's this month!  Eek! 2. The tickets are actually booked.  We fly out on Monday, November 14th at 6:35 pm from Toronto and land in Lome on November 15th at 6:10 pm (Lome time).  That's about six weeks away! 3. Support is at 91% today.  AMAZING!!  We have about $600 per month left to raise to be fully supported.  Please pray with us that this final amount comes in BEFORE November 14th. We trust that God will provide. This is starting to be really real. I was filling out all the applications for our visas today and it's crazy to think that in a few weeks, we'll actually be back in Mango. It's exciting and scary, happy and sad, good and hard all at the same time. Ugh - these crazy conflicting emotions! You want to know how you can pray for us?  I'm so glad you asked! 1. P

My great-aunt Ines, who was a missionary in Nigeria for 28 years, had a saying:  "Things are happening around here." This wasn't her most famous saying.  I'll get to that one in a bit.  The "things are happening around here" was something she said in the final years of her life when she suspected that her cleaning-lady was stealing tuna cans from her pantry or when she felt that the nurses in her nursing home were conspiring against her. But it's true around our place nonetheless.  Things are happening around here...and it's nothing to do with tuna. Here's what is happening: 1.  Support!!   Look at the "before" photo of our snake and the current-up-to-the-minute snake!!  Praising the Lord on this big answer to prayer! I posted this photo on June 4th. No coloured stripes. And then this is today - 81%, baby!  It is the abundant provision of God through people like you that has allowed this to happen! 2. House Rental

Happy Middle of August! We can't believe how quickly the summer is passing. It's been a busy one and we have some updates to share with you: 1.  Last week we had the privilege of going on a family holiday - all seven of us!  Everyone was able to book the same week off from work, so we headed to the beautiful province of Quebec.  We had a great time as a family, enjoying the beauty of the province and engaging in some crazy adventures.  We went white water rafting, whale-watching (and yes, we saw whales!), caving in Gatineau Park and exploring a little of Old Quebec City.  It was absolutely lovely! The view of the St. Lawrence from one of our campgrounds. Heading into our first rapid... Jack and Ted at The Citadel Beautiful Old Quebec City It was also great to practice our French.  It's amazing what we remember but more astonishing what we forgot.  Nate only made one major faux-pas but likely we'll never see those people again...(if only I wa

Just a quick update today so you know we're still alive and kicking! First things first - snake update!  We're excited to be past the 25% milestone! It's so great to see the stripes being coloured in and knowing that we are getting closer and closer to our goal of being in Mango sometime in November. This second photo is our front living room  - it looks like Ikea exploded in here! We're heading to Lansing, Michigan on Friday to take a load of totes and boxes to a container that is heading over to Mango. From school books to peanut butter and juice crystals to towels, we've got a bunch of stuff ready to sail across the ocean and (hopefully) arrive in Mango before we do.  It's so great that we can send some stuff across rather than trying to squeeze everything into 12 bags of luggage. Thanks for your faithful prayers and encouragement.  We're excited to get to Mango as soon as we can - and we know that it's through your support and e

Today Kylie saw her surgeon. And today, she walked out of the doc's office with a letter in her hand that simply states: Kylie has no current medical concerns and is cleared to travel to Togo. Sigh of relief.  Tears of joy.  High fives all around. We have waited a long time for those words. And now they are official, on hospital letterhead with a legit signature at the bottom. Thank you, Jesus. And thank you to Alex and Dr. Cashin and Dr. Salvadori (as well as dozens of nurses and techs here in London) who worked so hard to restore her health. And thank you to Dr. Kelly and Dr. Keuhler and Gordon and Todd (as well as many nurses and techs in Togo) who worked so hard to restore her health. And thank you to you who prayed and wrote and prayed and visited and prayed and encouraged all along the way, asking God to restore her health. And He has. This started on December 16, 2012. That's 1305 days ago.  Three and half years, basically.  And today

He's getting more colourful! It's happening!  The support is coming in and we are so, so grateful.  Grateful to those who have partnered with us and grateful to our Kind, Compassionate Father who has placed it on the hearts of people to partner with us.  It's amazing! We're about 25% of the way there! Warning: Sales Pitch Ahead! If you would like to partner with us in getting houses built in Mango,  please do!  You can simply contact ABWE at www.abwe.ca/give.  You don't have to start giving now, you can just tell them that you'd like to start once we hit the field (estimated time would be November 1st) and the ladies in the ABWE Canada office would be happy to sign you up! 

If you were along for the ride of our first journey to Togo and kept up with our story, you would know that we mentioned a particular doctor that was a huge part of the treatment of our kids and became a huge part of our hearts and lives. Todd Dekryger. His picture can be found here and there throughout my posts of 2012 and 2013.  He was an amazing doctor and an amazing friend.  I think when someone prays over your kids and then plays a massive part in their healing and restoration, you come to think pretty highly of that person.  We LOVED Todd. You'll notice I'm speaking about Todd in the past tense.  For some reason, on February 26th, 2016 (one year TO THE DAY that the Hospital of Hope opened), God saw fit to take to heaven our dear friend, amazing doctor, loving husband to Jennifer and fantastic father to Will, Grant, Luke and Drew. It's rough.  It was a series of unimaginable circumstances for the Togo North Team and Todd's family as Todd became very ill,

As soon as we told the kids that we needed to start raising support to go to Togo again, they immediately asked if I would make another "snake" to mark our progress. So I did! This is our snake.  Every stripe is $100 we need to raise to be able to reach our required funds.  This time around, we need to raise about $5800 per month.  It seems like so much. It's almost a thousand dollars more than last time.  There's a couple of reasons for that: 1. Our Canadian dollar isn't so hot. So the exchange rate to US dollars alone is a big jump in our support requirements. 2. We need to come home at some point.  Last time we went, we somehow missed a line item on our support document called "Flights Home" - thankfully, we had enough extra support (and the insurance company paid for Kylie and I to come home due to her medical situation) to pay for all seven of us to get back to Canada.  This time around however, we plan to stock pile a monthly amount so t

We've had kind of a big week here.  It's been a bit of a roller coaster. On Tuesday, an offer was placed on our house from the family that had put the note in our mailbox. On Wednesday, we counter-offered. On Thursday, we sold our house. Can I be really honest and say that this was actually really hard?  This business of knowing, not only that we're going to be homeless in a few months, but also that we'll never live here again, is tough.  We love our house.  It's our home. When I told the kids that we'd actually sold it, they all kind of looked at me and said, "Oh." Oh. Exactly.  Although these are exciting days, they're hard. Obedience is easy, said no-one ever. And then another big deal on Thursday.  One of our big prayer requests has been for Ethan.  Ethan is NOT coming with us to Togo and my momma's heart is having a struggle with this one too.  I know it's natural for kids to grow up and leave the nest, but is it natural f

It's actually happening.  Round 2. We have been approved (re-approved?) by our sending agency, ABWE, to return to Togo. (insert deep breath here) I'm stoked.  Nate's stoked.  The kids are stoked. But this time, we go with eyes wide open. So even though we're stoked, we are also realistic. One of my first blog posts, waaaaay back in 2012 when this whole business began, was entitled Counting Miracles. And guess what?  We're doing a repeat. So here's the scoop on what's been happening in the last bit.  (And if you already know this, feel free to scroll down.  This is for my own sake.  I don't want to forget this stuff.) In November 2015, Kylie basically received medical clearance regarding her infected foot.  She had an MRI a month before (which was kind of a funny story because they lost power in the entire department and she ended up being trapped in the MRI tube for about 2 hours.  Well, it's a funny story now, anyhow) and when we met w