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Home Life Requests

As you think of us, please continue to pray for a healthy balance in our home life. In many ways, though culture, language, and ministry do take its toll, the difference between thriving and simply surviving lies in the health of our home.

Helper
Over the past month we have been without our primary helper, Nopi (we have another dear lady who helps us twice a week though). Nopi has been dealing with severe heartburn. Last month we took her to the hospital because her heart started racing and she struggled to breathe. Since that episode a month ago, her heartburn continues to get better. But over the last few weeks she is not sleeping at night.

We desperately want her to get better. Mostly for her own sake. It is hard to see her and her family struggle through this without knowing what has caused any of these symptoms. She is tired of staying at home and some days just shows up in the morning. But after sweeping a little or preparing a small lunch, see is noticeably exhausted and needs to go home. The inconsistency of her being here adds some stress to our daily activities. Thanksgiving dishes (with no dishwasher) and birthday meals/ dessert (made from scratch) took a lot of work and coordinating. Every day we lose a few hours of homeschool, work activities, or rest because of the added work.

We are so thankful that the Lord has sustained us through this unexpected break in the routine. Please continue to pray for Nopi's health, their family's finances, and that we can stay the course even when we just want to give up.

Homeschool
This year we settled in to some really good routines. We had many months of continued growth and good problem solving for each of our kid's different challenges. Our hardest challenge was our son's reading ability. But with each passing month since August we have seen him make steady improvement. We also found that when B took just one day a week of the teaching everyone in the family felt lighter. Pray for us to be able to continue these routines. Pray for K to have stamina, grace, and creativity as she handles most of the homeschool workload. Pray also for creativity in giving our kids motivation to work hard. One child in particular has extremely low motivation. :)

Parenting
Our other great need (as any family with young kids) is how to respond and help our kids develop their character. Pray for great patience. We have learned that our response is 50% of the battle in engaging and discipling our kids. Our son continues to have a hard time with change and attention span (or just hearing our voices at all). This can be very stressful for us. One of the added challenges is that there aren't other boys on our team. So we don't have other boys to compare him to and we don't have other parents of boys to talk with. Of course, we can always email and call people, but we don't always have much time for extra things like that. Pray for us to be able to find other avenues for input and advice.

Marriage
Next month we celebrate our 15th anniversary. Where on earth did those years go!?! One of the greatest joys in our life is the wonderful marriage God has given us. We continue to see each other grow in Christlikeness, humility, and service. We really love each other and love spending time together. We wish we could be together more often. No grandparents, babysitters, or anything interesting to do in town makes special times together few and far between. Pray for us to use the time we do have to have meaningful time together. Pray for us to stay humble and keep short accounts in the stressful moments of life.

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