Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Inundation

Well, you can't leave a country without some sort of crazyness, and ours happened the night before we left Tome. I, Missy, in my desire to get the house spic-and-span before we left decided I just had to fish out some spoons that had fallen behind the sink in between the wall. Of course, moving the sink out (it isn't attached to the wall just a free-floating furniture piece) I pulled out one of the pipes from the faucet – thus spraying water EVERYWHERE.

Yes, there was yelling, yes there was running around trying to stop the flow with towels, napkins, all those ridiculous things that don't really help anything, yes tempers were high - when I remembered to turn off the water at the shut off valve outside (this is my second time breaking a pipe in Chile, the Capstone team can vouch for another caper I had breaking a pipe). Did I know where the valve was? Nope. Did Jordan? Tampoco. (No) Was it pitch dark? Yep. But after running around in the dark, coming back in for a flashlight, then running around some more, we found it, turned it off, and looked at the damage.

Mind you, I had JUST finished cleaning the house for our departure, ready to go to bed, get some sleep, all that great stuff. And I had just flooded the kitchen with a good inch of water. Great. And to top it off – I had actually broken the faucet, so that had to be fixed before we left.

Now, I had to wait about a day to be able to write about this, because we both had to come to the place where we could laugh about it...it had been a little stressful getting ready to go, it had been a long weekend, and we'd been working hard. Needless to say, at the time it wasn't at all funny. But, we've moved on, chalked it up to a good experience as a married couple, and can appreciate how the other handled the situation. I mopped water, Jordan got some tools, I mopped some more water, Jordan fixed the pipe, we both mopped more water, and eventually were able to get to bed.

Great adventure, great company, glad we laugh and Jordan can forgive me for being the insane cleaner that I am (we did get the spoons by the way, when we had to move the sink to mop up water and mess with some pipes – and you better believe I made sure I cleaned back there when I had the chance as well – that's how insane my cleaning gene is). And, I think I really learned my lesson about what is worth it when you are trying to leave a house for 2 months – and spoons – are not.

Have a great day – we'd of course love to hear other stories of madness you've experienced!
Missy (and Jordan)

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Coming Home

Well, with the Easter service came our time to hop on a bus and head out to Santiago to return home. We are leaving on Tuesday evening, and arriving in Portland on Wednesday. 

It seemed to come out of nowhere (minus the fact that we have been working super hard to prepare the house for winter while we are gone) and it was hard to say goodbye. We've made some amazing friends down here, and it is honestly difficult to believe that we've only been here a little over 7 months, because we simply feel so close to everyone. 

We got to say some goodbyes at church, everyone gave us lectures that we must return, and both of us cannot imagine saying goodbye for good. It is incredible how much we have grown together here in Tome, but also how serving this group of believers and their community has made us feel so connected, so blessed, and so much apart of them. We are going to miss life down here in Chile, but at the same time are excited to come home and share with all of you the mountains God is moving down here!


May you have a blessed day, and if you think of it – pray for our travels!
Jordan and Missy

Monday, April 25, 2011

He is risen!

The Easter celebration we had at church was pretty mellow here, Jordan made some bookmarks for people with a verse from John on them, as well as the tri-fold with all the service information. 

On top of that, it was our group's turn to set up and tear down. (Since the church here rents the space they use for Sunday service, they have divided the congregation into 5 or 6 groups so that every week a different group comes early to set everything up, provide the coffee break treats, etc.) I made about 100 cookies, and they went like hotcakes! 


The kids and I had a great time, it was our last Sunday together for awhile – and because it was Easter we had a big celebration for the resurrection of Jesus! It was great, and we had some time left over so I pulled out a VeggieTales Go Fish game that they love to play. It's pretty funny because the cards are all various fishes – in English – so the kids are always laughing about the pronunciation of the names. Whale comes out “wally” and eel comes out “ale” very cute.





Happy Easter to all of you!
Missy and Jordan

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Interview with Pastor Luciano coming soon to a town near you!

We got a chance to sit down with Pastor Luciano a few days ago to talk a little about a lot of things. For  those of you who haven't gotten a chance to meet him, you really should try to! It really is an honor to get to work side by side with him on a daily basis. We will be showing this interview at some of the meetings we will be having in Portland.

The clip below is from one of the camera angles that got rolling a few minutes before the actual interview got started.



Blessings!
Jordan and Missy

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Happy Thursday

So today we were busy like bees getting the house ready for when we are gone -- mostly Jordan working in the yard chopping wood, putting it undercover, and then finishing the fence to keep Imac in. He does an amazing job with all that stuff, like really amazing. Anyway, I need to put up some pictures of all the wood we hauled up on Tuesday, it took a little over an hour with both of us going up and down the stairs carrying hundreds of logs up to store for the winter. It was crazy hard, I felt like I was back in cross country trying to finish a race....you've gotta dig deep when you are carrying logs up 85 stairs. Seriously.


This evening we had a belated birthday party for our friend Dario after English class and prayer, it was cool to hang out with a bunch of the youth before we head home. Pictures to come!


I figured I needed to put some pictures on the post to make it more interesting...so here's a random story about the dog.

The dog is named Imac because she loves apples. Apple ie computers ie Macintosh ie Imac. Well one day Jordan picked a bunch of apples up in the camp and brought them back for me to use for a pie...they were sitting in his open backpack waiting to be peeled when I turned around and there was one on the floor. Hmm, interesting...I come back out a few minutes later to find this little lady with the tell-tale stem of an apple on her bed - in like 5 minutes she had seriously grabbed the apple out of J's backpack and gobbled up the whole thing! Needless to say I washed all of the apples really good after finding out I had an apple thief under my roof.


Oh that Imac...
Have a great Good Friday,
Missy

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Eventos del domingo (Sunday Events)

Hey all, here are some photos from Sunday morning....
Coffee and leftover scones from the women's night for breakfast
 Ready to get teaching
Kids working on their craft for the day
 Making crosses and writing memory verses
Showing off their work 
 So cute
 These kids are so much fun to teach every week, I'm going to miss them while we are home!
Finished prayer scarf for a friend's sick uncle


And Jordan? Well he filmed the service (didn't get any photos-sorry!) and then chopped wood all day for our  winter wood supply. He is amazing! And we will have some pictures soon of the hundreds of pieces of wood now littering our front yard!

Memory verse of the week from Sunday school: Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. - John 15:13-14. 

We learned about Jesus' crucifixion this week, thank you Lord for what you did on the cross for us.

Blessings,
Missy

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Women's Evening

This weekend I hosted a women's ministry event with the idea of sharing tea and knitting. I am hoping that we can start meeting regularly, there isn't many opportunities for the women to spend time together outside of church. It was small and simple, but the three of us had a great time chatting, sharing treats, and knitting. It was also good to get to know these women a bit more, and I am looking forward to spending more time with them!

 I made some little Bible verse favors for the meeting
 Jordan recently made - yes, MADE! - a fisheye lens, so this is him documenting my preparation of gingerbread biscotti, recipe here
 Cutting the biscotti
Imac, my little encourager!
 The finished biscotti - very delicious by the way...
 Chocolate chip scones
 Tuna and cucumber cream cheese sandwiches
 Our little tea-time spread


 Ready for the knitting to commence!
 Angelica and Sayonara
 Sayo the teacher
 Crocheting
 Final piece, very cool - and she did it in 5 minutes!

We had a great time together, just hanging out enjoying the evening. The Lord really blessed it as well, and I'm excited to see where our Knitting Ministry goes!

- Missy

Friday, April 15, 2011

BEST Recipe...like ever

Jordan found this the other day, and put in a request for me to make it. Oh man, it was delicious. Good request J. Anyway, it is called Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread, and it is a soft yeast bread with lots of cinnamon and sugar...simply magical. You can find the recipe here, and the narration of this woman will give you a laugh as well.

Here are some pictures of our bread-making experience:
Nice little ball of yeasty goodness
Closer look
 Browning some butter
 Cutting into strips
 Stacking
 Loads of sugar...I know, not one of the healthiest recipes
 Getting ready for another rise
 So many layers
 Baked!
 Seriously soft, sweet, and yeasty
 This really makes me want to bake more
The best thing was also the sugar that had caramelized on the bottom of the pan, bonus!

You should really make this soon, it's totally worth the time! 
Hope you had a wonderful week, we just got back from Married Group this evening, and I am hosting a Women's Group tomorrow afternoon - prayer for our time together would be greatly appreciated!

- Missy