Guest Post // Our Mustard Seed Life

As most of you know we just returned from Thailand, which for our family, was an introduction to a life in missions. We wanted to experience the highs and lows first hand on what it is to follow God's lead even if it meant moving our whole family to another country, another culture, another way of life. This was one of the greatest and hardest journeys we as a family have experienced. And now when we hear of other people doing this we have a newfound appreciation for their faith to follow after God regardless of the sacrifices and challenges they may face.

Which leads me to introduce Catherine... she and her family we just met, but I feel like we know them without ever meeting them! It's pretty cool! She has written a little something for O+M so we can have a glimpse into how in the world they ended up in Africa! Hope your inspired by their faith and check out her blog for more good reads! Thanks for joining us today Catherine!

Hello Owls + Monsters readers! My name is Catherine and I blog over at Our Mustard Seed Life, where I write about mommy hood, missionary life, adoption + orphan care and life in Africa!  So excited to share a bit of our story today!

Our first years of marriage consisted of bicycling around our small, sleepy college town campus, seeing how far we could make $50 stretch on groceries, and playing intramural sports late into the evenings.

The orphan crisis, widow care,  and adoption weren't words we threw around at the dinner table. In fact, our dreams consisted of: graduating from college, getting jobs, and saving up to pay off our house. We knew how many kids we would have, how many years apart they would be and at what age we would retire. You might say we were the "oldest 20 year olds you ever knew."

And then, God completely trashed our plans. Through some difficult events in our lives: still birth, miscarriage, a health scare and infertility, He caused our plans to take a complete one-eighty. We found ourselves sitting in a pile of ashes begging God to do something beautiful with it.

And, He did!

One year ago, my husband and I kissed our two boys good-bye, and loaded up on a plane headed to Africa to meet 2 little girls that shared our last name. The 3.5 years we spent pursuing them through adoption taught us so much about God's never-ending, unrelenting fight for us as His children.

Six weeks after we returned to the States with our girls, our family of 6 loaded back up on a plane to move to Malawi, Africa.

Talk about transitions, huh!?

This past year we have had the privilege of getting to work at Esther's House orphanage in a rural village in Malawi, Africa. We have:

transitioned into a family of 6

watched our girls become fluent in English

became students of a new culture

moved onto campus at an orphanage

began new jobs

stumbled through language barriers

fell in love with 79 children we call "our own"

attempted to balance family life and ministry

tackled the learning curve of village life

functioned without our American luxuries (hello, electricity?!)

and began full-time homeschool

When I look back at our first years of marriage and our grandiose plans for our life, I am so thankful that God's Plan for us was so drastically different than our own. I think of all we would have missed out on if our plans had come to fruition.  His creativity and purpose for our lives completely knocks my socks off!

Following God has proven to lead our family on quite the adventure!

December Newsletter

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Thank you everyone for following along with us in this journey while we serve in Thailand. We only have 3 months left here and it's so easy to look forward to returning home and all its familiarities but we are striving to finish well! Setting our hearts and minds set on the here and now rather than the then and there.

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Christmas Eve

What are some of your Christmas Eve traditions?

This year we kept one tradition alive, one we've adopted from Sevio's family. We all sat down to listen to Sevio paraphrase the Christmas story of Jesus' birth and read from the bible 1 Corinthians 11:23‐28 (where Jesus shares in the first ever communion with his disciples), after which we all shared in communion together.

We finished up the night with some last minute present wrapping, stuffing of stockings (which for Sevio and I are actually Santa hats), and family snuggles watching a Christmas movie.

Can't wait till the morning to crank the Christmas tunes, drink hot chocolate, eat candy canes, skype with family back home, and watch Rylee's little eyes fill with delight as she opens her gifts!

Hope you all have a safe Christmas filled with peace, joy, love, and maybe some of that white stuff!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

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November Newsletter

Check your inbox's, our latest newsletter is out! 

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And if haven't already, subscribe now to our monthly newsletter, just follow this link below:

Thank you everyone for following along with us in this journey while we serve in Thailand. We are so encouraged by all the love you send us whether that be in your prayers, finances, skype calls, or a simple hello via email or facebook! All of it means so much and we're blessed to have such loving family and friends supporting us all over the world! We love you and miss you all!

God Doesn't Make Junk

I'm gonna get right to the point, no sugar coating, no nothing, this past month has been a tough one! 

This past week especially has felt like I've hit the wall, i am: emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausted! I recognize I have a choice...to sit where I am (which is a sucky place to be), I retreat and ignore it all (which will put me in a worse state I'm sure), or I tried to climb, hit, go around, do something to get past this blockage and move on with life!

Thankfully I have a husband who is understanding and has given me this morning to take a time out and just be. Be alone, be me, be with God.

I have spent the last couple years losing a pieces of myself, very important pieces, my joy and love for life. My once extroverted carefree personality has shriveled into itself. My excitement to try new things and live life as an adventure has dried up. I'm tired, I'm impatient, I'm a perfectionist, I worry too much, I think WAY too much about what others think, and I have no aspirations or dreams to strive after. (sad? yes...this much I know)

Currently I feel like I'm in a place where I'm over sensitive (and no not because I have raging pregnancy hormones), that because of this I can take something someone says or a look they give and turn it into something wildly negative. I feel like I'm unlikable, inept at everything, and have an uncanny ability to do/say things wrong at all times. It makes me nervous, shy, and yes right now I believe I am junk! (This video nails how I feel, especially at 7:05 onward)

I'm trying to have the perspective that these things are just lies, and in my head I know they are lies, but in my heart they are truth and have been for a long time ... thus the reason why I'm stuck in a rut and can't get out...at least by myself.

Over the last couple weeks I've felt like God has been trying to teach me about love, and originally I thought it was to help me to learn to love His people the way He loves them, unconditionally and wholeheartedly not dependent on works or social status. I'm beginning to think the purpose of this is more for me, to recognize I'm am the one that is loved unconditionally and wholeheartedly, I am NOT JUNK, I am an original masterpiece set apart to do amazing things, its a truth and I need to believe it. For it is when I accept this I can begin to love myself and love others again.

So I've read through the gospel of John highlighting the word "love" and found it is used in one form or another 54 times (at least by my calculation...)! My next step in this study was to see which form of love (in Greek there are a few different variants of love) is used and in context to who and then going a little deeper to how all this love relates and applies to my life. I've started journaling through these things as well as trying to write down one thing a day I'm grateful for, recognizing the reality that there are things in my life to be happy about, & there are people who actually love me.

Slowly but surely I believe God is chipping away at my feelings of perpetual inadequacy and showing me what it is to love again. To love me, love life, and love others. I have been resting on this verse, and see it regularily as it is the first page of my journal...

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26)

Becoming Relevant

We had an interesting night that I wish I had pictures to show you.

On a typical Monday night we go to a small group and study the Bible. This Monday night we met with our small group but we had a special guest, our pastor, he came to give us an glimpse into the Sikh religion and Punjabi culture. He himself was a Sikh and through his troubled teen/young adult years found God in a jail cell, his life is an amazing example of God's grace.

Anyways, after about an hour of learning about how we can relate to our Sikh friends and neighbors he took us to a Sikh temple so we could see exactly how they practice their religion. As we entered the temple we covered our heads and split up, men and women, and went up our separate stairs. At the top we removed our shoes and washed our hands and entered the sanctuary, women on the left, men on the right. The first thing I noticed as we walked in was the men at the front wearing white robes playing traditional Indian instruments singing from their scriptures. The next was that it was a wide open room with no chairs, front and center was an altar adorned with colorful fabric, Christmas lights, gold pillars, and a really elegant chandelier.  This is where their book of scriptures was held and where the people would give their offerings.

After a few minutes of observing their religious practices we left the sanctuary and returned downstairs and shared an Indian meal together. This is something I wish we could incorporate more into our North American churches, where we come to worship together and fellowship together, time being of no essence. Another aspect we all agreed was cool was that the temple was open all day, they welcome worship at all hours, I wish we could see this in our churches, understandably people can worship God in the comfort of their own home, but there's something special about doing it together.

So that was our night, definitely not your typical night for a group of Caucasian Christians but I think very neat, important, and relevant to learn more about a people group that is very prominent within our community.

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