Archives for 2013

It’s hard to believe Christmas is in two days! December has flown by for our family. We will be out of our house in just nine days… next Tuesday. Needless to say, we have spent much of December sorting and packing… sorting and packing… sorting and packing. Plus, we are getting ready for our two week visit to Turks and Caicos! A lot of the paper work for our visas needed to be done before January (to be able to move in July) so Sean has been working on getting it all (and it is A LOT) in order. We are preparing to meet with pastors, churches, volunteers, real estate agents, a doctor (we have to get check ups for our visas) and time to simply see the country. It all happens in three weeks! On one hand we are excited to see where we are going next and then to finally be home for a while but on the other hand, we are sad to be leaving our friends and our home for the last two years. I’m sure the next three weeks in St. Kitts will go by quickly.

In December we celebrated the Fall TCE Graduation!

Sean shared the Christmas story to classes in some of the schools.

Earlier this month we celebrated Maddy’s 5th Birthday! She had a double party with her best friend Audri… they are only two days apart!

Mavis returned from CMI in Missouri so Sean has been catching her up to speed. She is ready to take over… in fact, there are times Sean feels like a “lame duck” just keeping a seat warm! It’s a good thing not to be needed here anymore! We have complete confidence in leaving.

Baby #2 seems to be doing well. We had another appointment and got to hear the baby’s heartbeat! Also, our first visit had us waiting five hours but our second was down to three! I’ll never complain about waiting to see the doctor in America again. We have one more appointment two days before we leave… and I’ll be having an ultrasound (I’ll be two days shy of 18 weeks). We are hopeful this little one will give us a nice shot of whether we are having a boy or a girl. But more so, we ask for your prayers that we are having a very healthy baby.

Honestly, we only plan to update this blog once or twice before we leave St. Kitts. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!

What a week!

For anyone who doesn’t yet know, we announced on Facebook last week that we are expecting Baby #2 due June 15th! We have been praying for another child for four years so we are beyond thrilled!

Also, last week was our first ever island Thanksgiving! Last year we were home for Thanksgiving but this year we stayed. It wasn’t the same as being home with our families but it was still nice. Our church threw a big dinner so we had everything we normally would and we got to spend the evening with all of the friends we have made here in the last two years.

On Saturday we had the 2nd Annual CEF of St. Kitts & Nevis banquet! The evening turned out nicely and everyone had a great time. It’s so awesome to see all of the people in this nation who support and love the CEF ministry here. I am still in the trenches of first trimester nausea and wasn’t able to attend. But Sean said everything went great. Of course, here are some pictures from the evening.

On Monday night we had our last Good News Club in Fig Tree. 🙁 We started this club in April 2012 and now we had to say goodbye. We will miss the kids so much! We had a Christmas party… we watched a movie about Jesus’ birth and then we made “Christmas trees”. We decorated upside down ice cream cones with green icing and then stuck candy on them as ornaments. All the kids loved it… from the little preschoolers to the teenagers!

They were so proud of their trees!

This week is also the last week of school. Exams were last week so many of the kids are in class with nothing to do. So Sean has been showing the same Christmas movie we showed at Good News Club to classes in several schools.

And… Maddy’s birthday is Friday! How is she about to be 5?!

We started selling our stuff and our plan is to pack 1 box per day. Sean is out right now paying our last month of rent. We move out of our apartment in 28 days… and we leave St. Kitts in just five weeks… we’ll be in America in seven weeks.

The time is going by so quickly…

It’s been over a month since we last updated our blog! Sorry! We’ve had a lot of things going on in October.

Last TCE Class in St. Kitts

We finished up our very last TCE class here. It’s hard to believe! There were seven people who completed the class. Mr. Fitzgerald Semper, the National Director of Antigua, came to St. Kitts to help with our last class session.

Group shot!

Mr. Semper and Sean

Good News Clubs

Our church partnership After-School Good News Clubs are in full swing! It’s so exciting to see churches reaching out to the local primary schools in their area! Sean has been to several of these clubs. It was awesome to find out the club at William Connor Primary has also included Wonder Time in their ministry. CEF distributes the Wonder Devotional Book, a daily quiet time devotional for kids. Every week these kids bring their books to club, divide into groups with a leader and talk about the devotions they completed in the past week. It’s a great opportunity for continued discipleship!

Wonder Time

They broke up into groups to discuss the Wonder Devotional Book

I (Mandi) Turned the Big “3-0”

We didn’t do a whole lot for my birthday but had our closest friends on the island over for dinner. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and let all of the kids play together while we hung out. Just the kind of party I like! We also got to watch the Texas A&M vs. Auburn game… which has made us a house divided ever since A&M joined the SEC. Unfortunately, the Aggies did not pull through for me and we lost… much to Sean’s delight. We are so thankful for the friends we have made here… it makes it that much harder to say goodbye in just two months!

The CEF Caribbean Leadership Conference in Antigua

So this technically happened the first week of November. We left St. Kitts on November 2nd and flew an entire 10 minutes to the island of Antigua. The conference was awesome! Missionaries from just about every island in the Caribbean were there along with staff from America and Canada! It was such a blessing to spend the week with these people and to learn from them. Sean taught one of the main sessions about starting church partnership school-based Good News Clubs.

I also had the opportunity to teach a break out session about using the internet to update supporters and partners with your ministry.

Antigua is bigger than St. Kitts but the “look” is much the same. Although we will say, the nice parts of Antigua are VERY nice… Sean went to the grocery store and said it looked just like Publix back home! Talk about culture shock!

View of Montserrat from the South side of Antigua

We were able to honor the Assistant Regional Directors of the Caribbean who have served many years with CEF. They are a wonderful couple and a huge support to all of the missionaries who serve in the Caribbean.

Steve and Kris Groome, Assistant Regional Directors of the Caribbean

Other Big News!

We have a couple of big things happening, one we can talk about now and something else that will have to wait a few more weeks… but…

Our tickets home have been purchased!!!

We will officially be leaving St. Kitts January 13th. We will fly to Turks and Caicos the same day and will be there for two weeks. On January 27th we will fly from Turks and Caicos back home to the good ole USA where we will be until July!

So our goals for November are to begin going through our stuff figuring out what to keep, what to sell or what to give away. We literally only have two more months until we leave. It is so bittersweet. We are excited to be no longer needed in St. Kitts but it’s hard to say goodbye to friends and our home for the last two years.

It will go by fast. In two weeks we have Thanksgiving (with our church), the second annual CEF of St. Kitts banquet on the 30th, Maddy’s birthday is December 6th, Mavis returns from her training, then Christmas, we must be out of our house by December 31st (we will stay at the office until we leave) and then we are gone.

Life always seems to move on doesn’t it?

Fall is definitely in full swing! Over the last two weeks Sean has been in meeting after meeting with pastors, church volunteers and principals. It seems like everyday he has another meeting with someone. All of these meetings are happening because five Good News Clubs are starting this October in five different primary schools! ALL of these Good News Clubs are church partnerships!

TCE

The Fall TCE class (Teaching Children Effectively) began last week with eight people enrolled and one is a local pastor! The class is held on Friday night and Saturday mornings for the next six weeks. Last year we had it on Tuesday and Thursday nights which meant we literally had something going on every night of the week. So far, we are liking this schedule a lot better… and those taking the class prefer it too.

The first TCE Class this Fall

Fig Tree Good News Club

We started our Good News Club in Fig Tree again. We had always met for club at 7pm which meant we wouldn’t get home until almost 10pm! It was hard on us, but especially hard on Maddy. Thankfully we moved the time up to four o’clock and actually got home last week before six! Before, the kids had already eaten dinner and finished their homework so there was no reason to start or be finished on time. But with them getting out of school at 3:30 we MUST be done by dinner time. The kids have just enough time to get home, change out of their uniforms and get to club… so they don’t get distracted. Plus, they aren’t nearly as tired!

Snack time after Good News Club in Fig Tree

Local Boy Found Dead

We also have some very sad news. Over the weekend a 10 year old boy went missing and they found his body on Monday… on his birthday. He is from Tyrell Williams Primary school, an area where we’ve had 5 Day Clubs and the Grayson’s have their Awana Program. The boy was not involved in either ministry but his friends were. Grace Gospel Hall church (Mavis’ church) is adopting the school and will be starting their Good News Club there this month.  The situation is so sad and we are currently getting 800 Do You Wonder Why? booklets shipped to St. Kitts for the school. We had to pay for these books ourselves, but we were able to afford it because of the support we receive from you all. You can read the news report about it here… http://www.thestkittsnevisobserver.com/2013/10/04/child-abduction.html

Doctors Visits Galore

Other than working, we’ve had a time of “visiting the doctor” for all of us!

When Sean’s family was visiting a few weeks ago, I unfortunately lost my glasses. We looked everywhere for them and called the places I went and… nothing. After a couple of weeks we decided to try out the eye doctor here. The frames and lenses are EXPENSIVE so we decided to get contacts instead. We have been to the doctor now three times and I still don’t have it all situated. In fact, I still have at least two more appointments scheduled.

Sean went to the dentist for a cleaning and found out he has another cavity. While there he made an appointment for Maddy. It was her very first visit to the dentist! Our friends the DuValls live here in St. Kitts. Yuki teaches at the Ross Prep School and Michael is a dentist. Maddy loves their daughter Meg and they have been wonderful friends. So, Maddy wasn’t as nervous as she might have been because she knew Dr. Michael. She did a great job but she has a very tiny cavity and will be going back next week to get it filled. She will be getting a shot so we would appreciate your prayers for her. She will actually be getting her filling the day after Sean goes to get his cavity filled.

She was only a little nervous…

She calmly laid there letting Dr. Michael look at her teeth

Also, last week I made the mistake of eating some suspect hot sauce. I opened a new bottle at lunch and it was a little fizzy… but I ate it anyway. When I opened it at dinner time, it was like a volcano spewing out. We were then on botulism watch for a few days… lovely. I started getting sick to my stomach within 24 hours but fortunately that seemed to be it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t getting better so off to the doctor we went. The diagnosis? A parasite. Either Giardia or Cyclosporiasis. Both apparently are similar and not even worth testing to figure out which one it is. Usually you get these by drinking contaminated water but we’ve been careful not to do that. However, they put water in the hot sauce which wasn’t handled properly. I am taking three prescriptions but I should be fine by next week.

I guess October is reserved for doctor visits!

Between ministry and personal life, things are never boring around here…