Cactus Flower

When I was little, I remember somebody saying this a lot before we went to bed... and I remember saying it to my boys sometimes! Crazy isn't it.  We live and work in a tropical country where there are all kinds of biting bugs and dangerous snakes.  But, where did William get bit by a snake?  In the woods below Granddaddy's house in Virginia on one of our furloughs!  Thankfully, it was just a black snake and Mr. Intelligent William was smart enough to know that.  And where did Uncle Byron get attacked by wild, vicious, biting bugs?  In Georgia! Uncle Byron and I went down to Georgia for a meeting and were very happy to be given a night in a hotel room by the church.  We checked in and got ready for bed after a long trip.  In the bathroom I noticed what looked like a few ticks crawling on the white wall.  I thought, Well, we are in Georgia in the middle of lot of pine trees and woods.  I captured them and flushed them down the toilet. As I...

To go or to stay?  In first installment of MK Decisions {Here's the link:  To GO or STAY? }, I talked about how it was important to me to make sure my TCK/MK boys know that living and working in Brazil is just as valid as the USA.  It was always our intentional intention to see to it that our boys did not value one culture more than the other in our bi-cultural home.  Granted, I was born American.  My Portuguese is okay, but I don't really fit in well in my surroundings on many levels.  Good intentions or not - there is no perfection in intentions.  But, my goals were positive and well meaning. In August of 2014 our oldest was faced with an interesting dilemma.  It was time for his family to go back to Brazil, but his furloughing parents had decided to extend their time in the States.  We had tickets for August.  He had a free ticket in hand to go back to Brazil which he had originally planned to do when we all came in ...

Amigos Brasileiros -  role para baixo para a tradução em Português   This morning on my Facebook's ON THIS DAY app the post above popped up about one of the last great big, happy fun retreats that I remember on the island.  Treasure Island Camp or llha do Tesouro was closed in the Spring of 2014.  The reasons were diverse but mostly boiled down to lots of "out go" and not enough "in-come."  Running a camp as unique as the island was required paid workers, a year round caretaker, lots of diesel fuel and generators, and lots of hard work.  The end of it all had been postponed several times over the years.  Byron and I had been invited to come and work with the camp in hopes of some sort of miracle.  Our miracle lasted for ten years. Right now in our area there is no camp for area youth to attend.  The teens, families and churches of our area will begin to see the affects of the closure of Treasure Island over the next few years....

Living Room, Santa Constancia house, Fortaleza Greyson, later in 2002 I remember like it was just last week.  I was in the living room of our house on Santa Constancia in Fortaleza, the only house we ever bought and was truly ours.  I was cleaning up after breakfast and getting some off to school and morning activities.  The phone rang.  It was a church member.  It was odd because it was not a person who had a phone and not someone who called frequently at all.  The man said I should get off the phone, sit down and turn on my television.  He repeated the sit down part at least once and said to hurry, something was happening. I did what he said.  When I realized what was going on, in spite of my fears, I decided to call the children as I knew this would be an important moment in their lives even though they were so small and might not remember the details.  It never dawned on me at that time that it could be bad for children to ...

Today's story is about a little boy and some little "untruths," otherwise known as lies.  When a certain one of our three boys was a wee little thing, I decided that I didn't want a house full of cave drawings with crayon and markers like I had seen in friend's homes where small children lived and reigned freely.  So, I was very careful to supervise all coloring book activities and kept the crayons and other marking devices like pens put away when not in use. Uncle Byron and I were living in a rented house in the neighborhood of Fortaleza where we were working with a small church congregation.  Prior to this house we had lived in a different house for every year of our first term in Brazil.  Each of the other three places had belonged to missionaries on furlough and had furniture. (One even had a dog! Remember I wrote about the dog that ate poison a while back.) This time we moved into an empty house and had to scrounge around rather quickly to get some furniture....

Our boy finished up his high school work and graduated.  We were able to travel to the States to be there for his graduation.   I'm one thankful, happy Mama. 

Seems the people in my house are always losing things and that I am the one who has to find them.  While we were staying in Eden there in the old "Uncle Bob" house, Dalton lost something another just about every day.  Usually I found whatever it was within minutes - either on his bed, one that table by the big recliner chair, or on the table that was between the two beds in the room where Dalton and Greyson slept.  Several times Dalton just had to smile as I found whatever it was in seconds. Sadly I didn't find Greyson's Portuguese Bible before we left the States.  The day before we left, Greyson commented that he couldn't seem to find it.  I looked rapidly around but not extensively thinking it would show up as we were cleaning and organizing to go.  The day we were to leave there was still no sign of the little black Bible.  I looked under the bed where Greyson had been sleeping and all around that little table.  I looked in his backpack.  ...