An Update on Our Kiddos

Since our newsletter this round was focused on teaching, I thought I'd give a blog update on these kiddos. Hope turned 3 and is delightfully hilarious.

She says funny things like calling Snickerdoodles "tickernoodles", and running around on those chubby little legs, imagining herself to be a fierce superhero. Then again, they all do that. They currently have constant imaginary stories and world happening, and there's a lot of dress-up, lego building, and imaginary battles in the yard.

While the local school kids were on summer break it went on all day long with neighbor kids, from the moment we opened the front gate till sun down. Kharis, our neighbor, is still Judah's best bud and still a pretty constant presence at our house. He sometimes comes in and asks me what we're having for lunch, just assuming that he's a part of it. He and Judah have been given permission to use the wood, hammers, and nails that we have on hand and have begun trying to build all sorts of contraptions. They've also started to experiment with fishing in the local streams.

We're thankful that Judah has local friends, because we're in a seasons of not having any other school-aged English-speaking kids here. That's a bit isolating for us, although we are so thankful for the community we're a part of, sometimes we wish our kids could feel like they just fit in. Our kids go to Sunday school at church and are beautifully used to their friends there and the community. However, they don't understand much. Elly had reached a stage where she was no longer trying to engage with her local kindergarten, she was silent and not interacting with peers or teachers much. So, with her wishes in mind, we've decided to pull her into full-time homeschool with Judah. Homeschool has been going pretty well for everyone.

Since Isaac had two trips out of the city this semester, Mom and kiddos did three weeks total without Dad around. While not ideal and we miss him when he's gone, we survived! The kid's ceiling did cave in, the sink broke, and mom got a virus that gave her temporary arthritis, but... we survived! And actually most of that is fairly regular life here, and we had Indonesian and expat friends come and help us when we needed it.

Parenting in a place without peers or a formal school of the same culture or heart language means that these kiddos need lots of love, stability, fun, imagination, discipline, and guidance at home. It pretty much all has to come from us as parents. So, we'd appreciate your prayers for our family that we would parents and discipline and love these kiddos well, and provide for them a childhood of joy and a knowledge of a mighty Father of love.