The news just gets BIGGER

It has been a little strange for us to look back on how much has changed since last Thanksgiving.

Last year our closest family member would have been Brandon's cousin in Morocco, this year all of Hannah’s cousins were together.

Last year we ate sweet potato casserole with food coloring to make it orange at the “Toyota Thanksgiving”, this year we have three snowy Thanksgiving feasts planned.

Last year the only Christmas decoration we had was a stick of chapstick with Santa on it, this year we can't escape Commercial Christmas and our tree has been up for a week.

Last year we were bike-riding or moto-riding into town for groceries in the 90 degree warmth, this year Brandon has been driving his 21 year old car through record-breaking snow and record-breaking cold.

Last year the rest of Brandon's family was in Maine waiting out his dad's quadruple bypass surgery after a mild heart attack, this year the family is spread back across countries and continents.

Last year we were making new friends in foreign languages, this year we shared a meal with 40 friends under one roof.

Last year the first ebola case was still a month away, this year it has closed the Louis Pasteur Clinic in Bamako, Mali where we first heard our baby’s heartbeat in May.

Last year we were anticipating the January arrival of two college grads who would be spending several months with us, this year we’re anticipating the (possible) January arrival of up to 2 foster children AND the July arrival of our own baby.

We hope you're as excited to hear the news as they were before. You got that right: for the third time we’re clinging to the hope of building a human to raise to honor God and live with Him. If you haven't already heard this part of our story, you can catch up here and here. 

At church this past week we were encouraged to thank God for imperfect gifts. Waiting to thank God for things that are just how we wanted them to be is a road to bitterness. So right now we’re thankful for the joy of being pregnant and the hope God has given us.

You’ve heard that it “takes a village to raise a child” and we want you to be a part of our village. But we don’t even think that you have to wait to meet our baby to be a part of our village. We’re asking our village to be serious about praying for the safety of Hannah and baby. We’re thankful to still have each other despite some dark circumstances that could have turned out otherwise.

In our quest to live genuine, open and vulnerable lives, you can help our growing family in an unusual way. Because Hannah is considered high risk, she has to give herself shots twice a day. Anyone in our village that wants to, we’re willing to let you give Hannah one of the 450 shots she’ll need to take between now and birthday. So if you've always kinda wanted to give someone a shot and want to be a part of our family in that way, here's your "shot". (See what I did there?)

And since some of you are wondering, just because we’re having a baby doesn’t mean there are any fewer kids in St. Joseph County who need a foster home: we’re still in 100%!

Our Next Adventure

Although it was not our intent to continue this blog after returning from Guinea, We thought some of you may wonder where God has been leading us since returning to Indiana.

Several months prior to our return, a part time position opened up at the bank and I returned to the same chair I left two years ago. Brandon's boss saved him a spot at work where he now helps run the shipping department.

We've done some work to our house and it has taken on a little bit of an African flavor, including a few vintage West African maps. Fenley was, of course, thrilled to see us. We've spent a lot of time traveling to visit family and catching up with friends over the summer.

We've also gotten much more deeply involved at church: We serve on the missions committee and are leading a small group through a 12 week Bible study (we hope it continues beyond the 12 weeks). We're also helping with a "business plant" (like a church plant but a community/missions minded business instead). Our experiences with the curriculum research for GBU in Guinea have led us into a long-term project to help members of our church integrate faith and work.

Outside of church, God has called us to something a little more personal and challenging.

Jesus advocates for the cause of the broken, the disenfranchised, the hurt, the helpless and the defenseless. We are called to do the same. It's not the government's responsibility to care for these people, it's the church's -- ours. We are all called to it in different ways. But God asks all of us to reflect His amazing Glory to a dark and broken world around us.

Knowing that this marvelous task has been entrusted to us we are setting out on our next adventure:

Becoming foster parents!

This is both exciting and terrifying. And we will need constant prayers now, as we finish up the approval process, and later, when we get our first placement. We have been told that we could have a placement as early as Christmas!

For many people (us included before we got deeply entrenched in this), the term “foster parent” and all that it entails is pretty fuzzy. But for us, this is what it means:

We will be placed with either one child or a sibling set between the ages of 0 – 3 years old of either gender. The child could stay with us for a short period of time and then be reunited with their parents or they could be with us for much longer, up to 15 months. There could be cases where the biological parent's rights are revoked and the child is then legally available for adoption. In those cases we would love for our home to be the child's forever home. But whether the child is with us for a short while or for life, we are delighted that for that season we get to be their parents.

We have received nothing but good news from my many visits with my OB/GYN and my hematologist, and they all seem optimistic that we will be able to have biological children in the future. Maybe God has sent some rough times our way to shift our perspective and put us together with a child who wants a family as badly as we do.

There are so many other aspects of becoming/being a foster parent that we are looking forward to sharing with you all. We know that it will be challenging. We know that it will mean regular meetings with biological parents and caseworkers. We know that it will mean having our own lives under the microscope. We know that it will mean only leaving our children with someone who has been fingerprinted, had a background check run on them and has been approved by the department of child services if we ever want a night out. We know it will mean sacrificing our free time, our own wants and our money. We know it will mean a whole shift in our current life and in some of our mindsets. We know it will mean facing challenges, having our hearts broken and seeing a side of the world that can be gut-wrenchingly sad.

We know all this, but we are still in it 100%...

Because Jesus came to rescue us when we were orphans and give us a family in Him.


-Hannah



Also, if you are interested in reading more about foster care, from some experienced foster parents, I highly recommend you go here. 

The Cost

Some of you who read this blog are very close friends and family. Some of you are casual drop-ins who find an interesting post shared by someone you know. For some of you, this may be the first you’ve heard of us.

Thirty months ago, we followed Abraham’s example and decided to let God lead us to “a place that He would show us” to be used by Him. That landed us in Guinea where you’ve read about our market trips, cooking adventures, mountain climbing accidents, homesickness, discipleship experiences, and other ADVENTURES.

We developed a business curriculum for The Center, missionaries and other Christian organizations to use across West Africa, building on Luke 14:28-30

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. 

Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 

For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, 

everyone who sees it will ridicule him.”

We figured the passage applied to business even though it’s really about the same thing this blog is about: The cost of following Jesus.  

And I know someone that is taking it all the way. For some of you, this story may seem distant and need some imagination. But some of who either know who I’m talking about or someone just like them.

Having only briefly visited Dakar, Senegal over a Christmas break while we were engaged, Hannah agreed to follow God’s call to Guinea. Our colleague, David said it was “not because she loves Africa but because she loves God and trusts her husband”. That’s about right. 

Soon after WorldVenture approved us to go to Guinea, we were excited to learn that there would be three of us travelling to Guinea for the first time. We were really looking forward to showing this long-awaited baby the continent Gruddas have been following God to since 1952.

On October 22, 2012, an hour after leaving the doctor’s office with news that our baby was healthily entering his 17th week, from the basement I heard Hannah deliver our son in the bathroom of our house. Pain is not a contest-for us, this was a very traumatic and painful experience-I think more-so than some miscarriages. 

Having held our son only once, we were flooded by God’s calling of people to support us through our battle with gifts, tears, cards, hugs, prayers, company, even (and we suspect many of our readers contributed to) helping pay for our hospital bill. We quickly learned that Hannah also has an incurable blood disorder but her jaw never wavered from God’s calling-we were going to Guinea anyways.

God asked many of you to contribute financially to our trip. He lined someone up to live in our house and pay our mortgage while we went to connect with our supervisors in Guinea. He asked someone to watch our dog (Fenley), drive our cars and promise employment for our return. 

Hannah cried the first night we spent in Guinea. In her eyes, we would be basically camping for the next three months. 

April 10 came and went while we were at training in Colorado (ironically that day was about raising kids on the mission field). God put Hannah’s creativity to use to raise over $1000 for our trip through ZipAfrica. And He held Hannah’s hand as we watched person after person, friend after friend, and relative after relative announce over social media their children's births and bemoan the struggles of parenting.

It would grate a lot of people raw right down to bitterness. But the day before Halloween, Hannah squeezed Fenley one more time before handing him to God’s next provision-a friend who made a daily (you’ll see that word again soon) sacrifice to support us while we followed through with our promise to God.

During the next 6 months in Guinea we spent days broken down on the side of the road eating cold rice and wild pig (or sardines and stale bread), skipped the World Series, BCS Championship, Super Bowl, Opening Day, Champions League Final, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Memorial Day with our families. We showered with buckets, peed in the woods, drew water from the well, sat in the dark, slept outside and sweat by the gallon. We learned about new jobs and houses, marriages, heart attacks and family (and friends’) parties by email.

We finally left Guinea and started our journey home ready to coast back to familiar. 

But two missionary moms spent their whole Mother’s Day at a Bamako clinic with a new mother-to-be: Hannah. More good news! After a night of fear, we were glad to hear that our baby was fine. It was our first time to see a doctor-baby was 12 weeks. After a doubtful American doctor did a full reversal and said surprisingly, everything looked great, we had nothing to fear, we continued our journey. 

Ten days later, we heard, “Tsk. C’est pas bon,” from the ultrasound technician. We had bumped our way across town on a mattress in the back of a LandCruiser to get here. The bathroom had no lights, the waiting room had two broken windows, there were band aid wrappers and used kleenex under the beds, holes in the ceilings, little blood spots on the walls and no real options: Baby was gone…again. We needed a D&C. 

As mosquitoes drained my ankles, I saw a dragonfly buzzing the Operating Room. Hannah gritted her teeth and went into the OR with 3 French-speaking African men- I wasn’t allowed in. After strapping her to the table, they continued to prepare for 15 minutes before administering the anesthesia. After carrying Hannah into the recovery room, they called me in to watch her wake up before starting the IV for the pain. 

As she shivered, shook and trembled and her glazed eyes kept trying to find my face before they rolled back, I wondered:

How did God find me a woman like this?

After she finally woke up to herself and was able to let me help her back to the truck, we left with a prescription for one medication she couldn’t take because of her blood disorder, one she already had, one she was already on and 500 mg Tylenol for the pain. 

We’re hoping to be back in Indiana within a week. Of all our friends, we have the oldest cars, the smallest house and the smallest salaries, but we’re looking forward to getting back.

Hopefully, if you know us or have kept up with our blog, you’ll see that this isn’t about complaining. We want to live openly with people. We recognize that so many of our “struggles” would be considered blessings by most of our neighbors in Kankan. “Someone is praying for the things you’re taking for granted.”

If you’ll take Hannah’s example, there’s one important difference: 

She chose this. 

Maybe not all of it, but she chose to follow God to an uncomfortably place where small obstacles become big deals very quickly.

Just like other servants of God have chosen worse situations for even longer periods of time.

God asked, and Hannah said ok even though it meant giving up a whole lot of things that were really important to her. She’s happy to be heading back to America, but that is what God asked Hannah to do next. And based on our experiences, it doesn’t mean that will be easy either. But she’s going to do it anyways. And when a new obstacle comes up for the next thing God wants us to do, her eyes may fill with tears, but there’s determination behind those tears.

God must be so proud. I know I am.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

What cross are you choosing to take up to follow him?

Education

A while ago someone asked me what I thought Africa’s biggest need was. After a day of thinking about it, I decided that in Guinea, at least, the greatest deficit is in education. 

When Guinea was given their independence from France, the new president, Sekou Toure kicked all the foreigners out and adopted Communist policies as a way to protect Guinean culture. 

(In Guinea, development often battles culture and tradition. Consider wells-a great cause that Matt Damon is big on. A neighborhood well is a huge social asset. As development progresses, more people have wells and a small part of communal life fractures. The same goes sometimes for phone service, internet, electricity, etc. This is not a criticism of Damon’s critical project-just a suggestion that solutions to today’s problems aren’t as simple as the sales pitch makes them sound. Ask me what I’ve learned about mosquito nets, sometime.)

One of the things Sekou Toure did to preserve Guinean identity was to do away with French as a national language. If you lived in Kankan, you would attend school in Maninka. If your family moved to Macenta when you were in 3rd grade, you would be expected to start school in Toma. If they moved again to Labe when you were in 7th grade, you would be trying to enter 8th grade in another foreign language—Pular. A shaky foundation for a country to rely on for education.

French has been re-instated as the national language but new problems have arisen. Teachers are not very well paid (and sometimes go months without receiving their salaries). One of our young leader friends, Jonas, is an adjunct History Professor at the U of KK. He and his wife are one of those statistics you hear about living on his $60/month salary. $2/day for 2 people. 

In addition, another friend of ours tells us that they have had as many as 300 third graders in a class. He says when it’s time to change classes, kids will throw their backpack into the classroom so they can sit where it lands and be guaranteed a spot. Imagine trying to control 300 eight year olds! And imagine, statistically speaking, how many of them would have learning disabilities and behavior problems. Furthermore, teachers are expected to give monthly exams, both written and oral for each student.

So the reality is that to control the students, teachers often resort to a “repeat after me” teaching approach. Students can often quote pages of information verbatim and recite their times tables but not know how many mangoes they will have if you took 2 of their 5.

But would you really hold back 50 of your students if you know you have another 300 coming in next year and you haven’t been paid (your tiny salary) in 2 months? Teachers sometimes end up selling grades. The final exam is at 4pm: at 3pm students may start showing up and paying $1 or $2 for passing grades. The teacher gets paid, doesn’t have to grade 300 exams, and the students pass.

As a result, some university graduates can’t construct a well-written sentence. Last week I saw a professor get out his calculator to figure out how much it would cost to photocopy 40 pages at $0.25 per page. He owns the photocopy business.

BUT, every skill and piece of knowledge that sticks in these students’ brains, is often more than their parents ever got. So maybe it’s still progress.

Last week we went to visit Katie and Kelsey’s classes at The American Reading Room at the University of Kankan. The US Embassy runs the program. Although a lot of the content is vocabulary, there is also a heavy focus on American culture. 

We also attended David Moriba’s (Hannah’s French teacher) English class where we saw an excellent lecture (in English!) on Lesson Planning for future English teachers.

I’ll close with some hope: When David Guilavogui mentioned that the nearby village of Sabadou-Baranama had no physics teacher, Jonas (mentioned above) said, “That’s unacceptable. How will they pass their exams? Tomorrow I will rearrange my schedule and talk to Soumou, who teaches Physics. These kids must have a teacher.”

We’ve mentioned this before, but now Soumu rides to Sabadou-Baranama with Jonas every Friday to teach two 4 hour sessions for free while Jonas arranges sports events and some history lessons. Remember, Jonas makes $60 a month. What's holding you back from serving?

*Other photos: One of our favorite breakfasts, the garage where we changed our moto oil, clearing the new WorldVenture property for sand/gravel delivery.

Why So Busy?

You can count on this blog being informative because our last few weeks have been so busy that we’re just now getting around to writing about our adventures.

If our curriculum work was “Oregon Trail”, the pace would be “breakneck” (and people would be dying of dysentary). The English version is entirely finished and Brandon is working with Hannah’s French teacher on finishing up the French version. At our last (you read that right, keep reading…) Leadership Group meeting on Monday, we hope to get feedback on the overall format and a few key portions of the 40 page curriculum. 

Right before our trip to Paris there was an Evangelism Campaign in Kankan. It was organized by Guineans with a special guest speaker from Sweden. We were happy to see Hannah's French teacher translate from English to French and another member of our Leadership Groups translate from French into Maninka!

The weather has been changing. We were a little surprised to return from Paris and find it even hotter than when we left. For several nights in a row it was 95 degrees in our room at bedtime. We’ve benefited from a few small rains but mostly we’ve gotten the clouds or edges of storms headed in other directions. Although we welcome the relief of shade, our solar powered house has been suffering because of it. 

If you have solar panels on your house in the US but don’t have batteries, you aren’t actually off the grid. Most people receive their power from the utility company at an enormous discount due to the solar power they sell back to the utility company. Solar panels are a great way to use the sun’s renewable energy, but they can rarely provide the “oomph” we need to run things like microwaves and hair dryers.

At over 5 years old, our house batteries and fridge batteries are on their last legs. The fridge has been working overtime to stay at 60 degrees (barely below some AC levels!) in such a warm house and the batteries are barely making it through each night. The occasional cloudy day has necessitated the first running of the generator since we got here. We ran a 3 day regiment of 1 hour charging sessions before sunup in order to boost the batteries.

However, without electricity to run our fans, we moved outside for several nights. We renamed our “mosquito net” a “scorpion net”. This was also the first time we’ve used a net since arriving here. 

The delay in the heavy rains that we love so much has allowed the well-digging at the Center to begin again. The water table has dropped far enough that guys can shovel into the bucket and pull it up by hand. Talk about slow going…and biceps.

Katie and Kelsey (our roommates) shared a room to make space for a few nights while we hosted a missionary couple from CMA Canada (the Ibsens) who are showing their interns around Upper Guinea. We’re one big happy family.

Brandon has also had to buy new soccer shoes since his “Drogbas” finally broke. He’s been playing with the church team a couple times a week. They’re currently in a “maracana” (small field and tiny goals that require direct divine intervention to score on) tournament and have qualified for the semi-finals. New gravel burns and blisters serve as souvenirs.

We also celebrated our second Easter here. Being almost a full month later than last year, the 4 1/2 hour long (on the dot) service was exceptionally warm. It was 105 in the shaded canopy outside where we sat. The Heat Index pushed just over 125. So despite the occasion being to celebrate Jesus rescuing us to an eternity in Heaven, it felt (in one way) a little closer to Hell.

Keep reading the blog… although we leave Kankan May 4th we still have a bit more time left in Africa and we can’t wait to share our plans for that with you all!

A bientôt! 

How we ate and bled our way through Paris

As promised, this blog will be heavy on the pictures: we were recently able to spend a long weekend in Paris. It did not go as planned but we were able to spend a few days with a family studying French before moving to Senegal to do some pastoral training. We'll give you the highlights in no particular order.

 Bridge near the Military Museum and Palaces.

 We really enjoyed the architecture. This was near one of our train stops, Chatelet des Halles.

We took a walk down Champs Elysees starting at the the Arch of Triumph. There was McDonalds and Starbucks and yes, that black car IS covered in velvet.

Obviously, the Eiffel Tower. We walked about 10 miles on Saturday and ate a lot of delicious crepes.

We came back at night to se the Tower all lit up. It was definitely worth it. The Eiffel tower now "sparkles" for the first 5 minutes of ever hour.

We spent a morning in the Louvre which was enormous. If you were in there 24/7 and looked at each work of art for only ten seconds it would take 6 weeks to get through. We did see the Mona Lisa. Spoiler Alert: it's an 8x10.

 Again, beautiful architecture and the weather was fresh-in the high 60's which was a welcome break from the heat for us.

We even met a man from Dakar, Senegal selling Eiffel Tower keychains. He understood my Wolof. 

The bridge near Notre Dame (while there, you have to pronounce it correctly). Traditionally, when someone gets engaged here, the couple puts a padlock on the bridge and throws the key into the Seine. 

The Luxembourg Gardens 

We spent a good chunk of time on the RER subway system. We saw some tough guys working out along the river which reminded us of our Weightlift-a-thon...Also, cops on rollerblades. 

The Notre Dame Cathedral was one of our favorites. The builder started a project that took 190 years to build. What a visionary! And people have been worshipping in this building for 850 years!

We also walked our (literally) bloody feet to the Musee d'Orsay where there was a big Van Gogh display.

 We enjoyed the outdoor market shops all over: bakeries, pastry shops, cheese shops, veggie stands, nutella crepes. We ate our way through the city!

A few other things you should know:

Thanks to your faithfulness our account is full enough for us to finish out the month of April and start working our way home. We're aiming to be back by June 1, details forthcoming.

The Ebola Virus epidemic in Guinea has pushed Senegal to close their border with Guinea. Although this does not effect us directly, if Mali closes their border with Guinea, we will have a hard time getting out of here. Most of the cases remain about 200 miles south of us. Pray that we will still have the ability to leave Guinea when the time comes!

To give you some perspective on Ebola, we'll give you a little reading on some"Flu Facts" as everyone is supposedly well-versed in how dangerous the flu is in the US. Keep in mind that Ebola kills 90% of its victims regardless of age. Keep the people of Guinea in prayer too as they fight against this disease, and for the people who have lost many family members to the disease.