Our two weeks in isolation after returning from Madagascar in the mid- March, were AMAZING!! Riding bikes and scooters, fishing and playing in the beautiful lake were just a few of the fun things we were able to enjoy together!
The number of Lego creations during this time amazes us!We celebrated our “Madaversary,” one year “in Madagascar” in a lake house in quarantine. Definitely not “Our Plan,” but hey…we CELEBRATE what HE IS DOING for our good and HIS GLORY!
They are “sheltering in place” outside :).
He is Risen!! Celebrating the Risen King at home with our family and worshipping along with our church family through the internet.
Celebrating Mother’s Day with some friends and at home with a tea party with Nana!
WAIT, STOPwhat you are doing and pray for these 5 people groups! You will be seeing frequent posts from us about praying for specific unreached unengaged people groups in Sub-Sahara Africa! Go ahead and take this people group before the throne of God right now WHILE YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT IT!
Antesaka of MadagascarFulakunda of SenegalJula of Burkina FasoChikunda of Zimbabwe
Sonde of DRC
Praise the Lord that He hears our prayers!
Ok, here are the top tenways in the past twomonths we have seen God’s gracious hand at work!
1. God gave Anna and Titus another year of life! We don’t want to overlook what a gift each undeserved day if from the Father! Thank you all so much for all of your love and blessings during our birthdays’! Chris showered Anna with a great birthday and Titus had a birth week lol, including a pizza night birthday party and a trip to the lemur park with his friends.
2. The IMB missionaries in Madagascar along with some of the amazing Malagasy ministry leaders/pastors came together in a beautiful city in Madagascar to pray, cast vision together, and to encourage each other while having fun! It was a blast and the Lord inspired us mightily to continue to seek His face and work heartily unto Him.
3. While we were traveling back through the capital, we were able to have a fun family day spending time at the Croc Farm! We also got lost for 3 hours in downtown Tana, buuuuut God faithfully got us back to our hotel.
4. The Lord is doing mighty things in Tanosy land! We were able to go out as a family to a a weekend pastoral/leadership training in January and stay in the village where it was held!
5. Step by Step, Word by Word, Laugh by Laugh, and Tear by Tear (Anna cries over language lol, most of the time Chris doesn’t), we are making progress in language. Chris was able to share the story of Zacchaeus in Tanosy and then preach an amazing sermon with the help of our brother in Christ translating! Praise be to God!
6. New teammates have arrived!!! Woo hoo! Praise be to God that more brothers and sisters have come to bring the Good News and training in the Word to the Malagasy people!
A picture of our two new college students, Maddy and Kayla, standing by the mom and the youngest daughter of the Malagasy family that returned from finishing seminary in America! We are so glad to have them all here! More pics of the other new family soon!
7. Happy New Year! Meet Sandy the sand snow lady. She helped us to bring in the New Year!
8. We had a great Christmas celebrating the King! It was hot and different, but joyful! Thank you ALL SO MUCH for showering us with gifts, cards, messages and videos during the Christmas season!! It was so encouraging to our hearts! The boys got bikes (thanks to Nana and Papa :)! And we had a sugar cookie decorating party with our amazing friends, and the boys sang some Christmas songs in their Christmas performance at school.
9. We had a birthday party for Jesus with the children in Sunday School in our church family in our NEW CHURCH BUILDING!!! Answered Prayer!! The boys loved helping out with the cake, handing out packets with hygiene items and some treats, and Annd tried her best at sharing the Christmas Story in Tanosy! The children were so gracious and kind.
10. We are thankful for the Father that sustains us in every day life here. We just listed off a lot of big ways that we saw Him work in the last couple of months, but He’s just as mighty to give us breath to do the small tasks like cooking, playing and reading with the boys, driving, learning a new name, giving a smile or having the mind and ability to read and soak in His Word. It’s hard, but we are thankful for all the little things, too!
November was definitely a month full of good gifts that were undeserved! We had the joy and privilege of hosting a Thanksgiving meal at our home with everyone’s help of bringing supplies, food and drinks. We had a blast! And yes, we had turkey and chicken thanks to our team leaders!
Chris also had the opportunity to go along with our team leader and some of our national partners to a leadership training meeting. Chris learned so much from our team leader and these amazing pastors and leaders. He even understood some of what they were saying even though they were speaking in a different dialect most of the time!
We took our first language evaluation this month! Our language nurturers and our language coach have worked so hard to help us learn Tanosy! We did not meet the required level to stop formal language study (language study never stops lol), but it was very helpful and a huge motivation to keep studying and working hard. It also helped us to see what areas we are doing well in, and which areas we need to focus on. That means most of our time is still spent on language study and practice. Please pray for us as we desire to work hard unto the Lord!
Yes!! We got two precious puppies this past month! Charlie and Max, half German Shepherd and half Lab. As you can tell, we are smitten. They definitely help to make this feel like home and they will be great guard dogs when they grow up :).
The boys started going to Sunday School, and we are all starting to learn the songs! Anna started praising the Lord through dance with the teenagers! So fun and such a good learning experience!
We also finally had our pastor and his family over and we celebrated our precious language nurtures’ daughter’s second birthday!
Even in the midst of the to-do list we had some cherished family time celebrating our Clemson Tigers by watching some highlights and wearing our shirts, stamping and creating (thanks to a great package from a sweet church family in America), daddy making his delicious biscuits and going to the beach!
The first couple of weeks of October we had some special training to learn more about our people group, more about the city where we live, and learn a LOT about how people live in the bush (rural areas). This amazing village hosted us for two nights! Pastor Eloa and his family, were amazing hosts. They loved us and took care of us so well!
To get to the village, it took about a 4-5 hour 4×4 ride on some crazy roads, then some walking by foot, and then a canoe trip :). Such a beautiful place! And of course we had to stop to admire a chameleon. That canoe was given to this village by the former IMB missionary who came and shared the Good News with them!! Now there is a flourishing church in this village because of how God worked through him and his family!
We all learned so much about planting, harvesting, cleaning, cutting and cooking belahazo (a long, potato like plant) that they eat almost every day for almost every meal with rice. They also make very intricate rugs and baskets by hand. Chris and Titus also went fishing with the pastor. Such hard-working and God-fearing people! And yes, Noah and Titus loooooved the chickens and ducks!
The church gathering was beautiful and joyful with about 20 people from the village and some surrounding villages. Titus did get sick the last day, but as you can see, these people are our brothers and sisters. Radu (one of our faithful national partners) carried him back through the fields and mud to get him back to the canoe and finally the truck.
Titus and Noah both love our new chickens! One was a gift from Pastor Eloa and the other a gift from our yard worker, Mahery!
We had many more learning experiences while in the town we live in, Fort Dauphin. We learned the names of the neighbourhoods, we took observational/prayerful Tuk Tuk rides, we learned about how people view missionaries, and we were able to learn from people about how they view medical care and what they do for medical care while also getting to pray with them. That’s just to name a few! Our team leaders, national partners and language nurturers ROCK! They were patient with us and helped us along this journey, just like they do every day we are here!
Then we flew to KENYA! We were in or near Nairobi for 3 weeks! It was full with a week of learning and refreshment, a few days full of doctor appointments, and then some days of fun and vacation! Praise the Lord!
The Kenyan flag!
Beautiful tea fields!
Standing with a man from the Maasai Tribe!
Cool acrobats at a fun restaurant!
The Kenyan Flag, beautiful tea fields, a man from the Maasai tribe, and some fun acrobats at a restaurant!
We enjoyed bowling, a trampoline park, drinking way to much amazing Kenyan coffee, and we saw the Lion King in 3D! So much fun doing these things on vacation when we don’t have them where we live in Mada!
We had so much fun at the elephant orphanage, going on a hike and feeding the giraffes! Got to see Pumba in real life :).
And we got to carve a pumpkin, which his name was “Happy Scarecrow” and dress up as ninjas (hey, put those new Tae Kwon Do uniforms to good use) for a fun Halloween event where we were staying!
The boys started school in September at the same school they went to during May and June. They have been going to a French school in town where the teachers speak primarily in French. Stop and think about that, we (Chris and Anna) are learning Tanosy, while our sweet boys are learning French, but yet we speak in English mostly at home. Praise the Lord, as our Helper, Guide and Wisdom, He knows ALL languages! The boys have had some crazy emotions to go along with this transition (Momma and Daddy have, too), but things seem to be calming down a bit as they settle more into the language and make friends! Praise Him! We’ve also been doing some brief times of homeschooling in English!
Noah turned 5, and our little “Spider Man” was so well-loved by friends and family! He had a great time at his party, we had a little fun, one-night get away because he really wanted to swim :), and we had a camp fire with marshmallows! Noah is such a little sunshine gift from the Lord and it was such a joy to celebrate him!
Language and culture lessons pretty much happened every day in September as we grow more and learn more with the Lord’s help and with the patience and kindness of amazing Malagasy people, like these two sisters above. We are constantly amazed at the Lord’s goodness as He uses brothers and sisters to teach us so that we may love the Malagasy people well for His glory.
We have been soooo blessed with packages and cards this month! And with that, even though it may not be fall outside, it’s fall inside! We had some apple time during homeschool time and Titus helped to make apple sauce!
We had the privilege of attending a gathering of a different local church body this past weekend as a part of learning more about spiritual culture here in Madagascar. The pastor and the congregation were so kind and welcoming, so welcoming that we were placed in front of the huge crowd on the stage for everyone to see. At about two hours in the boys had to go outside. 🙂 Proud of them for making it that long.
Just wanted to share the beauty of God’s good creation that can literally be seen as we walk down our road. What a gift!
Creation really does proclaim how good and glorious He is!
So. many. cows. It’s a cow jam…lol. Don’t you love how there is a stick in our window as one of the boy’s prized possessions from the day. 🙂
“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:66-69
There were times this past month that I (Anna) wanted to turn and go away, as well.
When I could barely get the word “forgiveness” out in the language we are learning, I broke down right in the middle of language class, our precious brother and sister in Christ and Chris, just tried to console me. My thoughts, “How can I be a missionary here if I can’t even say one of the most crucial parts of the Good News?! I can’t even tell the Resurrection Story without my tongue getting tired and literally getting stuck.” After a looong walk surrounded by God’s beautiful creation, ear buds in with worship music blaring (and maybe some Malagasy staring as I cried and sang out to God) and some of my dearest friends and mentors reassuring me of who He is along with the call He has placed on our lives, my heart began to settle in His caring arms. (A good, big hug from our house helper and dear sister in Christ helped a bunch, too).
This passage of Scripture was balm to my dry soul in August. Peter could have said, “Absolutely! You’re teaching some hard stuff Jesus. We can’t keep this up. This following You is crazy and too much. We can barely even understand what You’re talking about. See ya later, I’m going with the crowd of other ‘disciples’ who walked away.”
No, no. Peter spoke the truth! I’m there with Peter. We may “think” another way is easier, or better, or more convenient or even more efficient, but no:
“You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
The Lord even wanted me to get this so much, that a dear friend sent me a coffee mug(yes, it made it to Mada without a crack, a miracle in itself) with this verse hand painted on it, which was sent long before I started marinating in that particular verse.
So, before you see the pretty cool pictures from August, know that He is refining each one of us Garduce peeps pretty hard core and to the core. It’s beautiful, but really really messy.
August Adventures and Celebrations!
Chris went on his first bush (rural) trip with our team leader and our language nurturer/national partner! They had a great time encouraging leaders and believers, sharing the Good News and Chris learned a lot about life and culture in the bush!
Anna drove by herself for the first time and it was a success! Driving is getting better and better for her! While Chris was gone for a while, language class continued for Anna. The boys and her held down the fort by getting ice cream of course (first outing Anna had with the boys alone since they got here!)
August was once again full of language and culture learning! We are really starting to become regulars at certain places in the market, making friends on our street and having friends over to practice language and getting to know them.
Our house is starting to become a home! Praise the Father, that the boxes we sent over from America, made it here! And nothing was broken! Also, all of the furniture we ordered is here!
And family time has been spent outside most days because of the beautiful weather, and well, we are super blessed to live in such a gorgeous place with mountains, waterfalls and the ocean right next door!
We bought some fish from the fishermen at the ocean! The Tanosy, the people group we have the privilege of focusing on sharing the gospel with and discipling, have many fisherman! Then our language teachers cooked it up! Soooo yummmmy!
We get asked quite often, “What do you actually do every day? What does life look like on a regular basis?” Great questions.
So, here is an update just about that. No pictures with big cheesy smiles , no pictures of special events or outings, just candid pictures of what an average day of language learning looks like right now during the first few months of being an Apprentice (first term career missionary 🙂
5:30-6:00am Getting Up and Looking Up
We usually try to get up before the boys, and spend at least a little time praying and getting in the Word and drink a much needed cup of heaven, oh wait, coffee lol. If we don’t get enough time or um we may hit the snooze sometimes (yes, missionaries hit snooze) lol, we try to make it a priority to finish our time later.
6:00-7:30 Breakfast and Getting Ready
Making breakfast, cleaning up the house for people coming over, everyone getting ready, breakfast and talking about a Catechism question at the table
PS- The amazing little peanut butter packets in a care package we received have been wonderful!
7:30-8:15 Let’s Get the Party Started
During this time, our two language nurturers (a precious couple who are a brother and sister in Christ) along with their little 21 month old daughter and the kind teenage helper who watches the boys right now while they are out of school start showing up to our house for language learning. Our yard worker (who also helps with the boys) is also hanging out and eating breakfast and 4 days out of the week our phenomenal house worker shows up soon after this. Here are their tea/coffee cups 😉
8:15-12:15 Language Class AKA Party Time
We have language class normally 4 days a week during this time at our home. Soon we are going to try and meet more at our language nurturers’ home, but this past month, we’ve been in our home trying to speak more, listen harder and grow in trusting the Lord as He is and will continue to help us learn the language! The boys have fun playing during this time with the our yard worker and teenage helper!
They are sooo patient and kind with us!
The boys love these people and they have become like family. And sometimes language takes a pause for cool bugs to be introduced. 🙂
12:15-2:30 Lunch, Reading Chronicles of Narnia and Praise God, Rest Time!!
This time of the day changes from day to day. Sometimes it’s doing chores and helping the boys with some focused learning time, sometimes it’s going out to the market to shop and practice language, and sometimes it’s just going out on our street and meeting people. We also try to add exercising a few times a week! Chris loves his rings and rope, and I love running/walking!
5:00- 6:30 Dinner Prep and Dinner
The kitchen gets real messy, real quick!
6:30-7:30 Bath, Bible, Bed for the Boys!
7:30-11:00 Studying/Getting Ready for the Next Day/ Emails/Connecting with People/Rest Time
This time changes from day to day. Sometimes it involves Face Timing someone or checking messages from the IMB, and/or watching a show or reading a book. But Shhh…it has also has occasionally involved crashing into the bed at 7:30 and falling asleep peacefully, knowing that the King is working through the night, even if we aren’t.
Yep, probably looks like an ordinary family schedule, and it is. We are normal people, serving an extraordinary and overabundantly gracious God.
There is a LOT of flexibility mixed into this schedule with sand fleas being taken out of our feet occasionally, the boys needing us for certain things, meeting with people in our local church, and special events with missionaries on our team. 🙂 However, this has been our skeleton schedule last month and will be for this month for language learning days, until the boys start school back in September.
No, it’s not really exciting and doesn’t seem really important most days, but this is a super moldable time for our hearts as we submit to the Lord and know that He is shaping us to be more like Him as we fight to be faithful and joyful in the mundane. There are many tears throughout these days. Please pray we would see His goodness and cling to Him as we seek to learn and grow!
Two different teams came from America in the month of June! Oh, what a blessing they were to have here in Mada for His name sake!
They were faithful to help lead and teach the seminary classes that were held for a week in the city of Fort Dauphin. This is a picture of all the pastors, preachers and leaders that were a part of the seminary that week. Most of them traveled from rural areas, very far away, to learn!
It was such a joy and privilege to go out into the bush (rural areas) with the team to share the gospel and to share our testimonies with the people! Continue to pray for the ones that responded to follow Jesus to be discipled and to grow in their walk with the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Chris turned 33 and we had a blast celebrating!
The leaders within our local church being recognized for Father’s Day.
This is one amazing, Spirit-filled lady! Cecilia is our local church pastor’s wife. She taught Anna how to buy a live chicken from the market and to be able to eat with your family within a few hours lol. Woah, what a learning experience!
She was so patient with Anna while she learned to defeather :).
Madagascar’s Independence Day is June 26th! It’s the countries most widely celebrated holiday!
Celebrating the night before with dinner at our language teachers’ home and fireworks!
Our amazing team leaders and their beautiful family!
We went on a field trip with the boys to Cascade Mountain! God is such a good God to create such beautiful places!
We memorized our first Bible verse in Tanosy! Language study continues!!
So, what is this little blister? This is a picture of Noah’s little foot when we spotted a sand flea had laid an egg in his foot. This is common here in Madagascar. Why would I put this in our blog? Because in little less than an hour of finding one in his foot and Titus’ foot, our amazing yard worker had removed both of them, Noah and Titus survived while eating some m&ms, and God once again showed us that He sees us and is faithful in the good times and the not so fun times when there is a worm in your foot. 🙂
As I scrolled through the pictures on my phone wondering what our May update should be titled, I kept thinking, “Wow, so many new beginnings! And new people! And well, just new!” New can be fun and exciting, and new can be hard and even painful at times. That’s been true for the month of May. Here are some pictures and explanations of the newness!
God gave our friend and yard worker a new life in Christ and it was such a joy to celebrate alongside him at his baptism, along with 15 others from surrounding churches. Praise God for His grace, mercy and salvation!
By God’s grace, we are learning new words in the dialect every day! Don’t you just love Chris’ face about new words!? Lol! He actually is a hoot during language study! Our language teachers are great. So thankful for them!
We celebrated our language teachers’ birthdays in our new home with new, amazing friends who are fellow missionaries, that we are learning new things from daily!
The boys started at their new school and are learning new languages along with their new friends. There have been some tears (mommy included), but overall they are doing well in transitioning!
We got to go on a new and exciting field trip with the boys to see the fire department here in town.
We all made some new friends on the Ascension Day picnic!
Well, this was just too cute not too put on the newsletter ;). One of our language teachers and his cute daughter!
Learning a new way to cook amazing Malagasy food! So yummy and they are always so welcoming!
Hopefully we will never get used to this new view as we drive, walk or run around this beautiful place!
Thank you so much for your prayers about this specific request! We have our new to us truck to get us around!! Hallelujah! And it’s still very new for Anna to drive this truck, but while practicing on the road no new fatalities of animals or humans happened! Praise Him!
Walking 3 miles from the picnic/baptism, in the rain, with the boys jumping in all the puddles, as we talked and were amazed at our Father, was a new favorite memory.
With all of this new, we’ve laughed a lot, cried a lot, and He has been faithful through it all. We covet your prayers and encouragement. WE APPRECIATE YOU more than words can express!
“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'” Revelation 21:5
Praise God, He one day, will make all things new! (Yes, you should click on that link and go to the article, wink wink. ) It’s a joy to see just a glimpse of that reality day to day as we live on mission here in Madagascar.
I put the title in quotes, because I’m sure many of you have heard of this song by Lauren Daigle. While in training in the States, soon after Chris’ step father passed away, one of our leaders played this song, and I just cried while I attempted to sing along (I’m sure I sounded great). The simple, yet really hard to obey truth of this song, has rang in my head during this past month of leaving the States on a whirlwind adventure of finally getting to Madagascar, turning back around and going to further training in South Africa, and then back to our new home in Fort Dauphin.
I’m physically “looking down” all the time. I’m looking down trying to unpack bags, I’m looking down for hours pointing at pictures on the table while our language nurturer says the word in a language I’ve never heard until I got here, looking down trying to cook with a gas stove with new ingredients, looking down filling up water bottles with clean water, looking down trying to figure out how to buy food and items in the market, looking down at family and friends on the screen that I desperately miss, looking down at the boys as I try to read books to them in English, looking down as our teammates and Chris try to help me learn how to drive a manual truck, and looking down at a list that seems to only grow by the kilometer (our minds are switching to metric lol) every minute. Yes, we did see some really cute lemurs one day, and there are chameleons in our back yard, but there’s a lot of little mundane tasks that are a big part of this missionary task that involve looking down physically.
However, where are my heart and soul looking while my physical body is looking down at the tasks He has clearly put in front of me for the day? During one of the first days in our home, as I was washing dishes, I noticed that the fence outside the window points up. Yes, I know, most fences point up, but in that moment, God gently reminded me to “look up” and gaze at Him in His goodness. Then when we bought some plastic cups for the boys on a whim, there “just happened to be” a fence design on each cup that points up. There are gorgeous mountains here in Fort Dauphin, that remind me to “look up.” When I don’t feel like I’m doing much of anything as I may complete one thing on my list, God continually shows me once again that He hasn’t forgotten me. As He “looks down” on me, I just need to “look up,” and be amazed at Him.
I want to get caught up in making our earthly home a neat and tidy home, all set up, and I want to feel hopeless as I see so many spiritual and physical needs around me, but He just wants me to focus on Him, and keep doing “the next thing.” If I go to bed knowing that I loved Him, loved others, and did the tasks He put before me with diligence, what else is there to do?
“To you I lift up my eyes, O You who are enthroned in the heavens!” Psalm 123:1
Taking pretty hilarious selfies on our scavenger hunt around the city.
Noah loved the snakes we got to see while on a safari in South Africa.
Titus LOVES finding chameleons, dragonflies, beetles, geckos, grasshoppers and any other type of wildlife in our backyard. And he lost his first two teeth on the way to Madagascar :).
Our team in Fort Dauphin (minus Adam, who was traveling). We had just arrived for the first time! They have been soooo incredibly loving, supportive and have basically made sure we stay alive! Love them already!
Picture of the market, where we can buy different food and goods that we need.
Our church family had some great performances on Easter Sunday, including some great dancing, singing and acting out of the Lord’s supper.
The “Three Muskateers,” Titus, Noah and there new friend and teammate River, playing on the beach.
Yes, we loved going to the Lemur Park one Friday. 🙂
Two brave boys looking out over the beautiful ocean just a few minutes away from us. They have struggled at times with this transition, but overall, they have been so strong, brave and courageous!
One of our amazing language teachers! So, we can at least point to some fruits and vegetables and tell you what color each one is :).
Garduce Mada Adventures 