never a dull moment

I thought I'd give you a little peek into what our lives are like right now.  We have been in the states for almost 5 months and we have 1 month to go before we head back to Mali.

Two weeks ago we went down to southern Minnesota.  We stayed with a lovely family for a few days.  We had the cool opportunity to share about Mali in 2 elementary school classes.  As it was public school we needed to be sensitive to not make it a religious presentation in any way, but that wasn't a problem.  We talked about the culture; JP taught greetings in other languages,  and I showed pictures of some kids I know and explained what life is like for them there.  Our friends also hosted a dessert night where we got to share about our work in Mali.  It is humbling and such a blessing that they would go out of their way to help us and create opportunities for us to share about Mali.
We visited the little town of Lanesboro, Minnesota.  I had never been there before, or even heard of it, but it is really quite adorable.  I guess its fairly tourist-packed in the summer, but in March it was wide open.  We have been having unseasonably warm weather, so it was even nice to be outside.

On Sunday morning we shared about our work in Mali in Wisconsin near Wisconsin Dells.  When we share we usually are able to set up a table to display some information and to sell bags and necklaces that we brought from Mali.  We get there early to set that up and make sure that our powerpoint and video are ready to go with the projection system.  It is amazing to meet so many people and I just wish we had longer to chat with them.
Sunday afternoon we went to Madison to visit a friend who I went to school with from 4th grade through high school.  It was great to see her!  I have found it interesting to visit a few friends that now have kids and to get to see them as moms.  JP had fun playing soccer with the kids.

We made Monday and Tuesday vacation days in the Dells!  We got a cheap hotel room that included tickets to an indoor waterpark.  Besides the waterslides, we had fun going on the river in an amphibious Duck boat.  It's a car/boat that was made for World War II and apparently it's a popular thing to go on tours in them in the Dells.  It was really nice to have a couple days to ourselves to just have fun and try not to think about all the things I need to accomplish for a while.  Sometimes people ask how our vacation in America is going.  A vacation and being in the states on furlough is not the same thing! We had 2 fun vacation days in the Dells, but we spend the majority of our time in America working.  It takes a lot of time and effort to do support raising while we are here so that we can get back to doing our "regular" work in Mali.  I'm not complaining; we mostly are having a wonderful time, but there is a lot of work involved.

When we got back I worked on catching up with things like appointments, emails, thank you notes, organizing plans, grocery shopping, and doing laundry.  We prepared for and shared at a children's program three times.  We helped get my mom's house cleaned up because yesterday I had some friends over for a jewelry party. I worked on making food for that, too.  

So that's some of what we've been doing.