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.

Joshua Tree

The Cholla Cactus Garden.  If you walk too close to this kind of cactus, some little prickly balls will velcro onto your clothes.

 One thing that we did during our roadtrip that wasn't visiting people was to spend a couple days at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.  I liked the idea of going to a National Park that was on our route during our trip, and I also liked the idea of being in warm, non-wintery places, so that is how I decided on Joshua Tree.  I would love to go back during the spring and see how the desert blooms with color and flowers.  It was still pretty for us in early February, but it was the dormant period.  There was a video to watch at a visitor center and it mentioned the Sahara desert (just north of where we live in Mali) and how the "desert" is so named for being deserted, void of life.  The kind of deserts found in Joshua Tree Park are very full of life.  And I learned that they even get a bit of snow there sometimes.  Not at all like the Sahara!

JP on our hike.

JP resting at the oasis.

My favorite part of our time in Joshua Tree was an early morning hike we did.  We went up and down a mountainy trail to get to the oasis where there is always a little stream of water and some palm trees. 
There was a sign that showed all of the different plants and animals to watch out for.  I only saw birds, no wild mountain sheep or anything else exciting.  But I can now identify several kinds of cactus that I didn't know before.
The other best part of the park for me was walking around an old abandoned homestead.  We went to a ranger program where a woman told the story of the people who lived there, so after that we had to go check it out.  There were walls left but no roof from the house, and lots of old junk laying around to see.  The people who lived there were trying to mine for gold and they learned how to live well in the desert. 

Mostly I enjoyed being in the sunshine and nice temperatures and seeing the gorgeous landscapes and crazy plants.

Old rusty tin cans at the abandoned homestead.

JP with a very large Joshua Tree.

more about our roadtrip

We are back in Minnesota after almost 6 weeks of traveling around America.  The trip was so amazing that it is hard to figure out how to write about it in brief.  I think that knowing people in so many places is cool and I am glad that I could visit friends and family around the country.  But it is also hard to say goodbye and know that it will be some years before we see each other again.  I know some really wonderful people!  When I am in Mali I miss certain things about America and when I am in America I miss certain things about Mali.  Sometimes I wish that all of the people I love could all be my neighbors so I could see them all the time.  Maybe it's like that in heaven.  I know it could be a lot harder and I am thankful for the ways I can stay in touch with people easily through modern technology.  For missionaries in the past it was much more difficult.  Just 15 years ago I wouldn't have had a cellphone or easy internet access in Mali.  It makes the world seem smaller to think that at any moment in Mali I can just dial up my mom and at the same time her phone rings thousands of miles and an ocean away and (for about 40 cents a minute) we can talk.

So enough of my rambling and back to the roadtrip:  JP got some really good experience driving in the states.  We were never stopped by the police.  The only car trouble we had was one flat tire (or rather I was driving on a low tire which someone pointed out to me and we had to put the spare on, no biggie.) We had to go through 3 border patrol/immigration checks when we were near Mexico.  I would have liked to cross into Mexico, but that wasn't possible because JP's USA visa is single entry, so we can't go to Canada either.  At 2 of the border control places they just looked at us and waved us through.  But at one they asked if we were both US citizens. I said that JP is from Africa and they made us pull over and find his passport to look at.  We almost ran out of gas once.  The light was on for a long time telling me that the gas was low, but we were in the middle of nowhere in southwestern Texas.  There is nothing there for a long time.  Finally an exit with a gas station appeared and I was able to get some gas, even if they were charging an extra dollar a gallon!  We were lucky because the gas prices were lower that they'd been in years during our trip.  When we left MN it was about $1.89 (it's up to $2.25 in MN now) and the highest prices were in California at about $2.59.  We enjoyed all kinds of weather along the way, but now we are back to below 0 freezing cold winter in Minnesota.  We've been inside a lot since we've been back!

Big American Roadtrip

We’ve been on the road for 3 ½ weeks now!  We left Minnesota early on a below-freezing morning.  Just 20 minutes later we were in Wisconsin and a few hours after that we entered Michigan.  We like to keep things exciting, so we managed to drive into and through a snowstorm on the first day of our trip!  After that we headed south until we hit the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama where the weather was much more to our liking, and from there we’ve been going west.  When we get to California we will go north and east until we return to Minnesota about 2 weeks from now. 
The main reason for this big trip is to visit family, friends, and people who support us in our work in Mali (who are generally also family and friends.)  It has been amazing to see so many people that we haven’t seen in a very long time, or in some cases to meet them for the first time.  Besides seeing a lot of special people and receiving gracious hospitality, we have appreciated a lot of other things about this trip as well.  Some examples are:  seeing so much of the USA, experiencing American culture in varied forms in different homes,  JP having to practice his English a lot,  the wonderfully low price of gas, spending a lot of time together as a couple, being out of a regular routine helps us step back and see things from a new perspective, trying new foods, and having that exciting sense of adventure.

A big fancy house in the snow in Michigan.

On Wolf Bay off of the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama.

Home for the Holidays - USA 2014

 Our time in the states over the past 2 months has been really fun and really busy.  It has been especially fantastic to spend the holidays with my family and have a white Christmas!  I thought I'd post a few pictures of fun things we've done in the last few weeks.
We went to Bentleyville in Duluth.  It is a huge walk-through Christmas lighting display village.  It is free to go there, and they give out hot chocolate, cookies, marshmallows to roast, and popcorn (and we tried them all!)  We went on a night that wasn't too cold, I think it was actually just above the freezing point.  I'm glad we went when it wasn't any colder because after an hour of walking around, even being all bundled up, we were freezing.

 We took a self-guided Christmas tour of Glensheen Mansion in Duluth.  There was a tree in pretty much every room.  We walked around the grounds outside and down to the boathouse on Lake Superior after the inside tour.  JP was happy to see a lot of books in French on their many bookshelves.

 Here is JP perched upon a gigantic Belgian horse.  It was his first time ever being on a horse!  We got to go on a sleigh ride over the fields and through the woods just north of Duluth.  The horses wore jingle bells. :)

JP's first snowman

 There hasn't been a ton of snow yet, but we had some on the ground with a warm enough day for it to stick together, so JP made his first snowman!  We got to go visit some friends at their farm in the country.  The pictures look dark because it was at dusk - the sun is already setting at 4:30pm here!  We are waiting for some more snow to fall so that we can try sledding.

what we've been up to

Wow, we have been so busy that I haven't blogged since October.
So, here is a little bit of what we've been up to:
In October I worked hard to get our house and us prepared to leave the country for nearly 6 months.  If you've taken a 1 or 2 week trip you know that it can be a lot of work just to get everything together, sorted out, and organized for that.  Well, packing up and preparing for 6 months is no small task!  There are some friends staying in our house in Mali and taking care of our dog while we are gone.  So I could leave food in the fridge and not empty that out, but there were other tasks to do to make the house ready for other people to stay there.

Once we actually left the house, we went to Bamako for 3 days before we flew out.  It was a busy and stressful few days before we got on the plane.  JP had to go to the Spain embassy to see if he would get his visa so he could actually get on the plane (he got it a day and a half before we flew) and he didn't know until the last minute if he would be able to present his Master's Thesis or not.  The night before we left he got the call saying that he could present in the morning!  So 14 hours before we went to the airport we were sitting in a room at his university for him to present his thesis.  What a relief when that was done!  I had been worried that he wouldn't be able to present and that he'd have it on his mind for 6 months while we are in the states.  It is so nice to not have to think of that anymore and to just be done with it!  And of course I'm very proud of JP who now has a Master's Degree in Public Health.

This is me helping JP with his special robe that he had to wear when he presented his thesis to the jury.

 Once we were checked in at the airport we both felt amazing relief and calm.  The last few months had been very stressful with finishing school and moving and preparing our trip, and it was amazing to know that we were done with all of that and could just relax.
We spent time on vacation in Spain on the way to the USA!  It was the first real vacation that we've ever had!  I have some pictures from that on my facebook page, here's a link: SPAIN PICS

We arrived in Minnesota just in time for the first snow storm of the season.  It was JP's first time seeing snow.  He says he likes it so far, and he is staying warm with the long johns and other warm winter clothes we bought for him.

The 6 weeks that we have been in the states so far have been very busy.  There is so much to do!  We have stayed at my mom's house part of the time and at a friend's empty house part of the time, so we've been driving 30 minutes back and forth pretty often.  This week we'll be moving out of the friend's house and staying at my mom's until we leave for our big road trip in January.

Here are some of the activities we've kept ourselves busy with:
visiting family and friends
sharing about Mali in 5 groups (9 total presentations)
a short road trip to visit friends and share
seeing my new baby cousin in the hospital
shoveling snow
shopping on Black Friday
joining the Christmas choir
Christmas party
going through the things I have in storage at my mom's house (a few plastic bins)
cutting down and putting up a Christmas tree
JP learned to make wreaths and drive a backhoe (what a day!)
visting Bentleyville in Duluth
seeing the Nutcracker ballet (my mom won tickets and gave them to us!)
attending a Christmas music concert
going running to prepare for a 5k, it's hard to breathe in the cold!
dentist appointments
eye doctor appointments
chiropractor appointments (my back is feeling better now! there is no chiropractor in Mali)
sending out cards and letters and setting things up for our support raising efforts
trying to watch a few movies (but I am usually falling asleep before the end!)




Ok, so that is some of what we've been up to.