Picture Post: Worth 1,000 Words

Brent driving through the big city market at "Hope"

Market Colors and Crowds

Claire found a nest!

Not thrilled with how our tiled bathroom turned out, but the mason was skilled at masonry not tiling, AND at least it's not a latrine!!

Claire's friend who lives near her Auntie Shelly & Auntie Brittany's house

Ethan and his soccer buddies near his aunties' house

Kids make incredible toys from tin cans

More friends

Water-totin' mama near the mango tree

At the pump - this is as close as we get to running water at our house

Smile like it's easy.  ;)

Hard work

Just love this pic

Trying to set up electric at the aunties' house

Our lil gull is a growin' - Happy 5th Claire

Such a card!

Almost got them all

Living room furniture thanks to some colleagues!

First successful from scratch cake & icing for our birthday girl

got the screens up in the windows, now we need a ceiling to close up the house.

Propane stove (European size) and some useful furniture we had made for our kitchen storage

Our front porch. Soon we hope to have a screen door to keep people from wandering into the house

Draw water from the pump, put into the 55 gal barrel, filter through the Katadyn filter to make it drinkable

African Sunset

Soccer field down the hill from our house

Laundry & Ponderings on "How"

Standing on the porch looking out at the clothes line.

Doing my part of the laundry while Claire "helps."

Ponderings on How...

I'm watching the clothes billow in the sun and breeze while they hang on the line. It's very peaceful. I'm thankful for calming visuals like this just when I need them. I've been thinking about our interactions with neighbors in this pre-language stage. It's made me contemplate how on earth we can reach these people who need to know Him. Then looking at laundry, I consider again – I can control nothing. Not the wind. Not the sun. Not the hearts of people who need to hear of His love. Not even the length of my own life. 

How do we keep from becoming discouraged while doing what we know God has called us to do? How can we possibly do what we have hoped to set out to do? Just like doing laundry, I need to do my part of washing and hanging the clothes & let God do the part of controlling the wind and sun to dry them. I do my part in ministering and He always does His... the sun and wind are there on days I don't do laundry too. He ministers to hearts in powerful words I do not have & will continue to minister even when I am not here.

Hmm. Plant the seed, it will get watered, it's God's job to grow it.

Lord, help me keep you in focus here – to know that You love us each one & You are doing a work in me as much as in those I hope to minister to. Help me with my faults and sins. Thank You for the daily reminders like laundry to lift my heart!

Good ole hymn:

Higher Ground

I m pressing on the upward way
New heights I'm gaining every day
Still praying as I onward bound
"Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."

####Chorus:
Lord, lift me up and let me stand
By faith on heaven's table land
A higher plane than I have found
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

My heart has no desire to stay
Where doubts arise and fears dismay
Tho' some may dwell where these
abound
My prayer, my aim is higher ground.

####

I want to live above the world
Tho' satan's darts at me are hurled
For faith has caught the joyful sound
The song of saints on higher ground.

####

I want to scale the utmost height
And catch a gleam of glory bright
But still I'll pray till heaven I've found
"Lord, lead me on to higher ground."
####

Picture Post - Glimpses of Africa

Tarantula-sized guardian of the bathtub (one we did not use) at our friend's house.

Kids flock to my family.

Me & my love of my life/ awesome companion on this wild adventure!

Awesomeness in a tree.

A regular road in these parts

Our cuties in a cabana - just kidding! It's a mud hut.

A friend's village - notice the natural fence of cactus

Vehicle at the compound in the capital

Yes, that's chickens tied to the top of a taxi.

Beautiful African Sunset

Ethan's first day in Africa, he played in charcoal - pic reminds me to pray for our neighbors here

Flaming Bread to kill flies eggs/germs

Local 2 mo.old orphan baby, who is now cared for by a colleague

Rough Roads

Road Trips to the Middle of No Where

We've been in Africa for 3 weeks or so now. We've driven a lot on really bad roads. There are some that are literally pock-marked by gigantic pot holes. We knew the roads would be bad, but not this bad & we have some worse ones to travel yet! So far, not much of a problem with motion-sickness thanks to Dramamine. Though on our last trip, Laura's Dramamine did not kick in right away & she ended up with vertigo & a 5 hour trip took much longer due to the needing to stop for her to toss her cookies 8 or so times. At one point we stopped to try to allow her meds to kick in and she laid down on the road, to try to stop the spinning, strategically resting in front of our vehicle to keep from getting hit by trucks bounding down the dirt road. Villagers came out of the bushes to stare and ask if we were ok. Some people took pictures! They were really curious & concerned for this sick foreigner. I bet it was quite a sight to see a white woman laying on the road with her husband kneeling, fanning her with a hand fan! 

Later down the road, we had to stop due to traffic backed up by two trucks stuck in the mud. One had overturned and the other determined it could not pass without tipping once it made it to the middle of the bog. Africans are so resourceful. They took a tire off the overturned truck to allow the other one space to pass and the traffic cleared up in 45 minutes! Thankfully, a dose of Dramamine started to take effect during that stop, and the swerving and constant bumping did not bother Laura anymore. We got in well after dark – not a great idea to drive at night here. It's dark with no street lights, so pot-holes jump out at you, and you never know what will be crossing the road (even at 10pm): people, cows, sheep, ducks... Needless to say, we rested up for a few days after that rough trip. All throughout we kept thanking the Lord that our car had A/C & was able to keep trekking after getting some bad gas that caused us to stall 15 times while we were driving. Reaching out to the unreached doesn't come without some challenges. Thankfully, we've had some decent road trips since this one.

In the Village

First village orientation.

So our village orientation has begun. We’ve spent a week living in a hut & pumping water from a well & learning some greetings. We’ve watched women carry huge buckets on their heads, seen men come back from the fields with a harvest of maize, peanuts, and manioc. It’s hot and dusty in the village. It’s been interesting. There are some big bugs in the latrine at night, & nightly trips to the latrine are disliked by every member of our family, but oh well, nature calls. Hut life isn’t so bad, but not my favorite either. It’s definitely doable and I can see the value of being in a village.

The village community is different from city life & as new-comers, we had a bit of adjusting to do. Each day, we would have 20-30 kids come to the yard to see our “too-ba-boo” children (foreigners or white people). Lots of kids wanted to touch our daughter’s red hair. She felt overwhelmed by all the little reaching hands. Some kids were nice and wanted to befriend us. Others were just amazed to see people so different. Young kids would stare and laugh sometimes. Some teens brought a new friend each day to come and take pictures of us on their cell phones. We felt odd in this new celebrity role. As our son played soccer with the other children, I felt like our kids were taking part in a daily routine of monkey-in-the-middle, where our kids were the in the middle. Watching foreigners is like watching TV for villagers. The adults on the other hand, were quite friendly and helpful – always greeting us and shooing away impolite gawkers. Our last night in this village, we had a dance party. (Those of you who don’t agree with dancing, don’t faint.) It was a way to make a memory, one African woman told me as we danced and laughed. They seemed impressed with my dance skills (that would never happen in the States!). I felt sad leaving the village, knowing that I may never see them again & knowing how badly they needed to know of the love of God. I will continue to pray for the two followers I met, that their light will be bright and not go out. I am praying that the whole village will be lead to the right path by the light of these two.

Hurry Up and Wait!

I hear that this is the lifestyle that many missionaries experience: Hurry Up and Wait.

They hurry to get in line at a bank in Africa only to find out it takes waiting most of the day and they will have to come back the next day to start all over. They hurry up to get trained before heading to the field for their first term and then wait for funds to come in. They wait for medical issues to clear up and then hurry to get visas and then wait at airports for their visas and passports to arrive by fed-ex before rushing to their flight only to sit for 9 hours and then wait for a connection for another 8 hour flight. I've been told this by other missionaries and have only experienced some firsthand.

Right now, we are rushing to get visas and paperwork for international health insurance set up in order to get on those long kind of flights in a few weeks. It's sort of surreal that this is finally happening. I am still prepared for some delay to come, but hopeful that we are in the home stretch of just getting to the field. I've been called since I was 14. If there is another delay, I can wait, but today I am hopeful that my life's calling will actually become tangible. I have been working to get to the field (mind you, I lived in France for a year and that was a mission!) and each step has been a part of this calling. I've come to grips with the fact that each step is a journey. It all comes down to how He called me, "I want you to BE a missionary." He didn't say, "I want you to DO missions." This hurry up and wait is a grand part of being a missionary in which I learn another fruit of the spirit: Patience.

Lots of work to do in the next few weeks. Not sure if I will get to blog again before we get to the field, so the next time I write, I might be writing from African soil !!
Something we've been looking forward to for a LONG time. 

Looking forward (photo credits?? sorry)

PS - New donation address as of  Sept. 2012
Brollier
c/o Judy Trollinger
1384 Meadow Springs Dr.
Lilburn, GA 30047 USA 
(Judy's email address coming soon.) Our email will stay the same, but we will end up with limited web access.

Thanks for all your prayers and gifts! This is only possible through God's and your help.
Donations can be given Online as well: see the yellow donate button on the left.

Teaching the ABC's to little ones

photo credit Microsoft Office

I have two children; one reads really well & the other doesn't - yet!
One has a keen interest in reading and  began to read before age 4. Now Ethan's almost 7! Of course, he had some help with a wonderful Christian pre-k daycare that was run by former Bible translator missionaries. They used some great tactics and introduced the alphabet to him by focusing on one letter a week. Each story, project, craft, and snack would then correspond with the letter of the week. Brilliant!

My other child, Claire, is now 4 and is home educated. She loves books, but hates to perform. It used to be that if you asked her a letter, she'd get shy and then mad that you asked her. We had to find some ways to teach the alphabet without making it seem like work. (We also had to deal with some letter confusion simply because she was learning French by immersion at the same time she was learning the American alphabet - same letters basically but a different sound!). She's doing great now, and it's likely due to consistency (mostly on my husband's part - God love him, he's so great!)

We found some great tools in Sonlight's curriculum. We use the Alphabet Bingo, and Go A to Z game (which is basically two sets of Alphabet flashcards that you play "Go Fish" with), and also a box of 25 simple readers called Fun Tales. They are very helpful. We sound out the letters as we read and point to them & she has fun when she can guess the whole word as she hears us complete the sounds (very Sesame Street-esque, I know!). 

from Sonlight (see link above)

 We also use workbooks from Walgreens or even Wal-mart. Oh, and she loves Curious George, so we bought a Curious George alphabet book too. We even use Starfall.com. We point out letters wherever we go. We sometimes trace letters in a pan of sand (or even rice).  Sometimes, I make soft baked pretzels and we shape them into letter shapes (or you can pour pancakes in letter shapes - put the batter into a plastic baggie, close it, and snip the corner to make it into a type of frosting/decorating dispenser, if you know what I mean.). 

bought elsewhere

 Our latest addition to our alphabet resources includes a book,
 The Sleepy Little Alphabet by: Judy Sierra.
Claire really loves this one since she is into anything that has to do with mommies and babies. There are capital letters in the book that are the parents to lowercase letters. She loves that we say that the mommy "T" tucks the baby "t" in bed. So this gave me an idea!

Here's what I did:
You know those paint strips they have at your Home Improvement store or even Wal-mart - the ones with different shades of the same color? Most people use them to create a color palate for their walls, well...

I took two sets of several colors (think I picked reds, blues, oranges, greens, and purples - so 5 sets, 2 of each color).

On one set I wrote a capital letter on each space and on the matching set I wrote the matching lowercase letters. I alternated sets as I went through the alphabet so that A, B, C, D, E were not all on one card (helps memory to learn out of order too). (I wrote a diagonal line between some like the lowercase "g" since I'd like our children to be able to recognize the "g" of one font and the "g" of another as the same sound and letter (see photo below).

Then I set aside the capital letter sets and cut apart only the lowercase ones so that what your left with is cards to match the lowercase letters with the capitals.

My custom-made Mommy & Baby Letter Match Game used with J. Sierra's book.

How to play our Mommy and Baby Letter Match Game:
You say the name of the letter and tell your child to put the baby letter with the mommy letter (if that's what works with your kid!). Then if they can't find it you give a hint, "It's on the red card," for example (that narrows down their guess to just 4 or 5 letters to choose from). You do this until all are matched and keep track of the ones they needed help with so that you know what to focus on later. We keep the cards in a plastic zipper bag. Claire loved this game and wanted us to find the letters in The Sleepy Little Alphabet book as we went along! Hope this helps your kiddos as much as it's helping Claire. Enjoy!

Signs of Spring! Mostly Picture Post

Beauty reflects the Creator.

Remember we're made in His image.

Get a whiff of that goodness!

Fun with family - love my sister-in-law, Carrie!

Easter at Great Grandparents House in NJ.

The Matriarch - Grammy Brollier

A Happy Hunter.

Love the Cheese! (And who says you need professional portraits?)

Proof I was at Easter dinner.

So, one year for Easter we made resurrection rolls (you can google them for the recipe) to illustrate how the Son of God was resurrected from death to life. The kids loved this object lesson of hiding a marshmallow tucked in a crescent roll. When it's baked it's gone! Just like an empty tomb. Although, our kids liked the lesson a bit too much, and since we don't do sweets often the kids kept asking when we were going to bury "baby" Jesus (my now 4 year old always thinks of Jesus as a baby). They just wanted the treat, but I'm sure they will never forget the lesson. Well, this year we, of course, talked about the real meaning, but also had an Easter Egg Hunt - no object lesson this time! There's something innocent about gathering candy-filled eggs in a basket and looking forward to opening them. I wish every chapter of life were like this. The excitement of the hunt and the prize. The joy of ownership and the savoring the prize hidden inside. Mmm.  Maybe more of life should be like this. Maybe it is all about perspective. We, as believers, are earthen vessels who contain the mystery of Christ. Easter eggs - Not a perfect analogy, but it's just some points to ponder along with the pics.