The Sunny Side?

Most people around the world have been pretty down on the year 2020. 2020- the year of COVID, the year that wasn’t, the canceled year,  for many the year of loss, isolation and disappointment. 

Peeling potatoes for Thanksgiving

We’ve shared in our frustrations with this past year, but then comes Thanksgiving! While some may have reasons to complain because their holiday plans were upset this year, in the spirit of Thanksgiving we are called upon to rejoice. 

So on Friday morning as we prepared a Thanksgiving meal (we’re sure it was still Thursday somewhere!), we set our screen saver to all pictures from 2020 and remembered together the sunny side of this year. 

Chicken (not turkey) ready to be prepped

We really had a pretty amazing year, especially considering the circumstances. People ask how our time in the US was and we usually say “strange”. Strange because it wasn’t what we had expected or even hoped for when we planned our time in the US. Strange because COVID restrictions and stay-at-home orders made for weird and new dynamics.  But we look at the photos and can’t help but be overwhelmed by all the cool experiences we were still able to have, the family we were still able to see and the travels we still managed to do safely in the midst of a pandemic. Now the photos never show us what we had hoped to do instead, or the people we didn’t get to see, it only shows us what happened and everyone we did see. Just the shift of focus to what we actually accomplished and skipping the disappointments, made it so easy to rejoice over 2020.  It was a cool year. 

It was a year where

- we welcomed a new teammate

- we watched our kids grow and mature

- we got to travel to the US for over six months

- we got to spend significant time with all our immediate family

- we got to take a road-trip across the US

- we got to go to some national parks

- we got to see some extended family

- we got to eat some new foods

- we ate good ice cream on multiple occasions

- we went on lots of outings, picnics and bike rides as a family

- we saw new islanders make life changing decisions

- we saw old island friends step into new leadership, encouraging and mentoring others

- we had fun adventures on all our kids’ birthdays

- we had close encounters with lots of animals (domestic and wild)

- we saw a lot of friends that we haven’t seen in years

Our Thanksgiving feast

We read that list and it looks like a good year! Sure, it doesn’t talk about the masks and distancing, all the interactions limited to Zoom calls, or any other frustrations, but that’s not the point. The point is remembering the good and being thankful. Something we definitely find ourselves needing to be reminded of and something that is good for our soul. So let us rejoice, let us look back on this year with Thanksgiving. 2020- a year of lots of fun and blessings! 

PRAYERS ANSWERED

We are thankful for 2020. We are thankful for a good Thanksgiving with our teammates enjoying each other and yummy food, and for the chance to video chat with family back in the US. We rejoice in Tom’s opportunity to share extensively with a new islander who showed up at our house asking deep questions. This young man also returned to go with Tom to study with the group of men that Tom studies with and the newcomer seemed to connect well with the group and empowered the ones that Tom has studied with to take the roles of sharer and teacher. Our colleagues were able to make it back to the islands with their newborn! We haven’t heard any updates from our island sister on the small island who was facing opposition, but we’re assuming no news is good news at this point.

PRAYERS REQUESTED

Please pray for our teammate. In the wee hours of Sunday she was awoken by excruciating pain in her torso. We eventually were able to discover that she has a kidney stone. She (accompanied by our other teammate, who is a nurse) went to the big island this afternoon (Monday). Please pray that she can get follow-up care soon on the big island and have a better understanding of the situation and whether she will need to travel to mainland Africa for treatment. Pray for a decrease in her pain which right now is only controlled with IV pain meds. Pray for our sons as they restart local school this week. Local school is a source of some anxiety for both of them, though they do enjoy having friends there. Pray that our younger son in particular will remember French quickly and that both of them would not be anxious but would actually enjoy school. 

For fun here are our kids entries into our Thanksgiving Book (the book where we write everything we are thankful for each year that we started before we had kids).

Our daughter wrote she is “thankful for the lemon meringue pie on my birthday, family, parks, playground, dressing [my baby girl cousin] and [my doll], playing boats and cars with [my little boy cousin], having my hair done by [my aunt], learning piano with Grandma, playing word games with Gram, good food, legos, ‘scare in the night’ and good books. Thank God!”

Our older son said he is “thankful for being able to see family even though there was COVID, taking that really cool road-trip, for the Radical Road-trip games, I especially liked the Grand Canyon and I’m thankful I thought to make a dino field guide and Notebook of Doom. I’m thankful that I am who I am.” 

Our younger son said he is “thankful for all the nice time with family, seeing them longer than we were supposed to, for the dino hunt for my birthday, playing on the slide at Grandma & Grandpa’s, on the swing chair in California, and with [my little boy cousin} and [my baby girl cousin]—she’s so adorable, and for my Voltron.”