These are all pictures from the Blangmee handing over ceremony.

Blangmee Handover

Greetings...it never ceases to amaze me that i can sit here in Salatiga, post pictures and send them off to cyberspace and then you all can read my thoughts and see the pictures. This is just too cool if you ask me. :)

Nick is on an airplane somewhere between Java and Singapore. He will spend the night in Singapore and then gets on another plane headed to the U.S. They will land in Indianapolis sometime on your Tuesday afternoon-early Wednesday morning for us. He will be there til Friday the 2nd and then will be in Arizona with his parents for a few days. It is never easy to have him go but this month is especially hard. He was gone last week to Aceh (more about that next), home this weekend and then gone these next two weeks, then home a weekend and gone again the following week to Thailand. Needless to say, he will be exhausted from traveling so much and we will be missing him each and everyday he is gone. The weekends are always the hardest for me since i am not as busy and don't have to be anywhere. This weekend fortunately has an indoor soccer tournament for the kids so we will go and hang out at the school a lot i am sure.

Please pray for Annaliese-she is going on her fourth week of non-stop headaches. It has been really hard to figure out what is happening with her. We go tomorrow to get her eyes checked and so we will see. It is hard because i don't always trust the doctors here but supposedly this doctor is very good. We will see how it goes. Will let you know.

I wanted to tell you a little bit about Nick's trip to Aceh this past week. It was for a ceremony for the 525 houses that have been built in the Blangmee area-a part of the Lhoong area where CRWRC/Gen-Assist has been working. They had a very big celebration with lots of bigwigs there...The head of BRR (the reconstruction organization) said that no other org. has been able to do this many houses in this amount of time. The houses are good quality and the community is also receiving help in restoring their livelihood - means of making a living - while also receiving homes. USAID did a survey of many villages in this area rating the many organizations for how they have worked within the community. GenAssist was ranked number one - USAID was number two.

Sorry if this sounds like bragging but it was really an encouragement for Nick to hear that the work is appreciated up there and that despite all the hard things that have occurred, much has happened and God has been at work.

One story Nick shared about a meeting with some of the heads of a village was extremely poignant though of the on-going need for the work there. A man shared how thankful they are for the houses but expressed how life was still so hard. He looked around the room and said how every person in that room had lost a loved one and was still so deeply affected by what had happened because of the tsunami. At night many of these men still cry themselves to sleep, weeping over their lost wives, children and family. There were not any women in this meeting and it wasn't because they were not invited but that in some of these villages, there are no women left. The hole that has been left is huge. Then at the end of this, the man turned to Nick and his coworkers, knowing that Nick was a Christian as were many of the others with Nick and said, "We need advice. We need to know how to continue to have hope...how to keep going."

What would you say? How do you express God's love and grace to someone that has hurt so much. Nick talked about his own deep faith and that is what we cling to. Pray for more opportunities for Nick to talk of his faith with them men.

Anna and Amanda

Thought i better add a picture of Annaliese to this Blog. :) This is on Christmas day at a friend's house. She is sitting with Amanda Morgan, one of our teachers at Mountainview. We had a very special Christmas...Amanda, Jeremy Cramer and Jay DeGroot spent it with us making our house full of fun and laugther. :)

Luke-The boogie boarder dude

Here is Luke after a time in the ocean. He enjoys boogie boarding to surfing. He and his friend Tim had a good time catching the waves and just playing in the water. We had a couple of good days of weather so we were thankful for that. One never knows that the water/weather will be like at this time of year. The first day we arrived in Bali it was rainy and very windy. Sounds like the weather has been pretty strange in many parts of the world these days. We had a lot of fun although the one downside was Anna being sick for a chunk of our time there...she rallied most days to have some fun but she was not her spunky self for most of the time. She is still struggling with lingering headaches so we are trying to figure that out.

Trying Blogging

So, i am still trying to figure out this blog stuff but as i read my friend's blogspot, i thought this would be a way to keep many of you informed of our lives here. I hope to post things more often than not but no promises. I am not an eloquent writer...so don't expect any deep thoughts on things...just thoughts on what our lives are like here. :) Enjoy.

Here is Nick enjoying a day of surfing. We were able to head to Bali for some sun (well bits of sun) and relaxation. Nick spent one whole day surfing...he was a bit red on the arms after that but his smile was worth the sunburn. :)