Argentina Bound!

Tomorrow Andi and I leave for Argentina. It has been such a whirlwind preparing for this retreat and my head is buzzing and I am incapable of any logical thought which may not be a good thing for the whole speaking part...still, I feel clear that there is a reason that God is drawing us to Argentina. And clearer still that God will speak to, in and through us while we're there if we'll just get out of the way! Please pray for the women, for us and for our families as we travel. I'll tell you all about it when we get back!

Thankful Thursday...um...Friday

Today I am thankful for...

• Grace...our daughter, of course, but also for God's grace. For how we can mess up royally and He can love us anyway. And for the way that experiencing his grace allows us to extend grace to others...even when it's hard.



• tennis...the amigos and I had a great time hitting tennis balls today. I just love the ages they are right now and how we can go do new fun things that weren't possible before.



• Friends and family who come to our kids' stuff...we have lots of friends and family who go beyond the call of duty to come celebrate and support our kids. I don't know how it is for your family but in our family May seems to be the month of recitals, games, and shows. Just this week we had a gymnastics show for all three amigos, Grace was Mowgli in the Jungle Book at her school, and Eli has a violin recital on Saturday. That's a lot of amigo watching!



• Eli and Noah's preschool...we chose their preschool because if the diversity of kiddos that go there. I have loved seeing how being there has effected each of their hearts. I volunteered in both boys' classes this week. It was such an awesome experience to see how God is working through their preschool class to teach their little hearts. From Eli's special needs friend who "does not follow the rules. He needs to follow the rules, Mommy!" (Eli is a fan of rule-followers and it has been a struggle to love this friend this year) but who he now believes that "God made him and loves him and I love him, too...and I can teach him to follow the rules!" To an autistic boy (we'll call him Jonah) in Noah's class (who we just LOVE) who Noah struggled with at the beginning of the year because he was always knocking down his block structures. On my last volunteer day, I got to see Noah very carefully build a huge zoo out of blocks. It was a great zoo, a detailed zoo, a zoo replete with animals of all kinds (although they all looked like tiny plastic cats). Noah was proud of his zoo. And Jonah came by and had the "I really want to knock down your zoo" look in his eyes. And Noah said, "Jonah, please don't knock down my zoo. I'll help you build your own zoo to knock down." And he did. And then Jonah accidentally knocked down a pretty big section of the African exhibit with his shoe and Noah said, "That's okay, Jonah! I can fix it!" And he did.



• That when I can't do it...God can! Because this women's retreat in Argentina is definitely something that I can't do. But, thankfully, I know I won't be doing it alone!



• Also...this just in...I'm super thankful for baby Caden who was born today! Whoo hoo! Congrats to Linds and Jer, Paul and Terry and all!

The Gymnastics show...

The amigos had their spring gymnastics show this weekend. Each of them got to show us what they have learned, received a medal and received ribbons for each event they participated in.