Handfuls of Blessings

Parties have been held.  The sweets are in the freezer.  Gift bags have been given out.    The house is cleaned, and we are ready for our morning Christmas service at 9:00 when we will give more gifts to each one who attends.  It has been fun involving our children in all of the preparations, whether it be tying bows on bags, filling paper bags with small toys, baking, or cleaning up.  We want our children to have giving spirits and to teach them the joy of doing it. The girls packing sweet popcorn for those my partner and I disciple The last two months have been quite busy for us, so I will give you the fast version in pictures backwards. Our children's afternoon Sunday School with their Christmas bags     The missionary kids of Masaka decorated snowmen at our house Our First American Fast Food In the Country!  It is 2 hours from our house. In our Missions Conference our people pledged the equivalent of $4,15...

It may be old age.  Perhaps it is how busy we find ourselves being.  Whatever the cause, I am terribly late in posting the last two birthdays of the year.  I was even late making their cakes, but I have the sweetest, most forgiving of kiddos. Dressed up from college classes Stanley requested the planets.  How simple, right?  Just 9 balls (yes, he wanted Jupiter included, although its planet classification is debated by some).  However, I wanted to make them different colors.  I lined up 9 bowls and added food coloring to each one with a little bit of water.  I tried rolling each planet in its designated color, but that idea failed.  I certainly didn't want to completely cover them with frosting.  Then the idea to "paint" them popped into my head.  I washed up one of the kid's paintbrushes and used the food coloring mixture to paint each one.  Of course, my own fingers were quite colorful when the job was completed, but I ...

Congratulations, Uganda, for 51 years of independence! Out of the 196 countries in the world, we are very grateful that God chose Uganda for our place of service.  We love being here!  We get the privilege of seeing God change lives.  We enjoy the friendships of fellow Christians from different cultures.  We get to be used of God to reach people who have never heard the Good News of Salvation.  Being American citizens with a strong sense of patriotism engrained in us, it is sometimes baffling to us how carelessly some Ugandans regard their Independence Day.  While running errands in town today, Keith greeted many people with, "Happy Independence Day."  These are some of the responses he got: "Is today Independence Day?" "It's just a rich man's holiday." "Why celebrate? With independence we lost our jobs, infrastructure, free education and proper health care."    Despite the attitudes we sometimes face, we do our best to in...

Remember when I mentioned our theme for my Ladies Sunday School class?  IT HAS BEEN SO MUCH FUN!  Not every week has been full of games and visuals.  After all, how do you visualize wind?  I thought we could run the fan on "hi" for the whole class, but we didn't even have electricity that day. However, let me share a couple of themes from the past month. Butterflies: Using my Cricut, we were able to cut out several butterflies to use for a review game.  I did learn an important lesson in doing this, though.  Construction paper on Cricut mats - a miserable mess to clean up!  Those small fibers love the stickiness.  While doing our shopping in the capitol a couple of months back, I spied these butterfly notebooks and grabbed up all they had.  On the day of class, I told the Lord, "You know I have just 14 notebooks.  You must control the size of my class."  That day, our attendance was low - 13 ladies. The Fragrance of B...

One of the joys of homeschooling is being able to incorporate life skills into daily curriculum.  My mom loved to sew, and she made sure all of her children learned, too - yes, even my brother.  (We used to set up hospital and repair stuffed animals.)  I have used this skill over and over and over again - making curtains, clothes, repairs, adjustments and numerous other things. When a fellow missionary began caring for orphan twins and mentioned their need for clothes, a bright light came on in my teacher/mom's head.  What an opportunity for Shae-Lynn to learn some sewing skills! Stanley and Shae-Lynn holding the twins after church We began with dresses and headbands that turned out very cute on the already adorable girls. A couple of weeks later we took a trip to the clothes market, bought four onesies, and then made matching skirts and headbands. (We had originally set out to buy dresses, but I wasn't willing to pay $4 for very used baby dresses!) ...

Shae-Lynn is doing great in carrying on the rice krispy cake tradition.  Another year has passed!  Wow - I am not getting younger.  However, I have the best husband and children who try to convince me that I really am not old.  I love the drawings of everyone in our family. Since we have three August birthdays, we decided to do one party for all three of us last Friday.  We were blessed to have 5 other missionary families join us for an evening meal and a time of fun and fellowship.  The Lord has given us such special friends. Maybe if we had paintbrushes this big, we could have finished the painting much quicker! Since we have spent so much time in house improvements this month, I thought it was fitting for Keith's cake to reflect our work.  We have now taken a break from the renovations and are enjoying the wonderful results. Skyler, our 9-year old  Skyler was having a very hard time deciding what he wanted for his cake....

Teaching is very rewarding.  Not only do I have the privilege of sharing God's Word with hungry souls, but I always learn so much, too.  For several years I taught our Children's Church and our Ladies Sunday School, but then our schedule changed, so I now just have the ladies.  I really can't decide which I like to teach better - the children or the ladies. I love them both! In the midst of teaching one series, I am always on the look-out for what I will be teaching next.  When we were about halfway through our study of The Women in Proverbs, I decided that Lessons from Creation would be our next series using many of the devotionals from Julia Bettencourt . Room decorations are non-existent in Uganda, so everything must be made from scratch (very much like the meals).  However, since Keith took our son to the States in May, one request I made was for him to bring some decorations to fit my theme.  To our home church ladies, I say, THANK YOU!  Several ...

You are probably wondering where I have been, right?  Me, too!  Although we have been moved into our house for 2 months now, we will probably be in a fix-up stage for at least a year.  My husband is doing all he can to make our house nice and comfortable for our family.  Our big project for this last month was a little bit of tiling.  I will let the pictures walk you through our kitchen and dining room.  The first section shows photos of the areas before we moved in. The entry. A closet where the wheelbarrow is and the pantry door to the left of it. The dining room. The kitchen where the sink and cupboards would be. In the kitchen where the stove would be.  After much clean-up, cement and a little paint, we moved in. Entry way after moving in. Dining room. Kitchen with cupboards. There is no counter top, yet; just rough cement I have covered with some linoleum. We have cement floors throughout the whole house....

Andrew (Keith's brother), Keith, and Shane Yes, we still have more than two weeks without Keith.  We are blessed to have been together SO much in our marriage, that when circumstances require us to be apart from each other - it is difficult.  However, we are VERY thankful for technology and the capability to be able to e-mail and Skype each other every day. Graduate of 2013: Shane Stensaas Shane is enjoying the "honeymoon" of American life with his dad being there to help him get settled.  We pray for him every day, and little brother Skyler still longs to see him.  He has been the first one out of bed every morning to check to see if Shane is online to talk with him. Savannah and her friend Molly Mop (can you see the face she drew?) With our move, we ended our school year sooner than we had planned, so our children have been on break for about 6 weeks.  In the midst of our move, we got new curriculum for next year, and our children have been beg...