Speech Therapy for Levi

One of the reasons why we were in Johannesburg, South Africa was to get Levi properly evaluated by a Speech Therapist. He saw a Speech Therapist 3 times. She was able to get a good sampling of his speech and will complete a written evaluation in about a week. He is definitely going to need quite a bit of focused speech therapy. My heart is so heavy for him and for us as we just don't quite know how we are going to get him the help that he needs. The speech therapist said that she would keep in close contact with us by email. We need to order him some specific games, activities to help us teach him. We just need wisdom in these coming days and I think that I just need a hug from our Heavenly Father!

Levi's Third Birthday Party

We had Levi's third birthday party a day early. Tomorrow will be another busy day of shopping for us and I wanted him to have a little bit of a special time with cake, presents and friends.

Levi got a battery powered bubble gun. He and Zoe had a blast with it.

My baby is 3 years old tomorrow. Wow-how time flies!

Posing with his cake and some presents.

Resurrection Sunday

I have to confess that Resurrection Sunday has completely caught us unaware this year. We have had no holiday decorations in every store announcing Easter, no commercials for Holiday Sales and no aisles of Easter candy. Good Friday in South Africa really caught us by surprise as almost all the stores were closed. Side note: they are closed on Good Friday but open for regular business on Easter Sunday. We have no new spring finery, no new shoes this year and no candy filled Easter baskets. Neither Jeff nor I have bought any new clothes in almost a year-except I bought 2 new skirts in Cape Town.

But do you know what we do have? We have a wonderous joy inside of us given to us by our risen Savior. We have a Friend who loves us and died for us. We have the privilege of serving our Lord in Zambia. We have a glorious new day to remember a God who loves us and gave his Son for us.

Celebrate Jesus today!

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our sins; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed."

Isaiah 53:5

MK Funny

We are staying at the Baptist Guest House in Johannesburg, South Africa. The rooms here have phones in them. We have not had a real telephone in our room for a year. The kids keep trying to play with the phone and I keep telling them that that is a real phone and they will call someone. Zoe came running into my room, telling on Levi that he was playing with the phone again. I told her to hang up the phone. She just stopped and stared at me. She didn't know what I meant. I told her to take the receiver and put it on the phone. She was still stumped. She had no idea what to do to "hang up" the phone. Our MKs are so precious but also have such a unique life.

End of Meeting Kids Program

All through our meetings, a team from Bryan, TX were taking care of our children. Our MK's go to do VBS during this time. At the last night, the kids 5-11 years old got to sing

them to the rest of us.

A very candid picture of me holding the camera in front of us and seeing what it takes...

Zoe and Hadassah - supposed to be singing. The girl to the right of Zoe became her best friend while at our meetings. She is a MK from Lesotho.

Me and Levi-goofing around again...

Can you believe it?!

We have finally made it to Johannesburg and can you believe it?!? Everything is closed today for Good Friday. We already got run out of a great mall last night at 6pm because the whole mall was closing-even the restaurants! We found out later that this is normal and a leftover from apartheid. So we frantically tried to find a grocery store that was open so we could buy some basics for today since most everything will be closed. We finally found some bread, eggs, juice, peanut butter and potato chips at a 7 Eleven. I guess those items will comprise our meals for today. :) Gee, we have dreamed of getting here for weeks and now we are stuck with not much to do!!! Oh, well-we will make good plans for tomorrow! :)

McDONALD'S!!

Our family FINALLY got to eat at McDonald's after almost a year! We all enjoyed Mickey D's. We are now in Johannesburg, South Africa. We'll be here until about April 10th. We have loads of shopping to do and Levi will have his speech therapy appointments next week. We'll celebrate Levi's third birthday on Monday. How, I have no idea but it will get done. :)

We have no special plans nor special clothes for this Sunday. To be honest, we had no idea this Sunday was Easter until just a few days ago. Our meetings in Tshipise were great and we have alot of spiritual things to ponder and many changes to make because of the great Bible preaching and teaching. More posts to follow from our adventures in America - oops, I mean Johannesburg!