Just Keep Swimming
Updated: Sep 11, 2021
"Just keep swimming.." These words spoken by Dory from "Finding Nemo" have never rang more true for us than they have over the past month. The month of August was filled with so many amazing moments as well as some difficult ones mixed in. Our family is feeling much more comfortable in our new home, and one of the highlights for us is constantly learning new things about our community and neighborhood.
Here are a few highlights from the past month:
Drew and I finished our first eight week language class! We both finished out the class well and thoroughly enjoyed the class. Although the class was conducted over Skype, we had a wonderful instructor. She was patient, fun, and so gracious to all of us as we embarked on this long journey of learning Romanian. We were also blessed with the most amazing language tutor who met with us twice a week in addition to the language class we were taking. She patiently retaught things we didn't understand from our class and was amazing at tailoring lessons to meet our specific language needs. By God's grace, we can look back over these first few weeks of language learning and say that our experience has been so positive! Moving forward, we will be solely working with and learning Romanian from our amazing language tutor! We are excited to continue our language learning journey with her and look forward to progressing more and more!
Drew and I went on our first date night together here in Romania. We had a wonderful time and it was a much needed change of pace for both of us. We were able to explore more of the city we call home and spent hours talking about this new life of ours. Being able to have that time to solely focus on each other was so refreshing and just what we both needed. The food was really great too!
Lydia started walking this month! In full Lydia style, she really just woke up one day shortly after her birthday and decided to take off! There was not much hesitation and she hasn't looked back since. She is all but running everywhere now and definely keeps us on our toes. She is the most inquisitive baby and usually solves whatever task she is trying to accomplish. Right now this includes throwing the most random items around the house into the trash can. This has resulted in some lengthy searches for shoe sole inserts and toy car tires, but all in all we are loving this age!
Drew was asked by a new Romanian friend of his to preach at a Gipsy church located in Alexandria. Drew preached on prayer from a passage from Genesis 18. Although the church has only a few members, they showed up and worshipped our Lord and Savior. It was a great experience.
We were both able to have some spiritual conversations with people in our community, in English!!
After being here 10 weeks, we have began to move into phase II of living overseas. Phase I is where you are excited about living in a new area/country and all the new things you are going to do. Phase II Is when the excitement begins to wear off and you begin to miss your old home, town/city, family, friends, food, and culture. Our company warned us ahead of time about this. We recently read a newsletter from a colleague who is going through something similar. Our colleague discussed how the Israelites mentioned in the Book of Exodus began to grow angry with the Lord and Moses for making them leave Egypt. They began to complain. The Israelites did not have a home nor were able to eat the types of food they wanted to eat even though God was providing for their needs. What they did not know was that God had something great waiting for them in the Promise Land. Now, we are not comparing the U.S. to Egypt nor Romania to the Promise Land. What we are saying is that although we have had moments of dwelling on the past and what we used to have, we need to consistently remind ourselves of why God brought us to Romania and the blessings that he continues to bestow upon us. He has something great in store for us that we cannot see. We truly are thankful for what God has done and that He trusts us to come to Romania and share the gospel here. We hope we make our Heavenly Father proud.
Prayer Requests:
Emerson started preschool. We pray that he excels and makes lifelong friendships.
Safe travels as we prepare for a much needed vacation soon.
Language continues to go well.
For our marriage to stay strong and that we are caring & loving parents to our children.
That we continue "swimming" through the difficult moments.
Pray for Drew's foot. He sprained his foot after missing the bottom step in our home and falling.
For our Visa process. We can see the finish line, but aren't there yet. There are still a few more steps.