Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Faith baptist Church’

We were a little lazy about having Heron’s baby dedication! I know we had Rhino’s dedication when he was eleven days old, but we just weren’t on the ball with it that early this time. There’s nothing wrong with having it postponed, though. Any time is appropriate to dedicate ourselves to raising our child according to God’s word.

We chose to dedicate our children before the church because it is important to us to publicly ask for wisdom and grace as we carry out the responsibilities God has given to us as parents, as for support from our church, and pray that our children will one day come to trust Christ as their savior. We were presented with a certificate documenting the day as well as a small blue bible for Heron.

Heron is a little picky about who holds him! He is just now warming up to Matt and in the nursery would usually rather sit in the swing than be held by a lady who isn’t Mommy. Occasionally he’s in a good mood and let someone new hold him, but not too often. There are two people in our church who he has never complained for, though! He loves spending time with our friend, Tanya, and our pastor. Pastor says it’s because he’s a “Papa” and Heron can tell. While Pastor Popwell was holding Heron during the dedication, Heron would stare up at him and babble a little baby conversation to him. He’d respond enthusiastically with coos and gahhs whenever Pastor would ask him a silly question (like “your mom and dad should keep working on filling that quiver, shouldn’t they?”!)

It was a sweet moment with Heron and I am so thankful that we have a close church family standing by us with support, advice, and prayers as we try our best to raise our boys. I do pray that one day they too will know the joy that is a relationship with our Lord and an eternity with Him.

The ladies of Faith Baptist Church regularly have a fellowship, with potluck snacks, our pastor’s wife giving some sort of devotion, and lots of chatting. This month’s was a Christmas fellowship, of course, and we were all to bring ornaments to exchange. Mrs. Popwell stood in front of a decorated tree and spoke on ornamentation while we sipped punch and munched sugar cookies. Then she set a wrapped ornament in front of each of us and read to us the story of Jesus’ birth. Each time she said the word left or right (which was quite often!), we were to pass our ornament to the person sitting beside us (right or left, depending on which word was said.) This was fun and got moving pretty quickly, it was a little confusing at times! When the story was over, we unwrapped our ornaments. I got a sweet, little Hachinohe horse (like the horses here.) It’s red and has Misawa and the year painted on it. I love ornaments like this, that will remind of us where we’ve been and what we were doing. I made a felt gingerbread man, which turned out really cute. I wanted to do a snowman also, but just didn’t have the time. I just freehanded the figures onto paper, cut it out and pinned it to the felt as a template. Then when the felt pieces were cut out, I embroidered details on to each side and blanket stitched around the edges. I like it a lot and think I’ll make more (and snowmen, reindeer, etc. in the same fashion) for next year’s Christmas for our own tree!

Matt’s sister, Jen, flew in to visit us for a week and a half! She came in on Friday and we’ve been having a good time, just hanging. I’m so glad she’s able to be here and spend time with the boys!

Today was our church’s Thanksgiving Fellowship. It was initially supposed to be a meal for the singles on base who don’t have a family to celebrate with, but not many singles showed up, so it was just another great church fellowship! It was a long day – we had our Sunday School then morning service, followed by the fellowship meal, then our evening service was moved up to after the meal. The boys handled it well, though! At last year’s church Thanksgiving, Rhino was just starting to eat solids and enjoyed just a little bit of mashed potatoes. I was hoping this year he’d dig in more, but he just wanted a bite of bread and lots of cranberry sauce! The meal was great, as always. I like that we did it the Sunday before Thanksgiving this year rather than on Thanksgiving day. Last year we had two Thanksgiving meals because we had the Armstrongs and the Kisers over for dinner as well as a church fellowship. This was all a little easier! We love our church family and they have been really good to us while we are so far from the rest of our family. I’m thankful to have them another year here and so glad that Jen share in an important part of our life.

Happy early Thanksgiving!!

We have a new family at our church: Jessica, Josh and baby Caden on the way. They’ve been here almost two months and are really great! We had them over for dinner and Balderdash a few weeks ago and had such a good time. I hadn’t heard if anyone was throwing a shower for her and Caden, due in the beginning of December, so I decided to throw her a party.

I’d never thrown a baby shower before and haven’t even been to that many of them. So I called up my friend Katy to see if she would co-host with me. She always makes wonderful cakes for these sort of occasions, so I thought it would be fun to work on one together. For a while I’ve been thinking what fun it would be to decorate cakes, but haven’t really had many occasions to do so. Katy and her boys came over on Thursday and Friday to put together an awesome cake! We made the buttercream frosting and marshmallow fondant from scratch. Caden’s nursery is jungle themed, so I wanted to do a cake to match. We molded all the decorations out of fondant and piped frosting for the grass, name, and vines. I think it turned out beautifully and it tasted really good, too!

I also wanted to try my hand at a diaper cake. I’ve seen these for sale on base and online and I think it’s kind of a cute way to gift diapers to someone. I didn’t want to spend hours rolling and tying each diaper individually, so I laid diapers flat and spiraled them inside different size cake pans, then secured with ribbon. I didn’t have a lot of little goodies to decorate the cake with, but I threw a couple on there to make it pretty. I think looked great and only took me less than 30 minutes to whip up!

I had a great time at the party! We played some games: a blind cotton ball scooping game, a baby items memory game, and a baby name race game. Katy and I had goodies for all the game winners. We also had a great baby-themed devotion by Mrs. Popwell, our pastor’s wife. Everyone brought some finger food, so we ate lots of yummy treats and then had our cake. Then Jessica opened all her gifts. This is their first baby, and shopping for #1 is the most fun. She received lots of cute clothes and gifts!

It was a fun time and I always like hanging out with the church ladies. We had a whole lot of babies due over the summer (I was one of six pregnant ladies at one point) and Jessica is the last of the church pregnant ladies that I know of. I hope there are more soon so we can enjoy more fun showers and sweet little newborns! I just had a turn though, so don’t look at me!

It was nice to have Mama and Ron in our home. They stayed in the Misawa Inn on base at night and we had a good time at home or out and about during the day.

We were able to take them to church with us on Sunday morning, which was wonderful! It happened to be a special visitor’s week too, so yay – we brought visitors!

We did the temple and shrine thing down in Tokyo, but we went to the temple here in Misawa, too. It was closed for renovations when we arrived, so we just toured around the cemetery.

We went to the Towada horse park. It was a nice drive out and we all went down the giant roller slide and pet the horses. Every time we visit with Mama and Ron, we play boardgames, whether at their home or in the hotel room in Santa Barbara. We picked up Pictionary this time and it seems like we must have played 100 games in the few days that they were with us. It was too much fun!

We took them to our favorite restaurants around town. We went to Global Kitchen, the new 100 yen sushi place, udon at Matt’s favorite noodle house, and Viking for yakiniku. I did cook some, too, but not nearly as much as I had planned on cooking.

We went up to Aomori to visit a Buddhist temple and Japan’s largest statue of Buddha, Showa Daibutsu (or as we call it, “the big Buddha.”) It was beautiful up there and I loved temple grounds. Stunning! We also relaxed at the beach and had some ramen in a very small, cramped ramen house with absolutely no trace of English anywhere. It was delicious!

Their trip was, of course, too short. They had ten days from leaving Colorado to returning home. I wish they could have spent a month, but it’s just not possible. I know this will be the only time they will be able to visit us in Japan and it is unlikely that we will be back to the states before we move again. We’re hoping to meet up in Hawaii at some point, though I’m not sure if I should count on it. I love being in Japan, but definitely do miss being able to see family even a little regularly. When this tour ends in 2012, we’ll at least be back for a visit! Spending time with Mama and Ron all week was wonderful and I can’t wait to see them again!

Over the summer, our church started doing the King’s Kids program for all our youth ages 2-18. We knew that the church needed teachers for Wednesday nights and that they preferred couples. Matt and I have never taught anything in church before; it just sounded like a lot for two young Christians who don’t have it all figured out! I mean, what if someone asks a question we don’t know the answer to? What if a child wants to be saved? We certainly couldn’t handle that! Matt actually suggested that we give it a try, which was a little surprising to me! We figured teaching teenagers seemed a little intimidating, so let’s go for a little kids class. Oh, they need a teacher for the 4 and 5 year-old? Sure!

We’ve been teaching 4s and 5s (the Flyers Club) for almost six months now and have really enjoyed it! Each child is given a booklet of bible verses to memorize. At first, I was trying to work weekly lesson around each of these verses, but it got a little difficult. The kids wound up working on different verses from each other, due to absences or needing more time to memorize it. Sometimes I just didn’t come up with enough material based on the verse for a whole 90-minute class. We had some good ones though, mostly about creation in the beginning.

I started looking online for Sunday School / Children’s Church lesson ideas and came across so many great troves of information! My favorite resource site is Danielle’s Place. I’ve been picking lessons off the site and adjusting them as I need. We did the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) lessons for nine weeks, which was a huge hit! Each week we focused on a fruit (e.g. cherries and lemons) and a spiritual fruit (e.g. joy and peace.) I think it helped them remember all the fruits of the spirit when they associated each one with an actual, edible fruit. It made snack time easy, too! When we learned about patience, we also learned about pineapples. Matt picked up a fresh pineapple and cut it up for them. They had to sit patiently as he cut off the skin, picked out all the spots, sliced it, cored each slice, and cut them up. When we learned about love and apples, we made little hearts out of apple slices. There were of course lots of other fun games, crafts, art projects, and songs too – not just snacks. It was a great lesson and now all of my kids can name all the fruits of the spirit and give examples.

Since then, we’ve been doing sort of an ABC format class. We did an A lesson about ants and how God says we should be like them (Proverbs 6:6-8.) The next week we did a B lesson where we learned about bees and how we are God’s masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10.) It’s been fun!

Our church decided to do different themed nights for each week. We’ve done sports night, bible character night, missionaries, etc. I’ve been trying to tailor the lessons to somewhat fit the themes, so I’ve strayed from the ABCs. Next week will be a lesson about fall, leaves, and how even though the leaves are changing, Jesus and his love never changes (Hebrews 13:8.) There are so many pretty leaves still on the trees and out and they won’t last much longer! Then I’ll have fun with Parent’s Night (maybe an “obey your parents” lesson) and Thanksgiving (we can do lots of things with that!)

It’s been challenging working with this age group, but it is all ready very rewarding. It’s so great when our members’ children bring guests who don’t ever go to church. I just pray we can make it fun and make them want to come back and learn more. The church talks about this program being permanent, so Matt and I plan to continue teaching this class until we leave in 2012. Rhino will actually get to be in our class for a couple of months at the end!

I’d like to keep up with blogging more specifically about each class, so be expecting updates on each fun Wednesday night King’s Kids lesson!

Even though we decided not to celebrate Halloween, I am not against a good, candy-filled party! Our church, Faith Baptist Church, puts on a harvest festival, as many churches do. Matt had to sleep, but I brought the boys so Rhino could get some fun in. It was a good mommy break for me too as I got to hand off Heron to some ladies who have missed holding a little one. And right now Heron loves strangers and didn’t seem to miss me at all!

A lot of the games at the festival were a little old for Rhino, but we adapted them so he could enjoy them. There was a “Fishers of Men” game where you had to hold a fishing rod with a hook on the end of the line and pick up tiny plastic men out of a kiddie pool. Rhino got lots of help. There was also a Jonah game where you’d put a golf ball into a whale’s mouth. Rhino got down on his tummy and placed the ball in the mouth, but I eventually got him to roll the ball. He did successfully knock down the “walls of Jericho” (stacked cardboard bricks) by throwing a tennis ball. He couldn’t use the Nerf slingshot to shoot a ball through the hole in Goliath’s head, but he did slam-dunk it in if I held him up! I didn’t even want to bother with the “Blind Bartimaeus” game where you are blindfolded and feel around in a bowl of rice for tiny safety pins. I could just imagine the mess! There was a face-painting station and Rhino looked at the sheets of clipart and pointed to the colorful train engine. He sat still the whole time while it was painted on his face and it was so cute! The last game we played was by far his favorite — the cake walk! What’s not to love? There’s music and cake, two of Rhino’s favorite things ever! We walked around a few times as I held his hand and he kept trying to walk away. Soon enough all the little kids walking around in a circle wanted to hold his hand too, so I got to sit back. He got a little bored of trotting in a circle and would break free to dance in the middle of all the numbers. Whatever he likes! We did win a cake and he picked out a white frosted cupcake and ate that while dancing for the cake-walking kids. It was a great time and went on for seven hours, but we didn’t stay nearly that long.

Afterward, we headed to the Weasel’s Den to crash a birthday party my friend Sarah had driven down for. We met some new people and Rhino had a great time eating grapes and playing! I had found Sarah’s blog a year ago and really enjoyed reading it then found out that she comes down to Misawa (from the Aomori area) once a month, so we arranged to get together. We haven’t hung out much yet, but I enjoy chatting with her when we have and look forward to her future visits. Her blog is a great read, too!

We have five pregnant ladies (that I know of!) at our church right now, all due within the next couple of months. Friday night we had our first baby shower. Tatjana is having a little girl (Tianna Isabelle) next month. Charren hosted this shower at her home, we had a fabulous turn-out (mostly church ladies) and a wonderful time!

We played a couple of baby shower games, such as finding the safety pins in a bowl full of uncooked rice while blind folded. We also passed around a roll of toilet paper and were told to unroll as much as we use in one day (and with four pregnant ladies present at the shower, the roll went quickly!) After we all had our toilet paper, we were told that we have to say one thing about ourselves for each square of paper we have. Tatjana definitely tore off the most and we got to hear a good deal about her life!

I brought Rhino along because Matt has to work at night and it didn’t really occur to me to leave him with one of the husbands (which pretty much everyone did.) So he was the only little kid there and is kind of distracting (especially at a 3 hour nighttime baby shower!) He was pretty well-behaved, but still very energetic and noisy! When we were all saying things about ourselves during the toilet paper game, he’d often laugh after someone gave a fact. Charren gave a nice devotional about loving your children and Rhino let a nice big burp right in the middle! A lot of the ladies got a kick out of him though, and he definitely enjoyed the attention. Heather was such a sweetheart and spent the most time with him: feeding him (that’s why they’re now best friends,) holding him, wiping jelly off his face, giving him toys, etc. He sang/whined himself down on her and almost fell asleep until he scratched his face on her necklace and came over to me. It was a nice break for me and he is really starting to get friendly with other people, thankfully!

Of course there was cake and presents. Katy made the chocolate cake with fondant and some yellow-cake cupcakes that were both delicious! This is the third cake she’s decorated and it turned out beautifully! I have a bunch of cake decorating supplies and it’s something I’ve wanted to get into, but it’s one of many things on my “to-learn” list that just hasn’t made it to the top yet. We decided we should bake up a bunch of cakes in advance and then have a day together to practice decorating!

Tatjana opened her gifts as we ate the cake. She all ready has a little boy, but this is her first girl and she received so many cute girly things! I got her some wipes, a set of Japanese-style (they tie like kimonos rather than snap) newborn clothes (onesies, sleepers, shirts, socks, etc.), and I crocheted her a little blanket. She also was given a ton of really adorable dresses, a bunch of diapers, and a neat little Japanese activity gym thing. She definitely made out with the adorable girl-loot!

The next three ladies (myself included!!) are all having boys; two of us all ready have boys. I’m told it will be one big shower for all three of us, probably just a diaper shower for the two of us who all ready have plenty of boy things. That’s fine with me (though I don’t really want/need a bunch of disposable diapers because we cloth diaper, but we’ll see!) because I just like getting together with friends (and cake!) Tatjana’s shower was actually the first baby shower I’ve attended other than my own and it was a blast!

On Monday morning our friends, Liz, Drew & their kiddies, left Japan to go live in Texas. A bunch of us from the church showed up at the airport to see them off.

I’m not sure Aime really knew what was happening. She just enjoyed her juice and the attention. It seemed like Josh was looking forward to the trip, though!

Josh is such a sweetie. He was holding Aden’s hand for quite a while before they left.

There was a pretty good turn-out from our church to say goodbye. Here are some of us ladies from Faith Baptist Church.

The Armstrongs have been our closest friends this past year. I love hanging out with Liz and feel like long-lost sisters! Their kids are wonderful and such fun and Drew is a great guy! They’ve made our settling into Japan, the base, and the church really comfortable and I appreciate all their family has done for us. Drew has separated from the Air Force and they’ve gone to live in Fort Worth. We visit Dallas every now and then to see my dad and family, so I’m hoping when we return to visit family that we’ll have the opportunity to meet up with the Armstrongs, too. The internet is a wonderful thing and I’m so glad we’ll be able to get in touch, but I sure hope that we’ll get to spend time together again in the future. I’m happy that they’re moving on to new things, though they will certainly be missed a lot here.

On Saturday, Rhino and I went to a 1st birthday party for Carson and Cole, two babies at our church who were born a week apart.

Rhino had a blast playing with all the helium balloons and their strings (so did the other little kids!) We spent about an hour just watching the kids enjoying themselves before we dug in to hamburgers and hot dogs.

Charren (Cole’s mom) and Katy (Carson’s mom) had kiddie music playing: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “The Wheels on the Bus”, etc. and Rhino spent a lot of time just jamming out to the songs and dancing for the guests. His favorite new moves are deep, repetitive squats with his arms straight out or waving around. The boy is going to have awesomely strong thighs!

After all the food, the boys opened their presents. I gave each of them a hand-stitched felt ball, embroidered with their name and the year. After everything was unwrapped, the kids tossed it around a lot, so I think it was a hit! I still have to finish knitting up some little bear finger puppets as a belated gift. I just couldn’t get it all finished in time!

After presents we had cake! The party was baseball-themed and the cakes were very cute (and delicious!) baseball cakes with a trophy for each boy. Carson and Cole each were given a chocolate cupcake. Cole was pretty unsure about the cupcake, would cautiously take a little nibble from his dad’s finger, and sort of complain or avoid the cupcake for the rest of the time! Carson, on the other hand, immediately picked up his cupcake by its bottom, and shoved nearly the whole thing in his mouth!

It was a great time chatting with other moms, watching the kids play (Rhino loves being around other kids now!), and getting some yummy food! Happy First Birthday, Carson and Cole!