Posts Tagged ‘Faith baptist Church’

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!

Hello, sweetie!

In the last six months, you’ve grown up quite a bit! You weigh 21.5 pounds and are 27.95 inches long. You are getting very sociable with other children now. We had a church picnic at Leftwich Park on base where you sat with 1-year old Samantha. You like to reach out and touch her head and babble to her! We have also spent time with our friends the Armstrongs and their kids, Josh and Aimé. Josh likes to tickle you (though I don’t think you’re ticklish right now, but Josh has fun!) and talk to you. Aimé likes to pat her head and you have pulled at her pretty little curls more than once! She always giggles and says “Baby Rhino likes me!” which you seem to very much. There are also other babies in the church nursery that you like to look at and reach out for. You are also very interested in certain adults. We were at the food court at the BX recently and there was a table with some Japanese men in front of you and you kept smiling and calling out to them with your screeches and babbles. They enjoyed your attention and would wave and laugh and you really liked the interaction. You are quite a friendly little boy!

You recently started pulling yourself to your knees and also to a stand. You have strong legs and stand very well with our support. We no longer pull you because you can bring yourself up! You are enjoying your play time in your crib more now that you’ve discovered you can hold onto the railing, kneel or stand, and chew on the wood!

You aren’t crawling yet, but I get the feeling you’re going to take off any day now! When you’re sitting on your own, you often lean forward and get on your hands and knees. It seems like you don’t know exactly what to do from there, though! Sometimes you plop down to your stomach and push yourself in circles with your feet or try to walk your feet forward so your diaper is in the air. Sometimes you just push yourself back to a sitting position. You seem like you’re ready to get moving, though!

You also started clapping for us this past month. You are very good with your hands and had been touching them together excitedly, but it never quite made a clap. Now you clap along with us when Daddy and I clap for you or you do it on your own when you’re happy and playing.

You make all sorts of silly noises, too! You’re continuing to string together “ba”s and “da”s, but lately you’ve been doing a whole lot more “ma”s and “na”s. The first time I heard your “ma” was when I walked in the room you were in and you looked up at me and squealed “mama!” I know you aren’t speaking yet and still just experimenting with sounds, but it made me smile! Now it seems like when Daddy is holding you, you repeat “mama” over and over, but when I hold you, you say “dada” all the time! You’ll figure it out soon! You are learning to recognize some words now. If you are lying down or sitting and I want to pick you up, I will say “up.” Now most of the time when I say up, you will look at me and lift up your arms for me to pick you up!

You love playing with your toys, especially some Japanese blocks we got you, your Bright Builders, and my yarn! You like to bang your toys together and sometimes get so wild with them that you scrunch up your face and lean back away from your hands because you seem like you’re going to smack yourself! You also like playing with your food. You are really getting good at pinching the sweet potato puffs and getting them in your mouth and you love the baby toast, both to eat and play with! You are still eating a lot of peas, sweet potatoes, and butternut squash baby food that I make as well as baby oat cereal. You don’t love being fed and always want to hold the spoon yourself. Sometimes you do a pretty good job, but most of the time you make quite a mess! You also like to chew on raw baby carrots and will demolish one very quickly. You chew it all up very well and leave almost no mess. You’re my little rabbit baby!

We are having such a wonderful time together and I have fun seeing all the new things you learn every day. It amazes me how quickly you grow and I am really enjoying helping you discover your world!

See some other photos and videos of the past month!

I love you,
Mommy

I don’t know why I’ve been so lazy about blog posts lately. Oh wait, yes I do — I’ve been knitting! I found an amazing site for crocheters and knitters: Ravelry.com. Over at Ravelry, yarnies share projects, patterns, yarn, chat, have knit-a-longs, etc. etc. etc. Looking through all the patterns and seeing everyone’s projects has been so inspiring and motivational — I have about 100 projects queued up for the future! I’m working on matching winter hats for Rhino  and Amelia since we’ll all be in Colorado together for Christmas this year. I’m also knitting a wool diaper cover for Rhino (or maybe it will be too small, in which case it will be for Amelia.) Rhino’s legs are so chunky and his current PUL covers dig into his thighs and leave ugly red marks. He’ll outgrow them and his medium sized diapers pretty soon, so rather than buy the next size up, I’m just going use prefolds and sew up some fitteds and knit wool covers. Right now I’m just doing a cover, but in the future I want to knit up some super-cute shorties and longies for him to wear around. With all the recent knitting enthusiasm, I’ve had to pick up some new yarn, of course! Liz and Drew took us to Shimoda mall last weekend and I visited the craft shop there. I got some needles in sizes I needed and some wonderful pretty new yarn. It will be a challenge staying away from there! My stash just grew quite a bit and I need to use up what I have!

We’ve had some recent get-togethers with new friends at our home. Last weekend Liz & Drew & kids, Nicole & Mike, and Catherine & Tyler came over for pizza, Wii, and MST3K. We’ve had them all over before for lasagna or shish kabobs and anime, games, and MST3K previously as well. It’s nice to spend time with other couples and I’m so glad we’re getting to know people over here. Mostly everyone we spend time with right now we know from church. Everyone has been so great to us there and I’m really enjoying getting to know other people in the church. Matt’s ushering and I’m working in the nursery now and we’ve opened up and are being more sociable than we ever were in California. There have been some fun picnics and fellowship potlucks lately that have been really good times.

Rhino is doing well. He’s making a lot of really funny faces lately and flashing us huge, toothy grins. He flails his arms all the time, both in joy and frustration. I think he’s getting ready to get mobile — he thrashes around more when he’s on his stomach or tries to climb up me if I’m sitting with him. He sits up on his own flawlessly and is now gently leaning forward and getting onto his tummy on his own from the sitting position. He’s eating yummy mushed peas, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes mostly along with some baby oat cereal. He’s practicing pinching and self-feeding with sweet potato puffs. He’s doing really well with picking them up between his forefinger and thumb (or thumb knuckle) and putting them in his mouth. I had also been giving him chilled baby carrots for a while to teethe on. He really enjoys holding the little carrot, holding it up and showing it to me, waving it around like he’s conducting an orchestra, etc. He’s getting so much better at chewing, he will pretty much demolish (and eat!) a baby carrot. Of course, I’m always sitting with him to make sure he doesn’t bite off a chunk that he could choke on, but really he just kind of grates the side of the carrot with his teeth so the pieces are really small and he can swallow them easily. He really has the best time with the carrot, too — I think they’re his favorite toy!

We haven’t really been doing too much else lately. Matt is back on a day schedule. His new term is starting up this week (he’ll be taking a math class online and hopefully tomorrow will be signing up for another class to satisfy his CCAF requirements.) Tomorrow through Sunday our church is having a world missions conference, which we’re looking forward to attending. School is going slowly for me, but it’s going. And that’s about all! We’ve been pretty dull lately. It’s been raining a lot, so we haven’t gotten out too much. I’m really itching to go on a hike soon and get some pretty pictures before it starts to get too cold. Hopefully we have a nice, dry weekend someday soon!

I was waiting to post anything about this until I got photos (just because I like to accompany my posts with photos when I can!) Well, our pastor gave me the photos from his camera last night so now I can write about it, haha!

I was baptized by sprinkling as an infant, saved when I was ten, and confirmed my baptism when I was twelve, also through sprinkling. I had some pretty rocky times since then with my faith. It wasn’t really until tech school in Georgia that I realized the importance of God in my life. When Matt and I began dating, we started going to church together. I have always felt so fortunate to meet and fall in love with a wonderful Christian man. When we were married we started going to a baptist church where everyone was baptized by immersion. I talked to the pastor and some other members of the church about the difference between “their” baptism and mine and never felt too satisfied with any explanations. I didn’t really have any motivation to be re-baptized. For about a year now it has been on my mind. When we started going to the church here in Misawa I wanted to talk to the pastor about his thoughts on baptism by immersion and why they do it. I feel so ridiculous that I had never even looked to the scripture about it. That was the first thing Pastor Monteith did with me and we talked about baptism as burial and being raised and everything seemed to make so much more sense to me. Of course I wanted to be baptized! Pastor Monteith had to go back to the U.S. the next day for the whole summer on furlough, but we have a pastor filling in for him who would baptize me the following Sunday. I have a few photos of my baptism by Pastor Van Dyne on June 8th here.

Well, I don’t really want to be a big whiner or anything, I’m just a little disappointed. The solid food issue is important to me and I’m trying to do what I think is best for Rhino and his diet. There are a lot of differing thoughts on when to start baby on solids and what they should be eating. The decision we came to was around 6 months to see if he can self-feed. Many parents take small chunks of mushy food (cooked carrots, ripe banana, slices of avocado) and give them to baby as is to pick up and put in his mouth. That’s what we decided to try at first and also see about making our own fruit and vegetable purees. I’ve done a lot of reading about how the bacterial flora of baby’s intestines matures and why it’s a good idea to delay and just be exclusively breastfed, at least for the first 6 months. Anyhow, that was our plan.

It still is. When we went into the nursery this morning, Matt noticed Cheerios under Rhino’s chin. I thought maybe some other child had spilled them on him and just kind of laughed and said “he didn’t eat those, did he?” I was kind of shocked when one of the ladies working there just looked at me and said “well, yes … Was he not supposed to?” Our church is small and everyone knows each other pretty well. They don’t do child-information sheets on the kids in the nurseries, you just tell them. Maybe I should repeat it every time he goes in. I was pretty sure everyone knows that when he’s acting hungry, come get me and I’ll feed him. That’s usually the way it works. Well, apparently he liked his half a Dixie cup of cheerios and ate them all up. I guess technically it’s his first food, but we’re still going to say this doesn’t count and stick to our original plan. Of course, I was disappointed too because I wanted to be the one to feed him! We were planning on having the video camera and the bib and all that jazz. We still will, but I feel like I missed out a little, and I am quite annoyed because we have reasons for why we choose not to give him solids yet and what we want to feed him. And apparently Cheerios are a 9-month and up food usually. I know Rhino’s a chunky guy and maybe looks big for his age, but she still should have checked with me. I handled it well and of course didn’t get upset or mad, because really, what can be done? Inside I was pretty bugged, though. But that’s the way it goes. Since Rhino  seemed to have done so well with chewing and swallowing maybe we will see how he does with some veggies soon.

A family from our church had a barbecue at their house yesterday. It was supposed to be on the 4th, but the forecast had been calling for lots of rain the 4th and 5th so they moved it to the 3rd. (We were originally planning a camping trip the 3-5, but canceled that because of the forecast. So far it’s 4pm on the 4th and we’ve just seen a couple little sprinkles. It would have been nice to go camping! We did set up the tent and the sunshade in the backyard for a practice camp-out, but when it started to drizzle we took them down. Then, of course, it was nice all night!) Anyhow, we went to the barbecue and had a wonderful time! A bunch of other families were there and we really got to know people from our church better. Everyone brought sides and/or desserts and all the food was fantastic! Rhino and I baked my chocolate pecan thumbprint cookies.

I love them so much (I think it’s the best thing I know how to bake!), but they’ve been the last snacks standing at two bake sales in the past. I made about 5 dozen for the get-together and most people tried them, but I saw quite a few half-eaten leftover cookies. Crazy people! There is one woman who thought they were amazing and ate a whole bunch, so that made me feel better (plus, I don’t feel too bad because I got to bring some home for myself, hehe!) Anyhow, these are my yummy cookies, and that’s enough of that.

The picnic was our first outing with lots of kids. I think everyone who came brought at least one kid. Kids were everywhere. It’s fun, they’re all sweet and adorable (and even the teenagers were super-polite and pleasant — we took 4 of them home!) Six of us tried to play a game of Balderdash and that was the most hectic thing I’ve ever experienced. Of course we’ll need to get used to this now, but it was a little overwhelming for our first time in a house full of noisy, clingy, playing, climbing kids. Rhino was mellow, of course, but I know that he’s not too far off from all that! We got one round (not anywhere near a whole game!) of Balderdash in and that was lots of fun. We spent about 4 hours there and were really glad we went (even though we didn’t get to go camping — there will be other camping trips!)