Why I'm glad my parents were "overboard and strict"

I was a little girl who LOVED to read. I was 4 years old when my mom started teaching my older brother how to read. I climbed up on her lap and she taught us together. By the time I was 7 years old I was reading 200 page adult books cover to cover in a couple of days. 

I got my love of books from both my Dad and my Mom. We lived in a teeny tiny trailer house with 4 kids and 4,000 books. Well honestly I don't have any idea how many books it was, but it was a lot. Every spare inch was filled with books. When I was 12 my dad finally got his dream library.

BUT

My parents were EXTREMELY strict on what they allowed us kids to read. 

I mean they were overboard strict. 

NOTHING secular... even if it was clean.

NOTHING fiction even if it was awesome.

I wasn't allowed to read all the normal books that little girls read.
Nope, I never read Little House on the Prairie. 

I didn't read Little Women 

I didn't read Uncle Toms Cabin.

I didn't even read Snow white or Cinderella.

Honestly, I was in my teens before I even had an understanding of who those "people' were.

So what did a book loving little girl like me read? Anything I could find on those book shelves that looked even remotely interesting!! 

One of the first books I ever remember reading was when I was 7 years old. 

I read "Christ's Witch Doctor" by Homor Dowdy. 

I read about Elka, a 7 year old boy living in the jungle afraid of evil spirits. Afraid of his father killing his baby brother. 

I read about Elka, a 15 year old boy who "became a man" by letting hundreds of large ants sting his legs over and over until they became so swollen he could barely walk. 

I read about Elka, a terrified teenage boy who became a Witch Doctor to his people. 

And then I read about a young man who gave up his life and all things comfortable to bring the Gospel to the Wai Wai people. 

I read about Elka who was the first in the tribe to give his heart to Jesus. I read about revival spreading through the jungle and fear being driven away by the power of Jesus! 

This book amazed me! 

From that day until this I read every book I could get my hands on about missionaries to the unreached.

When I played games I didn't play that I was a rich princess in a castle with a handsome prince. 

I played that I was riding on "Bwana Pauls Pie-wagon" fleeing from a panther in the jungles of Africa. A story taken from "Cowboy boots in darkest Africa" by Bill Rice. 

And as I got older I didn't dream the American dream. I dreamed about Missions.
I was 14 years old when found out that there were still people on the planet that had NEVER ever heard the gospel even one time. God stirred in my heart and I told him I would go anywhere that he wanted me to go.

Did you know that 70% of Evangelical Christians today do not even realize that there are un-reached people groups left on earth?
Did you know that most Christians have never even considered being a missionary?

Do you know what else? I would probably be on that list of 70% if not for the way I was raised. 

With nothing funner to read I poured myself into the missionary books and pretty soon they became my life. Even though I was 15 before I ever left the USA I pretty much grew up immersed in missions. They were familiar. They were normal. They were my dream.

Today I am married to a wonderful man who has the same vision I have. To see every people group on earth hear the wonderful news of Jesus. Together we are praying for Missionaries. Together we are praying for God to open the doors for US to go to Brazil. And I believe the credit goes to the way I was raised. 

So even if my parents were over board. Even if I did have some resentment as a teen...

Today I say with ALL of my heart.
THANK YOU DAD AND MOM!!!!!!!!

Thank you for giving me the love to read.
Thank you for showing me that my life is not about me. 

Thank you for showing me the world around me. China. Africa. South America. 

Thank you for showing me Hero's of the Faith. 

Thank you for giving me a vision. 

Thank you for giving me a heart for the un-reached people of this world. 

*Disclaimer. I am not saying that all books secular or fiction are bad. I don't even think my parents believe that. (I saw the grandkids reading stuff I wasn't allowed to read. hehe) My only point here is that I am so thankful that my parents stuffed me with meat and potatoes instead of cupcakes and jelly beans. They are kinda like the modern day health food nuts who instead of limited the sugar to holidays and weekends, cut it out all together. I know kids who've never tasted cotton candy or a pink cupcake. It's pretty much the same. 

It's 2 in the morning and I can't sleep... so bear with me on this post....

May, June and half of July have come and gone so fast it seems I hardly saw them, and yet so much was packed into them it seems like half a year.

We started off May with a trip to Wisconsin for Doug's sister's wedding. Congratulations to Aaron and Joyce Stewert!

The day after the wedding we were able to spend some time with my side of the family. First time I had gotten to see any of my siblings or my parents in over a year. It was wonderful to connect with all of them again even though the time was short. 

In June Doug and I went back to KY to spend a weekend with our church family there. Monday morning after a lovely visit Doug headed back to PA to get back to work. The kids and I stayed in KY at a friends house. Wednesday my friend and my Mother-in-law gave me a ride to the Gallilean Home in Liberty KY where I met up with a friend who was to give me a ride to Wisconsin. Thursday morning we hit the road. Praise be to God we all survived, but I don't really EVER want to ride for 17 hours in the car again... especially not with a 3 year old and a 16 month old :-D 

You may be wondering why the kid and I were headed for wisconsin again so soon after the wedding. Well, here it is! 

Each summer my friend Angie Conjurske hosts a beautiful camp called "Camp of Hope" for girls 12 and up. It's a free camp, a fun camp, a heart searching camp and an amazing camp! It's not actually "camp" at all as we get to stay in a wonderful place that used to be a spa. Very comfortable beds and hot showers ;-) Anyway... since she started the camp 4 years ago I've volunteered there. I didn't make it last year and didn't expect to go this year either. Well one evening my husband and I were talking and he told me "I think you should take the kids and go to camp this year" so it was settled! I was going! 

My "job" at camp is to make all the girls play ridiculous games and have lots of fun. Fill up the free time and keep people out of trouble. But we had tons of of serious time as well. I can't even tell you how much I enjoyed the fellowship. So many godly young women in one place and such wonderful times of prayer. Anyhow here is a couple pictures. The first is a group pic of everyone at camp. The second is a picture of the staff. 

After two and a half weeks without our dear Daddy and Hubby he finally joined us in Wisconsin! We were so happy to see him! That was the longest that the children or I have been away from him. 

On July 4th we had another wedding to attend. Doug's childhood best friend, Bobby Kulp was getting married! 

Congrats Robert and Sarah! 

July 5th we got on the road and headed back to PA. This time we drove through the night so the babies would sleep. They were so tired from all the traveling and visiting we did that they slept 14 hours straite in the car! 

Poor Doug was so sick when he got to Wisconsin that he was taking Tylenol to make it through the wedding ceremony (he was a groomsman.) Still sick as a dog when we traveled home. After we arrived home he lay on the couch for a whole week before he finally got back to work yesterday. 

We are Praising God that he is finally back on his feet. 

What about Brazil? Still waiting. Still praying for God to provide and still hoping to go this year. 

Goodnight (morning) you all ;-) 

Pictures fromthe NY and DC trip

Jubilee 

                                                                         Bubby

 Family selfie in the subway

CHINA TOWN!!!

A big church in downtown DC

We spent SO many hours in the car

Yay for getting our visas!

 Getting around in the subway

Longest escalator EVER

We found an awesome Indian Buffet for lunch and had some AMAZING food. I asked the waiter if they sold any tea and he said no. He asked what I was looking for and I described the tea that I had when I was in India. He again said they didn't sell such a thing, but about 10 minutes later he came out with a cup and it was so good! brought back warm memories. Then we went to this small Indian shop and I bought a skirt.

 Walked down and saw all the boats

And some parking armor. lol

And saw that people are not the only ones living in the city 

Jubilee fell to sleep riding on Daddy's back;-)

Time for Icecream:-D

Keeping Jubi happy in the car

In NY we visited with Doug's Cousin, her husband and their two babies. Here is their Daughter Anastasia and Ryan. They are just a couple weeks apart in age.

Food and fellowship

Sweet little Ana

Bub

Jubilee begged to ride the Carousel and then when we went up there she was to afraid to go on the horses so I rode with her on the bench. 

Ana and her brother Elliot riding in the stroller

Truffles for the drive home ;-)

Jubilee loves her daddy to tickle her. 

  A few weeks ago I had never been to Pennsylvania. Today, I am sitting in my new “home” which is parked in PA. It’s a long story. Maybe I should back up a little. Where do I begin?

  Ever since Doug and I have known each other we have talked about missions together. Before we had children, before we were married, before we were even engaged we dreamed about working in South America. On our wedding day we had big dreams and imaginations of moving to Brazil within a year, but God had different plans. By the time we reached our first anniversary we had a 6 week old baby girl and plans to move to Kentucky.  On Nov. 3rd 2012 we arrived in KY with no house and no job… just us with our 9 month old baby girl and a strong belief that God was guiding us. (We stayed temporarily with Doug’s parents.)

  Fast forward 2 years and a little more.

  We now have two children. We have moved 4 times. Doug has worked as many jobs. We have had a couple car accidents. It’s a miracle from above that we are all still alive. We have become members of a wonderful little church in eastern KY. We have made amazing friends who have become like family. KY has become “home”. We are talking about Brazil again. We are making plans for Brazil. God has been teaching us to TRUST him. Over, and over, and over. Again, and again.

  So, it’s Feb/March 2015. Doug’s current job of working as a waiter at Bob Evans isn’t going well anymore. His boss made a new rule that no one can work more than 25 hours per week. (I blame Obama care for that.) Yet they still want him to work 5 days a week (just 4 or 5 hours at a time.) with a 40 minute drive to work each way, it’s just not cutting it anymore. So for the trillionth time in the last few years we are job hunting AGAIN! The economy in eastern KY is dying a little more each year and work is hard to come by.

     In the end of 2014 we got passports for our whole family. Now we are wanting to get Visas.  In our jurisdiction they no longer do mail in passports, so we have to drive to Washington DC to get them. Doug was only scheduled for one day in a whole week so he took that day off and we decided to take a road trip right away instead of waiting until he had a new job and couldn’t take the time off. Since we were driving ALL THE WAY to DC we decided to visit Doug’s brother who lives in PA and since we were going all the way to PA and we might as well go to NY also and visit a cousin of his who lives there.  Oh and stop in West Virginia on our way home and pick up the motorhome we had bought the week before. (That is another story!)

   The trip was wonderful. We spent the day in DC riding the underground subway (a first for all of us.) and enjoying city life. We went to the Brazilian consulate and applied for our visas without any trouble. We were told that unless there was any issue we should receive them in the mail within 10 business days. Then we went on to NY. What we didn’t realize was that Doug’s brother Phil lives on the boarder of PA just a few miles from Maryland. His cousin in NY lives on the far other side a few miles from Canada… not exactly neighbors after all. It was worth the LONG drive though. We had a wonderful time with these wonderful people.

After a day and a half with them we drove back down to PA and spent a couple days with Doug’s brother Phil and his family. While we were there Phil’s boss offered Doug a full time job starting immediately. Doug told him that we were making plans to leave the country and it could be within a few months’ time but he said, “no problem, you’re hired anyway”.

After a nice visit  we headed back to KY taking this young man with us. :-D

His parents graciously allowed him to come and help us with the move into our motorhome. Back in KY we got busy, sorting, packing, selling, cleaning and trying to get moved into our motorhome. We had just a week and a half so Dean (Bryan) could get home in time for school to start again. We prayed, thought, prayed some more, talked with our pastor and prayed some more. Finally we made the decision to come to PA. So on April 6th (well actually it was REALLY early April 7th by the time we got in.) we arrived at our new home.

Doug won’t say we moved to PA he says “we temporarily re-located for work”. It’s still in our plan to go to Brazil as soon as God opens the doors. We like to dream and make goals and time areas, but as we have learned in the last 4 years, God’s ways are not our ways. We really don’t know when it will be.

Anyway, now you know how I ended up in PA. Oh and you should know we got our visas!!!! They were in the mailbox the day we got home from our trip. Thank you God.

Maybe I will post more pictures soon:-D 

 

  

  

I've started many blogs and never been good at keeping up. Also never figured out how to navigate my way around. I'm trying... AGAIN. This post is just me learning how to do it :-D

I am actually a little confused right now, why I had such a hard time doing pictures before. Has blogger upgaded and gotten easier in the last year? 

My little buddy :-D 

Well maybe in the near future my life will become more exciting and I will blog to keep you updated on our journey. we shall see. :-D One day at a time.