planning meetings

This will be brief and I will hope to fill in some major gaps soon, but until then, suffice it to say that our yearly review/planning meetings went well. We were at a really nice conference center http://www.immanuel.cz/en/ where we slept in the room that is pictured on the top right of the introduction page.

Always a time of fun for all, we worked really hard and accomplished goal setting and plans that we pray will impact reaching this place for Christ. Pray for us as we as ReachGlobal and we Becker's seek to glorify God and be effective in our outreach, encouragement and drawing others to Christs' Kingdom.

One big job that I have not gotten done, is to finish the online course that Tom was leading, "Getting Things Done". Catchy title, hmmm? I have finished most of the book and tomorrow Tom and I will concentrate on setting me up in this system. Rachel will be having an "independent work" school day.

After the grocery shopping in the morning, I hope to be hard at work with Tom, pulling together my "buckets" and organizing my somewhat organized e-mail. I am also preparing to move from a "paper" system to a more "electronic" system of to do lists and general calendar work. This is a BIG change for me. Pray for me as I enter the "valley of despair" as it is called by planning experts. That simply means that since my learning curve is great going from a known system (paper) to a new system that has the potential to make me not have so many gaps, and so is a better system (electronic), but the learning curve is such that I will probably drop behind and under my effectiveness before I become as proficient and, hopefully, better at the new one.

Thanks for your encouragement in this!

Meanwhile, kids start back at school tomorrow! Pray for them as this weekend was busy, but fun and school is just plain busy! (smile!)

Family update

It is a fairly quiet Friday. As it is a Czech holiday week, we didn't have school today making the day feel like a Saturday or a holiday!

The three eldest are at a school retreat and return tomorrow evening. The two youngest are home, but the house is much quieter and calmer with only two kids! I remember the days when I was overwhelmed with two kids. Funny how that has changed.

We are fighting this flu/cold thing and I have been at it for a week now. Last Thursday I woke with no voice and by Sunday I was able to speak a few octaves lower than usual. My voice is back to normal now, just congested. Matt and Nathanael are congested in the same way.

Today is a beautiful sunny day. Believe it or not, Czech can be so cloudy and depressing in the fall/winter. I appreciate the sun a lot!

My niece, Alison, was here from England for the last week. What a joy to have her. She was kind enough to take family pictures for us and so, thanks to her, we have some good pictures for Christmas cards.

What a joy to sit in bed and have extended quiet times the last two mornings. I am reading Ezekiel right now and as I try to imagine those angels with wheels and imagine what he experienced and saw, I am in awe of God who has these creatures and yet we can't always see them. What a powerful God!

As Ezekiel was compelled to speak what he was seeing I think of how brave he was. Yes I know, he was compelled to do so, however I am impressed with his bravery as he didn't know what would happen to him as a result of speaking up. May I be so bold and compelled to speak up for Him, too!

remaking, renewing

I am in the middle of a project, making pants for Nathanael using a old single sheet and flannel pajama pants that Matthew wore when he was about 8 or 10 years old. The sheet, navy blue, and the plaid, blue and black, look nice together. As I find myself not using flat sheets here, but the duvet and cover "thing" that our Czech friends use, I had 3 single flat navy blue sheets that were good fabric going to waste. More correctly, going into the stash I keep of curtains from former housing and clothes that the kids outgrow, clothes with holes here or there, etc.

I am particularly proud of these lined pants as I was able to cut out two pair of pants for Nate out of one sheet! Love little people! He likes them because I am happy with them and he gets excited about things Mom is excited about. Besides that, it snowed today for the first time and I am happy he has some warm clothes to wear.

Got me thinking how like God that is, remaking and renewing old things to new. Mind you, He does that on a MUCH grander scale than I can. Thank you God for taking old and/or no longer "modern" people and working on them and continually renewing us and remaking us into Your image. What a great thought!

2 Corinthians 4:16 says, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day."

correction to sidebar title

The book, Managers of Their Homes is found on the website for Titus2. There is a link if you click on the sidebar down on the left side of my site.

Manager of her....piles....boxes....messes???

I am working through my annual organization for homeschool book called Managers of Their Homes by Steve and Teri Maxwell (see link on sidebar) It is truly a wonderful tool and does help me every year with the home school situation I am in on any given year.

This year, however, I am feeling totally and completely incapable of pulling all these different piles, boxes and schedules together. I have, for the last three days, been working off the pencil copy of my schedule, trying to do school with Rachel without 1/4 of my books. Yes, that is frustrating at best!

Thing is, I think that we will settle into this routine, just in time for our books to arrive and again change things up! So, I guess in the meantime I will deal with: a three year old determined to "do school" by singing at the top of his lungs while I am reading with Rachel; the phone ringing just as we get going; a certain unnamed 3 year old his pants just after being asked if he needs to use the bathroom and it running on the chair and floor and me having to take him and clean him up while yelling behind me, "just go on to your independent work, sweetie!"

These, I know, are the good old days. Just wish I had that perspective when I am in the middle of the chaos of moving in, needing to sew curtains instead of draping them over windows, needing to unpack the rest of the bedding, games and craft items so that I have them a bit organized for Thursday's start of Klub in Vlasim. ***breathe deeply***

Thank God that He is hear in the chaos, piles and boxes with me and is carrying me.

***A funny note: I had this blog prepared a few days ago while waiting to use Matt's camera for some pictures of the piles I have around here. He took the pix and uploaded them to a computer that is on its last legs. In the meantime, for my birthday I received my own new laptop. So, Tom lovingly transferred all my pictures, documents and bookmarks, but somehow the pictures didn't make the transfer. So, here is the blog without the pictures! ***

God-sightings

Amazing ways God has worked in our lives in the last few months:

safety in MANY kilometers of travel to the US, Austria, Great Britain, Germany, Slovakia and Poland.
selling our house for us in 2 weeks!
doing it while Tom was gone to the US and helping me with my "real estate" Czech.
given us a wonderful, Christian realtor.
spoken to and through us to people we know and don't know.
allowing the 3 eldest kids to attend a Christian International school.
for teammates on the Prague City Team who helped pack and unpack us in the days we had between camp and conference in Poland.
for the 105 campers who attended our Family English Camp
good dr.s to help us when we were ill and
a new pediatrician here in Prague who diagnosed Nate properly (salmonella)
**please pray that he can fight this off...he is acting normal**
nice neighbors on either side of our new house (Czech on one side and Brit married to a Hungarian on the other)


We stand amazed at all God has done and want to praise Him for His amazing timing and leading and moving. May we continue to follow His lead in our lives and go where He takes us.

Enjoy a few pictures of the new house. Come and visit! There is room for visitors and we enjoy company.

brief update from Pruhonice

Obviously much has happened since my last update and I hope to do a brief sketch of how God has worked soon. For now, just suffice it to say that we are settling in to our new home...actually here for a total of 8 days now!

Nathanael has salmonella so that means he can't be enrolled in the preschool around the corner until he is healthy or later. Praying it doesn't spread to others and working hard at keeping things clean around here.

Just celebrated Matt's 15th birthday with 5 friends overnight. Party included pizza, cake and ice cream, a walk to the nearby playground and playing games, coming home to play Risk, play Game Cube and watch Rambo. This a.m. they went to the basement to play "assassin". The guys left after lunch.

Tomorrow we are planning on going to the house in Vlasim to mow, do a cursory cleaning as the future owners are planning on replacing the rest of the windows and radiators which we didn't do. We will mow and dig up some of the plants in the yard which I want to bring along. Does anyone have experience with planting rhubarb in a pot? Our landlord here isn't sure they want me to transplant it here.

Well, thanks for praying. Keep praying for our health, physical and mental and spiritual.