Thanksgiving Day 5 years ago God blessed us with our first daughter, Rebecca Grace. Born at 27 weeks, weighing 2 lbs. 0.8 oz., Becca’s first few months were filled with lots of unknowns and blessed with many prayers of the saints for her life.

The first Sunday of this month Becca was baptized. It’s been a blessing for us to see the Spirit’s work in her life. We praise God for claiming her as His child. Becca was very excited about her baptism. She kept telling us it was the best day of her life. We gave her a cross to celebrate her baptism.  (The photo on the right is of Becca and our pastor.)

The first day of this month Becca got to start her birthday countdown calendar. Each day she opened a window and got to do something special: small gifts, swimming (several different days), special snacks, special games, and surprise outings such as Burger King, two nights in a hotel, a scavenger hunt, making cookies, and so on.

This year we’ve seen Becca grow in her leadership as she includes her siblings in playtimes. We love watching and listening to them play together … even Anna gets included when possible. One of the wonderful benefits of living overseas in our situation is that Becca’s main playmates are her siblings. We enjoyed seeing Becca and Isaiah grow closer together because of this. We’re praying that the Lord will continue to allow us to cultivate this gift.

We celebrated Becca’s birthday by having our entire EMU Cambodia team over on Becca’s birthday (Nov. 26th). The party  was a little overwhelming for Becca. Tonight we plan to have a family-only party.  (Our team is down from Ratanakiri to celebrate Thanksgiving.)

In Becca, God has given us a special, living reminder of how much we have to be grateful for.

Two Saturdays ago we took a family trip to the market. Josh usually goes alone, since it’s rather hard to manage the kids, especially with all the attention they attract. Our helper showed up unexpectedly that Saturday (said she missed us after her 3-day holiday). So Yayyi went with us to the market and ended up being a great help with Isaiah — and it allowed me to take some pictures.

I had Anna secure in a front carrier, but  Isaiah got carried off a few times. He was happy when some ladies sat him down and gave him fruit. (All the while I’m thinking my kid is going to get sick.) Overall Isaiah didn’t really enjoy the market: he disliked the mud (our feet got very muddy) and all the people reaching for him.

We were really proud of how well Becca did. She was very interested in what was going on and didn’t ask to leave. She even bought some hair clips.

We buy most of our food at the market – chicken, eggs, veggies, and fruit. We do however go to the local supermarket for a few things including popcorn kernels for our nightly 8:30 popcorn snack. 🙂

Maybe it’s Cambodia, maybe it’s a third child thing, but the months seems to fly by with Anna Grace. Can she really be 7 months already?! Our Smiles is a mover – she’s constantly on the go and is now up rocking on her hands and knees, getting ready to crawl.

Anna loves being with her siblings. This week all three of them have been playing together. We love watching this.

One of Anna’s new tricks is scrunching up her face and sniffing repeatedly. It’s adorable. Perhaps she’s trying to imitate a Khmer kiss.

We thank God for the gift of Anna Grace. For blessing us with a third child.  And we’re grateful for the excellent health and sweet spirit He’s given her. We pray that she will grow to know and love Jesus.

Josh and I were laughing at how different our three children look around this same age. We’re guessing the next one will look Asian, since we’re often asked if I’m Khmer or Asian.

Tuesday marked the beginning of our 5th month in Cambodia. Does it seem like a long time? Yes and no. Sometimes it feels like we’ve just arrived. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been here for a long time. Maybe this has something to do with our loss of time. While people in the States are enjoying fall, we’re still in summer. When we see pictures of people in long sleeves my first response is to wonder what’s wrong with them – why would you want to wear longs sleeves in the summer…oh, oops…it’s not summer over there.

People have told us that our family looks so happy – we look as though we belong. The truth is, though we’re not always smiling and on Cloud Nine, we are typically very happy and content because we do belong in Cambodia. Maybe it’s because we’re finally home. We’ve spent all our lives studying and preparing for this calling. When we finished our studies, we spent a year traveling for partnership development. Now we’re home. We’re finally where we’ve been preparing to be all these years – we’re in our home – in Cambodia.

One of my prayers for our family was that we would embrace Cambodia as our home. The Lord has blessed us in many ways with answering this request. My heart rejoiced the night Josh told me he felt Cambodia was home and that there really wasn’t another place he thought of as our home. We thank God for giving us this great gift.

Last Wednesday was Coronation Day in Cambodia. Since Cambodia is our home, I decided we’d better celebrate. We had our own coronation at home. Isaiah and Becca were crowned King and Queen of Cambodia. It was quite the exciting event. We even had a spoonful of ice cream after supper (and goldfish, and a piece of candy, and cookies and banana bread).

If you’ve ever wondered why most of our pictures are taken at home…we do get out, but it’s hard to watch three kids and take pictures. 🙂