Last month Rundell and Judi Maree came to visit us for a Sunday. Rundell was the consultant who did the check on Jarai Matthew 1-16 chapters. It was great to spend time with the Marees and learn from them and their experiences. Judi took lots of pictures and shared them with us. She said she knows the missionaries usually don’t have time to take pictures of their ministries and she likes to do that for them. So here’s a few from our normal Sundays…

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Our Sunday begins around 8:30 with Sunday School. There are four groups: men, women, children, and youth. The men and women meet outside, the youth meets in the church building, and the children meet in the old church building. Somewhere around 9:30 or 10 we gathering in the main building for church.

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Twice a month we have a neighborhood Bible Club in the afternoon at our home. This includes games, singing, Bible lesson, and snack. We have a completely new group of kids coming since we got back from our time in the States. It’s been a good change and the group of mostly older elementary girls seems to be attentive.

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Sunday evenings (no pictures) we have a Bible study with a few adults and some children. We sing, Josh teaches a lessons from Firm Foundations, and we pray and then have snacks.

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Last week the Cambodian government asked all religious gatherings (Buddhist, Islam, Christian, etc) to stop until the Covid-19 situation is eased. (Public and private schools have been closed as well.) This means no church or Bible club for the time being. We were told that we can meet in groups of 5-10 people (which is slightly hard for us when our family already equals 7!). We plan to still have our Sunday night Bible study, but we will restrict it to people 13 and older – which will keep our numbers down (it’s around our kids bedtime anyway, so we’ll just let them read in their room).

Life is good!

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Tomorrow Clara turns 4 years old! She’s full of spunk and has been enjoying her birthday month so far. Since we were going to be out of town on her birthday, we celebrated last Saturday.

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One of the highlights of Clara’s Birthday Countdown Calendar was going to the market and buying a dress. She insisted she wanted a white dress, even though I told her they might not have that color. She was delighted to find a white dress at the second shop Josh took her to. I even had to make her cake with her wearing her white dress.

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Clara’s cake request was a bit complicated. She wanted to include everyone that was present at her birthday meal. Thankfully, she said the men could be in a house. Clara made name cards for everyone at her party (she took the idea from A Birthday for Francis).

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For Clara’s birthday meal she requested spaghetti. We made garlic breadsticks too. As you can see, Ezra thinks making breadsticks is dangerous business.

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Clara was pleased with the way her cake turned out – brownie with frosting.

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Two weeks ago, Clara and Anna finished All About Reading – PreLevel. We had an evening party to celebrate and give the girls their certificates. Soon we’ll start Level 1.

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Clara has grown up this year in good ways. She’s full of energy and loves life. She loves books and playing games. She loves clothes and shoes. She loves eating snacks. Every night when I put her to bed, the three bears make a visit to her bed and she has all sorts of things to tell Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear. It’s always funny how honest she is with them about her day and her feelings and whether she was disobedient.

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We’re so thankful that the Lord gave us Clara. Can’t imagine life without her spunk and thankful for how she’s slowly learning self-control and what I’m learning thought discipling her. Our prayer is that she will grow to love Jesus with all her heart, soul, and mind.

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On February 13th, Ezra hit 18 months. Our little man doesn’t sit still often, so it’s hard to take pictures of him, but every once in a while I can snap something of him. He’s much cuter in real life – if you can believe it!

Ezra loves wearing his helmet and going on moto rides. Whenever he knows Josh is leaving or hears him coming back, Era pats his head and motions that he wants to put on his helmet.

Usually Ezra is sporting a bruise somewhere. He bumps his head a lot – but usually recovers quickly. He’s a boy!

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Though Ezra naps well (which helps with home schooling), he doesn’t sleep through the night. For some reason he has chosen 4AM or 4:30AM as his morning wake time. This means Mommy and Ezra have lots of quality time together in the mornings. We take a pictures every morning to send to Uncle Johnny….sometimes other kids think it’s fun to get up early too!

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Though Ezra talks a lot, he doesn’t say a lot of words. He has signs for please, water, all done, and no and he waves bye-bye. He says Mama, ksss (which means yes), look, what’s that, yuck, and wa-wa.

All Ezra siblings get along with him well and think he’s cute – even though he tries to get into all their stuff. He loves playing outside and walking all over the place. He loves books and is a fan of Eric Carle (he started consistently choosing all the Eric Carle books off the shelf). He has his favorite books he brings to us to read.

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So thankful for our little man and all the joy and laughter he brings to our home. Can’t imagine life with our sweet little boy.