We’re in the modern land of America, and the Internet is down where we’re staying. Tune back in Saturday morning to see this week’s blog!

This week we celebrated Clara’s 8th birthday! We started out her celebrations by having a cousins party with her 9 Sutter cousins the Friday before. It was our first time to see them in 5 years ,and everyone had fun playing games outside together.

One of the things we’ve noticed about Clara since being in the States is how well she interact with older people. I was impressed with how kind she was to my grandma and by the fact that Clara wanted to visit her again. Clara seems to find the grandmotherly type ladies at every church we go to and endears herself to them, as though they were her own family. She loves playing with kids her age, but she also loves to talk with adults. It’s been fun to watch her blossom in this way. Thankful for our Clara!

On Clara’s birthday we went to the Spartanburg Children’s Museum with Grandma Jensen and then had a picnic at Cleveland Park and spent the rest of the afternoon there. The weather was perfect!

Saturday Feb 24th we drove to Alexandria, VA to spend time with Engleside Baptist Church. Pastor Ben greeted us at the van and said everyone’s name as each exited the van. He had been practicing for a week to get ready. It was a great place to start our adventure visiting churches. Pastor Ben showed the kids his chickens and then joined them playing a Khmer stone tossing game they taught him and his daughters. We presented at the church, Josh preached, and Monday morning Josh did an elementary school chapel.

Monday the 25th we visited The National Museum of the United States Army. It was a great place for our family and had things to keep all age ranges occupied. The docents in each exhibit room were amazing – each being a former solider. A very educational, very enjoyable place for our kids. No one was asking to leave when we finally had to go.

From the museum we went to visit the Gustafsons. They kindly hosted us for two nights so we could visit with their family. Tuesday we visited Mount Vernon. It was another great fit for our family. It was a little cold and rained in the afternoon, but we were able to do most of the outdoor things before the rain hit and the indoor museums were excellent.

Wednesday we traveled down to Burlington, NC to be with Beacon Baptist Church. We enjoyed fellowship with our friends there, and it was great to reconnect with church people. The younger girls are especially good at being friendly with grandmotherly type ladies. It’s been great to watch.

On February 8th, we left our home in Oyadao and started on our 6-month journey to the States and back. We spent the first night at the Crowleys so we could get an early start the next day. Friday morning we left at 6:30 and drove to Phnom Penh for 4 days of errands and packing up to fly.

The week before we left home, we were invited to two meals to say goodbye to our friends. Josh’s translators had a dinner for him at our pastor’s house on Saturday night. Monday night my ladies had a meal for us at one of their homes. We were touched by their kindness to us.

Monday morning (12th) we went swimming with our friends the Nhoemvans. Funny to think we would be swimming on Monday in Cambodia and freezing on Wednesday in Pennsylvania. We were able to visit with friends at the guesthouse and have our SK boys over for dinner.

We got to the airport Tuesday around 10pm. It took a little while to get to our gate – and our flight didn’t leave until 12:45am. Thankfully everyone stayed awake and happy. Everyone was excited to be on the plane, and the kids didn’t settle to sleep for a while. By the time we got to our gate in Korea, there wasn’t much wait time until we boarded our 14-hour flight. It was long, but everyone did pretty well.

When we arrived in the US (DC), we had a great passport control officer who was a Christian and very friendly. By the time we arrived at my parents (most of us slept during the drive), Micah was crying. Ezra was crying. Maria was crying. It was a rough “landing.”

There was snow on the ground, so once the boys recovered they went sledding. We all went to bed early and most of us slept until early morning. A week later, most everyone (except Maria) was used to our new time zone!

Isaiah has been enjoying hanging out with my dad.

We’ve been recovering from jet-lag while at my parents. Everyone except the two little boys have their own beds, and they have sleeping bags of their own. My mom has had many activities to keep everyone busy: sewing, yarn dolls, corn-shuck people, painting, making a corn hole – complete with the bags – and much more.

I made a separate visit to my grandma. Clara wanted to go along to see her again. I was blessed to see how considerate Clara was to her great grandma and the heart Clara had for her.

We finished out our time in PA with an evening with the Copelands – the couple who delivered Micah at the guest home in Cambodia. It was a delight to spend time with this couple. The Copelands served in Cambodia for many years before returning to the States about three years ago to take care of their aging parents.

Today is Maria’s 7-month birthday! She’s done a lot of traveling in the last month: traveling back to her birth-room (top picture), leaving her birth country, and flying to her passport country. Maria was a bit rough during the plane ride – she gave up sucking her thumb for some reason and ended up nursing a lot.

Maria loves people – she smiles lots. She’s started eating solids a bit, but prefers to feed herself, which is hard at this stage. After a week of being in the States, Maria is still not on the right time zone. She tends to want to play at 1am or 3am for quite a while. But she’s not sleeping much during the day either, so I’m kinda stumped on how to completely switch her over. Yesterday she didn’t want to play until 3am, so we’re making progress.

Maria is fast at army crawling and fast at grabbing things – watch out. Love this little girl of ours.

After months of praying for snow (and a rather gloomy forecast of no snow this year in PA), we arrived in the US the day after it snowed in PA, and there was still snow on the ground! We actually time our furlough and our starting location in hopes of giving the kids a chance to experience snow. The next Friday it snowed again. Our kids were delighted to be able to sled and play in the snow. The cold didn’t seem to phase the little boys. We’re thankful for this gift from God.

Last Friday we had our school graduation program.

Eighth Grade – Rebecca Grace Jensen

Sixth Grade – Isaiah Emil Jensen

Fourth Grade – Anna Grace Jensen

Second Grade – Clara Grace Jensen

Kindergarden – Ezra Emmett Jensen

Preschool – Micah Ebenezer Jensen

Our evening included a meal with hotdogs with mac& cheese. A program – with a piano recital and recitations by each of the kids. Everyone did so well. It was the first time Ezra had the courage to recite. Micah also did a great job. After the presentations we gave out certificates and diplomas, did sparklers outside, and ended with desserts while watching an end-of -the-year slideshow.

RECITATIONS

Micah – Poem – 1-2-3-4-5 Once I Caught a Fish Alive

Ezra – Poem – The Lizard – by John Gardner

Clara – Poem – Foreign Lands by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Anna – Poem – The Tyger by William Blake

Isaiah – Poem – The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron

Becca – Recitation – “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” by William Shakespeare

So proud of our students!

What a personality change we see in Maria compared to her first few months. We can now say very confidently that she is a very happy girl. She loves interacting with her siblings. Ezra has a special talent at making Maria laugh. She loves laughing at her two very silly big brothers! (Maria is pictured above with my dress.)

Maria is now army crawling and makes it quite far – I’ve given up trying to keep her on a large mat. She has also started eating oatmeal (I grind the raw oats up), and we give her large carrots to gnaw on. (My milk supply dipped really low last month – probably from all the things I can’t eat! – but since then we solved the problem by buying beef which I eat twice a day (like taking medicine :-). Thankful for our little girl and all the joy she brings our family!

We had a great visit with the Burkes last week. So nice to see them after three years. The kids enjoyed playing card games, and we enjoyed catching up.

A big part of getting ready to travel to American is trying to prepare ourselves for living with Americans who are not used to our ways. This is difficult when we don’t really know what people do in America (besides normal manners). I am often telling our kids, “I don’t know what people do in America anymore!” One of our kids is working on a family furlough handbook. There are a lot of family jokes in the book that wouldn’t make sense to anyone but us. Today I’m including the At Table section of the book.

At Table

A child should always sit up straight,

And never bang his spoon and plate,

And keep her head above the table,

At least as far as she is able.

Dinner is the best time to display your manners, consideration, and refinement. If you are rude, noisy, and cross, you will not be invited to any dinner parties, and you will have to stay home by yourself and eat burnt green soup.

• Do not put your elbows on the table.
• Do not lie on the table.
• Do not squat in your chair.
• Do not put your head under the table. Do not throw your food out the window.
• Do not jump up and run to a private place every time you need to sneeze.
• Do not put unwanted food on the table – just push it to the side of your bowl.
• Do not throw food under the table unless you are eating over the ground.
• Do not pull on the tablecloth.
• Do not make a big fuss if you find a hair in your food – just quietly pull it out.
• Do not throw food at your siblings.
• Do not climb over the table to kiss people.
• Do not fight when holding your sibling’s hand.
• Do not force people to hold hands while praying if they don’t want to.

Seven kids, ages ranging from 5 months to 14 years. Different personalities. Different virtues. Different vices. All one family. We’re so thankful for our seven children and the ways we’re learning about the love of Jesus through parenting them. It’s fun and full of laughter. It’s exhausting and full of frustrations. It’s the work of planting and reaping. Thanks be to God. (Don’t let the picture deceive you – Micah is smaller than Ezra…it’s just the camera angle that makes him look bigger.)

Every morning at breakfast (oatmeal and eggs) I read one chapter of the Bible with the kids. We’re working through the Bible chronologically – today we read Jeremiah 46. This is our second time through the Bible…it takes a few years. I love learning as I’m reading and explaining.

It’s the beginning of a new year, and we have much to be thankful in 2023 and much to look forward to. Within the first 8 months of this new year we will pack up our house (putting away all our belongings in containers to keep them safe from rats, water, mold, etc); pack bags for our family; fly to the US; visit with extended family, friends, and many churches; drive through over 15 States, pack up lots of boxes to fly back to Cambodia; and then fly home to Cambodia. It’s overwhelming to think about, and as much as we’ll enjoy seeing people, we’ll both be glad when we’re back home here in August. What other job requires people to uproot their family for 6+ months? This is a sacrifice we make and also a gift we get as we work as international missionaries. People often mention how nice it is for us to get such a long “vacation” and they don’t really understand. It’s not a vacation and it comes with joys and struggles. We are excited and we’re not. But in 8.5 months it will all be over, and we’ll be enjoying all the good memories we’ve made as a family and with others. There’s no place like home...and home for us is Cambodia. So thankful God has planted our hearts here.

This week we’re continuing Christmas celebrations with nightly singing. I guess we’re now celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas! Josh and I are trying to take more pictures of ourselves together. Each morning we get up and drink coffee and pray together. We now have two rocking chairs, received from long-time missionaries in Cambodia who no longer need them – one from the Crowleys, and one from the Carsons. We hope we will be as faithful as those two families have been to serve the Lord in Cambodia.

We had our Christmas celebrations on the 26/27. Christmas Eve we had our traditional taco meal; did some singing, while drinking hot chocolate and eating Christmas cookies; and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol.

Christmas morning we had a breakfast of omelettes and sausage, with mocha. Afterwards we sang a little bit and the kids exchanged Christmas gifts. The Crowleys joined us mid-morning for cinnamon rolls and the kids’ performance of the Christmas story. To begin the performance, Josh recited the genealogy from Matthew. We then had lunch (buffalo roast, potatoes, salad, and rolls), dessert, and an afternoon of singing Christmas carols with the Crowleys.

In the afternoon, the older kids and Josh played Catan – a gift we’d given them for Christmas; and I played games with the little boys. We then had dinner and ended the evening with singing and gift-giving to the kids from us. It was a very Merry Christmas!

We ended up delaying our family Christmas celebrations, since there was a wedding right across the street on Christmas Day. The bride was Davi’s cousin, and we’ve known the family since moving to Oyadao. You really can’t understand what having a wedding nearby is like, unless you live here. Weddings are done outside with a loudspeaker. All the ceremony stuff is blasted toward us, so loud that we can’t listen to Christmas music in our own house. The evening meal is a huge party that goes past midnight, with loud dance music and dancers on stage. This was all right across the street from our house, and it was LOUD!

Clara was asked to be a part of the morning wedding tradition of walking from the groom’s house to the bride’s house. (It’s just acted out, since the groom lived 45 minutes away!) Clara had to be ready before 5am to have her make-up done. (Somehow they roped me into having my make-up down too!) After the “walk” – they serve a breakfast of Khmer rice porridge.

I took the girls to the evening party, and we stayed for a little over an hour, leaving before the guest started dancing. Each table needs to be filled with 10 people before food is serve to the individual table. People are constantly coming in for about 2 hours. Thankfully we were seated away from the speakers and the other guests were older people. The music was so loud you really couldn’t talk with anyone. But it was a fun time to get dressed up! The ladies get really dressed up for these meals.

Our church had their Christmas celebrations Saturday evening, Dec 23 – a meal and service; and then Sunday morning, Dec 24, a service and meal. We helped the kids/youth do a Christmas pageant again this year. Becca was assigned the role of Gabriel. The elementary children sang the 10 Commandments to a tune I wrote and the other kids groups sang different songs we’ve put together using verses from the new Bible translation. In the morning, the adults sang a new Christmas song we wrote and then Jesus Kind and Strong (City Alight), which Josh translated for them a few years ago. Josh preached at the morning service.

Christmas is a really fun time for everyone with lots of extra pictures and singing. All our kids enjoyed both times at church. It’s one of the highlights of our church year.

Maria turned 5 months on the 22nd! She is a darling little girl who loves to laugh and interact with people. She is starting to inch forward a little bit more. We love our little Christmas girl!

One of the things we enjoy during Advent is our nightly singing time. This year the four oldest kids accompanied us on the piano. On a typical night we sing 8 songs, but on one night we have a concert included every song that can be played. When we have doubles, the kids decide who gets to play that song for the evening.

Our Christmas Countdown Calendar started 10 days before Christmas. It included crafts, cookie baking and decorating, reading, and other special activities for the season. One yearly tradition is Josh reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Another is the kids making giant gingerbread cookies! We made our wrapping paper this.year, with painting feet and dancing around on the paper – but I didn’t take any pictures.

We introduced some of our Jarai friends to Christmas cookie making. I made cookies with the two ladies I’ve been working with all year on learning to read their own language. And Becca made cookies with our Jarai friend who comes to teach Becca and me Jarai.

The first two weeks of December we were blessed to have several special visitors who came up for the Tampuan Bible dedication. It was a delight to spend two afternoons with the Carson ladies, who came back from Australia to participate in the dedication. We’ve missed this family over the past year, so it was great to catch up with them.

Other friends included the Lambrechts, Crystal, and Mee-Sun. So good to visit with people who are involved in Bible translations in Cambodia and have a heart for giving people God’s Word.

On December 3rd Clara, along with 11 other Jarai church people, was baptized. Thanks be to God. Clara responded to these questions as part of her baptism.

Do you wish to change your heart, abandon your sin, and believe the Lord Jesus, in order to have salvation?

* Yes, I do.

Do you wish to abandon Satan and all evil spirits, as well as all the things they tell us to do?

* Yes, I do.

Do you wish to abandon the pleasures of this world?

* Yes, I do.

Do you wish to abandon all the covetous desires of your flesh?

* Yes, I do.

Do you believe in God the Father?

* Yes, I believe in God the Father.

Do you believe in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who saves mankind from sin?

* Yes, I believe in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

* Yes, believe in the Holy Spirit.

December 1st we had our annual family Christmas decorating party and started our nightly advent singing. Everyone had fun putting their individual ornaments on the tree. Our tree is mostly filled with homemade ornaments. It’s a tree full of memories. After we decorated, we started our Advent singing – each night each family member gets to pick a song to sing – that’s often 8 songs (though our younger ones sometimes fall asleep before it’s their turn).