2025(6) Faith Leap - Chapter 14: Eating the Elephant (Bite 3)

 2025(6) Faith Leap - Chapter 14: Eating the Elephant (Bite 3)

All the feels for Enoch and his wife this week: his city being taken up into heaven and leaving his son behind in order that the human race might be perpetuated, and the Savior born (through Noah). I had a good moment of mourning as I processed the extension of our trip equating to a full month longer to wait to see CJ again. But, it is okay. He is doing SO awesome! He has a really full semester of difficult classes, preparing for an AP test, volunteering at the Capital, regular temple visits, debate tournaments, designing and building his own 3D printer, socializing, and dating - and he is managing it all so well! We are so proud of him! And shout out for the many moms and friends who are keeping an eye out for him and sending me pictures of what he is up to. I love every update. 💖

Highlights

• We are grateful for frogs, service opportunities, and the bashfulness of scorpions
• We look forward to thick grass, slow cookers, thin, flat floss, and costumes at home
• Our first youth activity was a success!
• How important is it to be able to speak the same language in a marriage? Also, we are trying to be more publicly affectionate in ours 🥰
• Richard received a raise - we are so grateful
• We connected with another family whose story is very similar to ours! Maybe God is hastening His work by calling families in mini missions? If the Spirit is prompting you to do it, leap! You won’t regret it! 

Prayer Requests

• This one is a little vulnerable for me. But our exiting Branch President’s final words to us on Sunday were an invitation to be willing to share our struggles with one another so that we can be blessed by exercising collective faith. So here we go: will you pray for my vision? I have occasional difficulties - likely related to my chronic health problems, and my eyes have been bothering me lately. 🙏

Details:

With this post, I will be all caught up. (Whew!) This last post in the series will largely be a few more things that we are grateful for (and maybe a few that we are not 😜)

Gotta Catch Them All

Our children's favorite past-time has become catching frogs in the tiny pond behind our house (if you can even call it a pond). They have become quite skilled in their technique - catching up to 40 at a time (and filling their bucket - figuratively, and literally). According to our animal identification app, these are Taurus frogs - which were originally only found in Turkey, and are considered endangered. But don't worry - the kids are very careful to avoid the increasing number of eggs, and they are strictly catch and release (no frog has been allowed to become lunch 😄🐸🍴). We are grateful for frogs.

Joyful Service

Our family joined the missionaries on a service project for a family in our Branch who are working to improve and rearrange their home to help them stay warmer in the winter, and get running water into their kitchen. We are grateful for the luxuries we've enjoyed (and taken for granted), and grateful for this family's example and the opportunity to see a different way to see how people live and how things are done.

Wake up Call

While we are pretty used to daddy-long-leg-type spiders tucked away in the corners of the house, it was a first (and hopefully last) to discover a scorpion sharing the bathroom with me one morning. I startled Richard awake so that he could dispose of it. We are grateful that a quick google search identified that the Mingrelian Scorpion is non-aggressive and causes a sting that is less painful than a bee-sting. So, at least if we see one again, it will be less frightening than this first encounter.

When we get home

A few more things we look forward to enjoying again when we return home: thick green grass - some yards here have grass, but it is different; our slow cooker - I made bone broth this week, but it was rather nerve wracking to leave the gas stove going for hours at a time; and flat dental floss - we have tried several brands of floss that have been thin, round, and painful to have wrapped around your fingers. Gratefully, this week we found a some Oral B and it is flat! It is thicker than what we have at home, but heavenly by comparison to the other brands here (pictured wrapped around my finger)

Beware the Ninjas

I am grateful for children's ability to find a way. My children have always loved dressing up in costumes. Obviously, costumes were not something I made space for in the suitcases. Yet, they have recently been using our cold weather layers to ambush us as ninjas in the dark 😂

First Youth Activity

I am happy to report that our first youth activity was a success! We had 3 families who were able to attend making 8 youth in total (which was actually a great size for our first time). It is such a huge challenge to plan activities and lead discussions/debriefs in multiple languages, and with youth who are painfully shy (which accurately described half of the youth in attendance). We did some get-to-know-you activities: 

• "Stand up if..." allowed us to get to know some interesting things about each other without much need for talking - though, we did invite people to share more information, if they wanted. For example, "Stand up if you live in a different country than you were born in?" And then some people shared where they were born
• "Silent Order" challenged everyone to stand in order (of age and then birthday month) without speaking. Again, we learned a little more about each other, but it eliminated the language barrier. This game led to a great debrief - where even some of the youth participated.
• "Name Face-off" helped us reinforce everyone's names. We divided the group into 2 teams, with 2 people holding up a blanket between the teams. Then each team sent a teammate up to face the blanket. When the blanket is dropped, the first of the two to say the other person's name earns a point for their team. We would occasionally mix up the teams. This was amazingly simple, yet effective.
• We also watched a short intro to the Children and Youth Program. I shared my simple goals and challenged the youth (and adults) to set goals of their own. 

Everyone participated in the activities - and seemed to have a good time. The discussions were pretty lopsided toward the adults. However, reports afterward were that everyone had a great time and are looking forward to coming again, and the missionaries are excited to bring more of their investigator families. Perhaps what the youth needed most was to have the adults model for them what a debrief is like? Hopefully next time they will feel more comfortable speaking up themselves.

Love is a language

Speaking of language barriers: we have a friend named Temo who occasionally joins us at branch activities. (He has a big, bright smile that he uses liberally - which is extra noticeable because that is atypical of male Georgians.) Temo only speaks Georgian. He has a girlfriend who lives in Brussels. She is from the Congo, and only speaks French. When they speak to each other, it is in very broken English as they are both at the beginning of their journey of trying to learn it. Temo is hoping they will be able to be married soon. This is blows me away. There were a few things that were non-negotiables for me when considering marriage. (Okay, granted, surrounded by English speakers, speaking the same language probably didn't consciously make my list, but I am sure it would have if I had been faced with it). I guess when you grow up surrounded by an wide array of languages, and your language is a small minority among them, your perspective is different. I admire their commitment to making it work.

Our Comic-Tragic Romance

We are 1 of 4 married couples in the Branch. In two of the couples, the husband attends church gatherings but the wife does not yet. The last couple are newly-weds who are still learning how to work through disagreements without seeking public perspective. The majority of our Branch are single adults who are either divorced or who have never been married - several of whom have expressed directly to us that they are afraid to get married because of so many of their friends who are going through divorce. It is heartbreaking. One of the things that our Mission Presidency invited us to consider is how we can offer hope for happiness in marriage through our example. They specifically encouraged us to hold hands. I remember thinking, "You don't have to ask me twice! I love holding hands! Richard is already in the habit of opening my door, kissing me goodbye, not bothering to make an issue/fight over trivial things, etc - it will be easy to demonstrate how happy we are!" Turns out, it is seemingly impossible. 😜 We are constantly pulled in different directions, we can't sit together during any church meetings, we always have items to carry into/out of the building...when he was Bishop, we at least kissed goodbye every week because I went home with the kids while he stayed for meetings. Now, we travel together (and the kids and I find ways to stay busy at the church building for 3+ hours) - so we don't even do that!😘 It is comically tragic how difficult it is to show that we love each other! 😂 (Richard commenting here, I am committing myself to making awkwardly obvious displays of affection from now on - challenge accepted!)

Unexpected Generosity

Richard received an unexpected, greatly appreciated blessing from his thoughtful and generous boss at Ever Accountable. He told Richard that, because this job does not include benefits, he didn't think that he was paying Richard enough - and he insisted on giving him an hourly raise! It is such a gift to work for a company that is all-around so easy to recommend: a great product designed to fill important needs, at an affordable price, run by people of integrity.

Families Hastening the Gathering

Get this: we had the privilege this week to connect with a homeschooling couple that sold their house at the same time that we did, and are preparing to move their family to his mission (Dominican Republic) because God told them to do it 🤯Can you imagine? If there are two of us, how many other families are being called by the Spirit of God to serve these mini-missions?!? Is this part of how God is hastening his work?! It is such a privilege to have a front row seat to the amazing work that our young and senior missionaries do - both equally indispensable! And we are also seeing doors that can open to family demographics when there is a family in the area to befriend them. It would make sense that The Church cannot easily call families to serve official missions - the expense to The Church, on top of family commitments like jobs, schoolwork, etc, would make us pretty resistant to that kind of a program. But that doesn't mean that God cannot call family missionaries on His own. In fact, because there is so much stability to sacrifice for so many people involved, I think that this is the best way for it to be accomplished: by individual testimony through the Spirit. Perhaps, as we draw closer to the Savior's return, my family's experience will become more and more common? Honestly, I wish that every family could experience the gift we've been given. Here is my Clarion Call: if you are feeling like God is prompting you to sell your home and move to a new place for a time, to participate in loving, serving, and bringing His gospel to His children, DO IT! My experience has been that you will be blessed beyond measure; He will walk with you every step of the way; You will grow, as individuals and as a family, in ways you never knew you needed; You will experience light, peace, hope, faith, love, revelation, and spiritual gifts like you've never experienced before; you will not regret it!