Grand Update!

Hello everyone!

Lauren here. We are so sorry that we have not written for half a year! We have been very busy and things have been hectic recently. The last time we wrote was just before Ezra was born. Hey - if you haven't heard yet, Ezra Luke Yoder was born on September 24th, 2016, and he's the love of our life!! ;)

I feel like there are so many things to write about that I don't even know where to begin. It seems as though one thing comes our way, we take a deep breath and deal with it, and then another thing comes shortly after. To start somewhere, we'll begin with the birth of Ezra. I had an unexpected C-section, which made recovery for me a lot longer than we had planned. Thankfully, we had such great care and great doctors at our hospital that everything went very smoothly. Mitch was also able to take that first week off from school and spent his time with Ezra and me, which was simply incredible. All I had energy for was resting so that my body could heal, care for Ezra with the little strength I had, and care for our girls the best I could.  Around November I started feeling 100% again, and we enjoyed a good month of time together once Mitch's school year finished in December.

In the middle of December we headed up to Alaska for Neil's wedding, Mitch's cousin. We got to spend Christmas with family and had a great time relaxing, eating great food, enjoying the snow, and the beautiful mountains. The only small bummer in the beginning of the week was that Ezra got a cold that made him a little more difficult than normal. Stuffed-nosed babies are no fun!! In the middle of the week on Wednesday, we had a BIG bummer. We went skiing with Mitch's family. It was a great day with one of the most incredible views I've ever seen. On the last run of the night, Mitch's ski came off, and he fell hard to the ground, breaking his collarbone. Mitch had to get surgery up in Alaska. We struggled a lot with why this had happened to us. We took 3 flights with an infant to get up to Alaska and had 3 flights back. (Thankfully, Phyllis, Mitch's mom, rearranged her flights so she could fly the first two with us to help out with Ezra. And boy, was she an amazing help.) We desperately needed this break from Nicaragua, and we were so thankful for the opportunity to be with family and to be somewhere we've always wanted to visit. With Mitch's broken collarbone, he wasn't allowed to fully hold Ezra for 6 weeks, and this added a big obstacle to our lives in Nicaragua. Ezra was 3 months old at the time and, of course, still needed lots of attention and care. Without family and friends to help out at all, the job falls completely to us 100% of the time. And now it was even more difficult with Mitch unable to help fully in the evenings after work. Anyway, we got through that difficult time and Mitch's collarbone has been healing well. At 5 weeks he actually got the go-ahead to hold Ezra on his own, and we were so thankful for that leg of the journey to be over. God is faithful and was with us all along and helped me take one day at a time.

We had a breather for a few weeks, but then at the end of January Ezra started to get a bad cold. It was fine at first, and we just watched carefully to make sure it didn't develop further. Once I heard it arrive to his lungs, we called the doctor and had an appointment that morning, Sunday Feb. 5th. Our doctor noted that Ezra seemed really exhausted and gave us medicine and had us use a defibrillator on him several times a day to help with his breathing. The following day, Monday, the 6th, we went to get my parents at the airport because they were going to visit for the week of my birthday (the 12th). The night that we got my parents, Ezra seemed short of breath and needing rest. We talked with our doctor through text message, and he urged us to go to the hospital. We didn't think much of it, as it's common to go to the hospital here in Nicaragua when you're not feeling well. It's not like in the States where you go only for a complete emergency. Anyway, we went and saw a lung specialist. and she told us that Ezra had bronchitis and to continue with the meds that our doctor had recommended, only changing one. She sent us home that evening. For that week while my parents were here, Ezra was on his medication, and he seemed so uncomfortable. The one medicine, our doctor said at another appointment on Tuesday, could make him like that. We went to an appointment, she lowered the dosage, and my parents, Ezra, and I went on our way again.

We had another appointment for that Thursday to check in and make sure everything was still okay. My parents, Ezra, and I were in the car on our way to get lunch and run some errands before the appointment, and that is when Ezra had his incident. While driving, my mom put Ezra to sleep in the car, but soon after we noticed him fidgeting around. His eyes were opened and looking up to the roof of the car and his arms were flailing around, but he wasn't awake. We couldn't wake him, either. It was a horribly scary sight as I was driving and looking in my rear view mirror at Ezra. We realized he was having a seizure. Thankfully we were already close to the hospital where our appointment would be that afternoon. I called the doctor on our way and told her that we were coming RIGHT NOW and that we needed to see her immediately.

Upon arriving to the hospital, my mom fainted in the back seat, then came to, from everything that was going on. I realized I was feeling like I might faint and had to sit for a minute before my dad and I rushed into the hospital with Ezra, leaving my mom to rest. At this point, Ezra had woken up and was conscious. We saw the doctor shortly after getting to the office, and we explained to her what had happened in the car and how we thought he had a seizure. She gave us the option to run some tests or admit him to the hospital and run tests. I wanted him admitted, no question. The doctor gathered papers, and I called Mitch to fill him in. He left school and rushed over as soon as he could. After doing tests on his chest, the doctors found that the lining of Ezra's heart was enlarged and filled with liquid. The lack of oxygen pumping to his brain caused the seizure. Thankfully, it was very treatable with medicine. The following morning Ezra had a CT scan on his brain to see if the seizure had caused any damage. Thank the Lord everything was, and is, fine with his brain.

In the hospital we continued treating his lungs and heart for two days. Mitch stayed during the days and brought my parents over to stay too, then took them back to our house at night and came back to the hospital to sleep. We are SO thankful to have had my parents with us during this really difficult time. On Saturday the 11th we were released in the morning upon doing another test on Ezra's heart to reveal that that liquid around his heart had shrunk considerably.  However, I also got very sick from the same virus and felt very weak and tired. God placed my parents here with us during this time intentionally, and we are thankful for His faithfulness. My mom was able to stay an extra few days, and our church in Harrisonburg lined it up so that when she left, Mitch's sister Rachel came to help us. She was a great blessing to us, and especially me as I felt very weak and tired from dealing with everything and being sick with the same cold as Ezra on top of it. Having to deal with this incident after dealing with the difficulty of Mitch's collarbone just left us both feeling pretty emotionally and physically broken. We continued treatment for another week and had follow-up appointments with the pulmonologist and cardiologist and they told us that he is now healed completely, and we are thankful beyond words.Praise God, Mitch, Ezra, and I are all healthy and feel 100%!

Later one evening, while Mitch was taking my parents back to our house for the night, my dad and Mitch started putting things together as to why my mom fainted in the car, why I felt like I could have fainted, and my dad also noted that he felt weird in the head after our car ride to the hospital. They smelled and heard something, and found that the exhaust pipe on our SUV had broken where it connects to the muffler. Which mean that all the exhaust fumes were going up into the cabin of the car, inside of out the back. We believe this spurred on Ezra's seizure as he was the smallest and weakest of health. That's why my mom fainted and that's why my dad and I felt strange. Strangely, we are thankful for the car trouble, which led us to Ezra's seizure, which led us to the hospital, which helped the doctors find the fluid around his heart, which helped us get Ezra medicine and on the path to recovery. Had his seizure not happened, he wouldn't have been hospitalized, and we probably wouldn't have realized the gravity of his bronchitis and the way it was affecting his heart. The Lord is good, and we praise Him in all of this.

So there you have it. Several things have been going on that have kept us from writing on our blog. We wish we had done a better job to keep everyone updated on here as some of you really enjoy these posts and use this to follow what we do down here in Nicaragua. However, it just didn't happen. We want to thank you all for your thoughts and prayers during these past months that have been the most difficult in our time here. Please continue to pray for us as we continue to adjust to changes in our life and as we dig into this new and last year here in Nicaragua. We promise to do a better job keeping you updated in the weeks and months to come! Enjoy the pictures below of Ezra's birth, to Alaska, to the hospital the other week, and now.

Changes are Coming Our Way

Hi, everyone! 

Lauren here. It’s the beginning of September which means that our due date for little baby Yoder is NEXT MONTH! October 10^th , to be exact. A lot is going to change here for us very shortly, and we’re anxiously anticipating those changes.

I have just one more week of work left at NCA Nejapa before my maternity leave begins. But actually, the beginning of my maternity leave means that my work at NCA Nejapa is finished for good. Since our school year ends at the beginning of December, that means my maternity leave will take me through the end of the school year. Then, come school year 2017, I will not be returning to NCA Nejapa as Mitch is. He will work while I stay at home with the baby. This will allow me to focus on our little guy, or girl, and also focus more on CINAFE, Fortress of Hope, and Yosi and Martha. In our last blog post, we showed pictures of our new home. Moving here has been one of the best decisions we’ve made since having Yosi and Martha with us, but with that change comes bigger bills. Come January, living on one income and supporting a family of five requires more money than we have.

We can’t wait for these changes to happen, but with that being said, we realize that we need to begin fund-raising for our family. Since the changes that are coming our way will make it much harder for us to financially support ourselves as much as we could before, we’ve been talking with our Mission Support Team about the best way to go. They will be helping us raise money, and we wanted to let you all know as well, being that you’re close family and friends who have supported us in many ways throughout our time here.

If you would like to support us financially, stay tuned. Our Mission Support Team will be sending out letters to lots of you and making announcements in several connected churches. Thank you for following us on the blog, writing to us, Skyping with us, and praying for us in these past two years of our lives here in Nicaragua. We are abundantly blessed and beyond thankful for the love and support we have from each and every one of you, and we’re excited to see where the Lord takes us in this next year!  

Pictures of Our New Home!

Hello everyone!

It's been too long since we've written and today we just wanted to send you all some pictures of the new house we moved into this past June. This home has been such a blessing for us and it's been a much needed change for our ever-growing family (Mitch, Lauren, Yosi, Martha, and baby Yoder...and Emre :)) This house still has three bedrooms, but the layout gives us so much more living space and our yard is such a nice haven for us and Emre.

Enjoy and thanks to everyone for your prayers of support and financial support to make this possible. We are very grateful.

Here they are!

Front view of our house

Lauren with Emre when we got the keys!

Living Room

Dining Area

Kitchen, with real space to prep and cook!

Girls' room

Hallway bathroom (girls' bathroom)

Our master bedroom

This shows our walk-in closet and bathroom

Walk-in closet with space above for our suitcases! No more suitcases sticking out from under the bed!!

Our bathroom

Our nursery - just needs a few more touches :)

Rocking chair and pack n' play

Looking through doors leading to back porch

Back porch area

Emre loving life here :)

Our big yard for Emre to run and play! (Lauren's in the very back of our yard)

April means springtime?

Hello everyone! 

How’s springtime? Are the flowers blooming? Are there blossoms on the trees? How wonderful is the smell of freshly cut grass? How are the allergies this year? WE MISS SEASONS and would love to be experiencing spring in any one of our states – Virginia, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. However, we’re currently in the hottest time of the year here in Nicaragua where it just gets a little hotter each day until the rains come in May/June. It’s quite miserable really, weather-wise, but we’re happy to here, a year and six months in! Time really is flying.

We realize it's been a while since we've written and we want to update everyone on our lives. A lot has been changing for us and we’re excited about the changes that will also be coming soon! Here are just a few things to fill you in on:

1. Lauren’s pregnant! She is due on October 10^th and we’re so excited! Right now she’s in her second trimester and is feeling a lot better than she was in the first! (¡Gracias a Dios!//Thanks be to God!)  Please pray for us, however, as the Zika threat is now a confirmed fact in baby defects. We have a private doctor and everything looks great at each appointment and we pray that things continue to stay that way. No worries for us though, please, just prayers. 

When we moved here we were just two, Lauren and Mitchell. Then, we quickly added our dog, Emre, and last September Yosi and Martha came to live with us. Our family is now 4 people + Emre and will soon be 5 people + Emre. Going from no children to three was not something we anticipated when we moved here in 2014 and we are quickly outgrowing our house. In June, we will be moving to a different place where we will all fit a lot better! The house will be a very nice change and will also be out of the city which we’re both very excited about!

2. Work at NCA Nejapa has been tough this year. It’s been challenging for us and some different things have come up in our jobs that we have to deal with and work through; part of working in a different culture, right? A lot of things happen that don’t make sense to us or don’t seem correctly done and that makes things difficult. We’re praying that we can put God first and make good decisions in our jobs that glorify Him.

3. CINAFE/Fortress of Hope continues to go well. This year, we’ve adjusted to less time there as we’ve been busy with our jobs and the girls. It’s been nice to have less to do after school as we don’t have to head to CINAFE each day. Mondays are our days to go over, hang out, help with homework, play some games, and enjoy dinner together. It’s really nice and is a welcome change.

In an attempt to keep this short and sweet, we're going to stop there and end with a few pictures at the bottom! We hope you enjoy our recent photos including Martha’s 14^th birthday on April 5^th, our baby announcement, and a couple from CINAFE.

Much love,

Lauren, Mitchell, baby Yoder, the girls, and Emre :) 

Happy 2016!

Hello everyone!

We have lots of family and friends that have been stuck in the snow between Pennsylvania and Virginia, and we can't say we're not jealous of your cold weather!!! For us, this is actually the coldest time of year right now as well but cold to us is mid-80's. That's not cold, but we'll take it!

We'd like to send a quick update to all of you as we begin this new year. We will try to keep it brief as sometimes that's a lot nicer when you're checking your social media in between all of your other things!

School (NCA Nejapa):
We're just starting our second year of teaching at NCA Nejapa. Right now we're in our second week, out of three, of teacher work days. I know, it's a lot. The students begin on February 9th, and we're excited to see what this year holds. Last year was a good and difficult year for the both of us. We learned a lot about the people, culture, and language and spent so much time building relationships that we both feel like we are able to be more forward, effective, and helpful in our roles as this year begins. That doesn't mean that things won't be super hard for us because they will be, but we feel encouraged and hopeful for year two.

Fortress of Hope (CINAFE):
Ah, yes. The reason we moved to Nicaragua in the first place, right? We have been taking these past two months, December and January, off from CINAFE. It's been a really nice break for us as we were very, very busy with lots of different travels and different people - including us visiting PA for Christmas, Mitch's family visiting us for the new year, and our friends Jackson & Katie visiting just after that. We hope to put a new plan in place for our time at CINAFE once February roles around. If this past year is any indicator of our time at CINAFE, our roles will probably change quite a bit as this year goes along but we have a good idea of where we'd like to start. Our main focus will be a weekly activity with the kids of CINAFE. We're excited for that as it will allow us to spend intentional time with everyone there.

Our girls, Yosidara and Martha:
They continue to be great, and we are so thankful to have them in our family. It's crazy that in a matter of weeks we went from the two of us and a dog to the two of us, a dog, and two teenage daughters. Again, we feel like God has given the two of us tools to be able to take in two girls from another culture. It's a pretty unusual situation, we realize, and we're glad we listened to God and are doing what feels like following in His will for our lives. These two girls have quickly become our focus and are changing and forming us in ways we didn't imagine for ourselves in our time here in Nicaragua. We are thankful and trust that He will continue to lead us.



That's all for now!
Here are a few pictures from our vacations:

Here we are in PA for Christmas with our nephew Wyatt. He wrote us a card for Christmas :)

Here we are with Mitch's family standing by the Masaya Volcano, one of many things we did during their visit!

Jackson & Katie came to visit us before their little one is due and here we are in front of a cathedral in Managua. It was such a special time and we're thankful we could spend a few days together.

Just the two of us by these beautiful hydrangeas during a staff spiritual retreat for the start of our school year 2016.

Here are Dale and Jason at CINAFE for the annual board meeting. We enjoyed spending time with them and getting to know Jason more, not a board member but supporter of CINAFE and member at Pigeon River (Mitch's home church.)

Merry Christmas from up here in PA! (We've got an update for you, too!)

Hello Everyone!

We are currently in PA for Christmas this year and being that we have some free time, we thought we'd take advantage of this opportunity to update everyone. [If you received our email last month, you can skip to the pictures at the bottom. It's basically the same.]  

Now for our update. Thank you, everyone, for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers recently. Last you knew, Martha and Yosidara came to live here with us at the beginning of September. The initial plan was to provide them with a safe home so they could finish out their school years at NCA where we teach. However, we took them in knowing that they could possibly be staying with us for a longer period of time than just until the end of the school year.

These past three months with the girls have been so great for us. In the beginning, Mitch and I have had to transition and figure out some things in our personal relationship with each other, but we are enjoying our parenting roles and feel this new change in our lives is just what God is calling us to.

As the girls came to live with us towards the end of our school year, we knew a big transition was coming up in their lives once December came around - either moving back to their homes where they didn't want to go OR going to live at a girls' home where they didn't want to go. We spent a lot of time in prayer thinking about whether or not we felt God calling us to offer up our lives and home to the girls here in Nicaragua for a longer time period than just-through-the-end-of-the-school-year. We were thinking about something more along the lines of, living-with-us-as-long-as-we're-in-Nicaragua.

Through prayer and conversations with close family and friends, Mitch and I knew, without a doubt, that we wanted to give the girls the option of staying with us for the upcoming school year, and really, as long as we're living here in Nicaragua. We sat down with the girls one weekend in October and offered them the option of staying with us more permanently, being clear of our expectations and also letting them know of our timeline here in Nicaragua. We told them to take their time in deciding what they wanted to do and made it clear that it was their decision to make, though Mitch and I really wanted them to choose to stay :)

Now, we're here in PA for vacation and the girls are just visiting with family and friends while we're out of the country, and they're only visiting because they have decided that they want to stay with us permanently, while we're here in Nicaragua. Yosidara, 16, knew right away that she wanted to stay with us and she made the decision on her own, just letting her mother know what she was going to do. However, with Martha, being only 13, we wanted to talk personally to her mother to let her know what Martha was thinking. We got to talk with her mother last month and she was fine with the decision Martha had made.

So now here we are, a year into living in Nicaragua and we've got two foster daughters :) There are lots of things we need to be thinking about as we are now preparing to start our next school year in January - financial budget, discipline, and home life structure just touch the surface as we adjust to a very different home life.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers as you have been this past year. Here are some pictures that we've taken together these last few months! We really hope you enjoy this first picture of us four in our Christmas hats the day before we came to PA!

So much love,

Mitch, Lauren, Yosidara, and Martha (oh, and Emre!)

Changes...

Hello to everyone, and sorry for the long absence of communication. We've been going through quite a few changes, and while keeping you all informed should have been higher on our list of priorities, we are finally getting to it. Thanks for thinking of us even when we aren't in touch!

Where to begin? Biggest news first, I suppose. The number of people in our house doubled two weeks ago! We currently have two Nicaraguan girls living with us until the end of the school year, which has been an unexpected, but God-driven, development.

These two girls, ages 13 and 17, attend our school, NCA Nejapa, and had been living with a lady from Maryland for the last year or two. She had to move back to the States at the end of September for some severe health problems, and the girls needed a place to go. Without a place to stay, they would have moved home and dropped out of our school as their homes are far away.

We heard about the situation as other options were being considered, such as Fortress of Hope or other organizations like that. The girls stayed on our hearts and minds, and eventually, after much prayer and deliberation, we offered them a place with us until the end of the school year. They moved in two weekends ago, and here we are!

It's been quite an adjustment, although there haven't been major problems. We've had to figure out many different things. How to act as parents...to teenage girls...who only speak Spanish...from a completely different culture. How to spend our time between their needs and our needs. How to cook food that teenage Nicaraguan girls will eat. How to communicate our expectations and reasons and understand their needs in Spanish. How to make decisions that balance the two cultures.

Overall it's been great, though tiring and with a few bumps. It feels like God is still leading us down this road and teaching us along the way. As a couple, our biggest prayer request is that we take good care of our marriage as we embark on a new journey. It's already changed our relationship in some significant ways, and we have to figure out which of those changes are good, bad, or unsustainable. So far we've communicated well, although sometimes it feels like we go for days without having a meaningful conversation. All in all, it's only been two weeks, so we feel good about things so far. God is faithful and leading us, so we're going to follow as far as he takes us.

Other than that large event, things have been moving right along. On October 7th, we celebrated being in Nicaragua for a full year, as you can see in the picture below.We're in a bit of a difficult patch with our jobs and Fortress of Hope. Each has its own issues right now, and we're praying that things will smooth out soon. Hopefully we'll be disciplined enough to write something more in-depth this week, but here are some things to pray for, if you are so inclined. If you want to pray for Fortress of Hope, pray that lingering issues among the children can be resolved soon, and that our relationship with the social services branch of the government continues to be strong. If you want to pray for NCA Nejapa, pray that we can give our best efforts in everything we do and that we continue to search for ways to contribute to the work being done there, rather than becoming complacent.

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone reading this. We know that many of you pray for us regularly, many have supported us financially, and many have walked with us through recent decisions. We are eternally grateful because this journey would not be possible without your support. God is good, and His goodness is shown to us through each and every one of you. Your little notes, emails, texts, and photos remind us that our work here is not something we are doing alone. We have all of you behind every step of the way and for that we thank you.

Make it a great day,