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,

Vacation to the States

As we drove to the airport to catch the plane that would fly us to the States, I found myself a little apprehensive to head back home. Most of me was excited to visit family and friends, but a small part of me was anxious that I would get back home to where life was familiar and comfortable, and I would want to stay there for longer than just three weeks. Before we left Managua, someone asked me, "How are you feeling about heading to the states for vacation?" I told them about my excitement but also that I was feeling a little anxious that I might get there and not want to come back to Nicaragua. The person told me, "You just need to pray that God has you where He wants you and that you can feel at peace about it."

We got off the plane and were greeted by two friends, ready to take us from D.C. to Harrisonburg. Instantly, we noticed that we were no longer in Nicaragua. Driving was orderly, there were clear signs on the roads, large cones for construction and even larger machinery.

We arrived in Harrisonburg in the middle of the night and opened the door to Mitch's aunt's house. We were greeted with a cold blast of air and a loving note on the kitchen table that welcomed us to anything and everything in the house. We soaked ourselves in steaming hot showers before bed, and then snuggled under a nice, warm comforter, rocked to sleep by the hum of the air conditioner. It felt like a spa experience.

Our three weeks were excellent, there's no doubt about that. We were able to do so many things - celebrate in the wedding of a cousin, see all of our family and friends, enjoy corn fields and clean lakes, eat familiar meals, camp and grill brats by the fire, drive 70 mph on a highway, worship God in English, take only one shower a day and still feel clean at the end of it, talk to someone quickly in passing and understand every word the person said without having to focus on the movement of the person's lips as they spoke. Everything was great and we found ourselves soaking up every experience that we had grown to love in the states, knowing that soon we would leave it all again.

Thinking back to what that person told me before we headed to the states, I realized that I didn't even have to pray to God that He would help me feel at peace about living in Managua right now. He made it perfectly clear that this is where we are supposed to be. Now, as I write this post with a glass of cold water at my side, a fan blowing on me, Emre sleeping on the porch outside, Mitch taking his second shower of the day, and knowing the kids at Fortress of Hope are playing just down the road, I know that this is my home. This is the place where God has called us for now.

We missed so many things about living in Nicaragua that when family and friends asked us what we were missing most about Nicaragua, we didn't really know what to say. A whole list of things came to mind for both of us, all equally important in forming this experience that we love. This is where we are. This is where we want to be. And this is where we'll stay for as long as we feel called, and I feel at peace about that.

-Lauren



Here are just a few of our favorite pictures from our great trip. Check out the whole album on my Facebook page: