New Year's Eve 2011

Olivia (10), Derek (8.5), Virginia (2.5), Wesley (5), Emma (6.5)
The kids in their Christmas jammies which traditionally
Granny (Dano's Mom) sends to the kids before Christmas.
This year she sent them in plenty of time, but with the
holidays & long commute they finally arrived
on December 30th... just in time for New Year's Eve
the next day!  The kids were THRILLED!  

2011 was an amazing year for our family...difficult, but amazing!  We are amazed and humbled how God called so many people to come along side our family and help us to serve Him where He called us to go.  So many of you gave so sacrificially during 2011 so that we could answer His call!  Thank you!  We could not be where we are without your faithful gifts and prayers!  We are ETERNALLY grateful.  We pray we are making an eternal difference in the lives of those we live among even though we may never be the ones to see the fruit.  Our hearts are forever tied to these people and this people group we live among.  We are burdened for them and the darkness in which they live.

As a family on New Year's Eve, we spent time remembering 2011 by looking at photos and videos from the past year and the fun memories they represent.  We lived in North Carolina and Tennessee before moving overseas!  For the first time as a family we lived near our family for about 7 weeks!  It was great to have so much time with our family (even though a lot of that time was preparing to move).  It was fun to celebrate 3 of the kids' birthdays with family just before leaving.  The kids loved those photos.  It was fun to look at the pictures of our new life here and remember how new and different so many things were.  Now those things are our new normal.

After that I gave everyone a piece of paper with 2011 on it from a free download booklet.  Everyone was free to draw or write whatever they wanted about the past year.  It could be fun memories, new experiences, blessings, or whatever.  It was interesting to see what each person chose and how they chose to represent it.  You can see those pictures below.  Dano and I also did one.  

Virginia
no idea what this means :)
She also had a pretty picture on the back.

Wesley (front)
This is the airplane that brought us from America.

Wesley (back)
This is the volcano we visited here.

Dano
This is a picture of our house and the rice fields
representing all God did to bring us here.

Derek
He has lots of things from the last year.  You
should be able to click on it (and any others) for
a closer look.

Emma
She has the volcano and a horse she rode at
the volcano.  (some coloring she did on the back
bled through)

Mine
I can't draw pictures so well... so I used words.

Olivia
She also had lots of things to record for 2011.

After this the kids started going to bed one by one... exhausted.  We were going to let Derek and Olivia stay up til midnight if they could to watch the nearby fireworks.  As usual, they celebrate things here in a BIG, LOUD way!  ;0)  Of course, our village could never afford the type of fireworks we are used to seeing in America, but we live right on the edge of a small city that has a hotel and several large, fancy neighborhoods who can afford nice, fancy fireworks!  We just so happen to live at a perfect location to see their display from our front porch!  Derek went to lay down "to rest" at about 10:30... we couldn't even stir him at midnight!  Dano, Olivia, and I played a few hands of Nertz (kind of like solitaire but for a group of people).  Olivia made it to midnight!  For some reason, she decided not to go outside so she enjoyed the display from the living room window while Dano and I went outside to watch and visit with neighbors.  It was a beautiful night with lovely fireworks, nice friends, loud horns, and a very busy street!  Amazingly, the four youngest continued to sleep!  We came back in around 12:30 a.m. and the noise level died down around 1:30 a.m.

This picture doesn't exactly capture the beauty of the fireworks,
but I've never claimed to be a photographer!  Look how dark
the sky is though!  That truly captures how dark it is here
when the sun goes down.  

We are thankful for a FULL year... FULL of God's Blessings, FULL of God's Mercy, FULL of God's Grace, FULL of God's Faithfulness!  Now we look forward to 2012!  You can look forward (hopefully) to my next post to see how we started 2012!

I pray that each of you are able to look back at 2011 and see God's Hand guiding you whether your year seemed harder than normal, full of heartache, or rich with blessings.

Blessings,
Melinda  =0)