Ever since moving back to our home town and back to our home church, I cannot explain how deep our roots are in this community and this church.  Our church is about to celebrate our 170th birthday!  My grandparents many generations back have been members of this church, probably even from the charter members.  Josh is the third Buice to pastor Prays Mill.  He had two great uncles that were pastors here. His grandmother was born and raised going to Prays Mill.  We have many people in our church that grew up with our grandparents.  Many of these precious people have seen us born, saved, married, and now growing in our walk.  I look to these people as family.  We had a man named Mr. Bill over for dinner the other night.  I felt so honored to have this man share a meal with us.  It was so much more than a meal.  He has a sharp mind for an almost 89 year old man.  He told us both stories about our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and all relatives we had here in this community.  No one else can share these memories with us, so many have died or lost their memory that many of the stories have been forgotten, but not to Mr. Bill.  It was such a sweet time.

He drove home alone, because Mrs. Annis went home to be with the Lord a few years ago.  She was a sweet woman, but she lost her memory and suffered from Alzheimers.  She had to spend her last days at the Nursing Home just down the street.  He would go be with her in her room every day until she went to sleep each night.  He loved her so much.  You can tell in his voice, and see it in his eyes, he loves her still.  He would drive her around each day and sometimes she knew where she was, but most of the time she didn’t.  Sometimes on their drives she would point to houses and ask,  “How do people afford to live in these houses?” Mr. Bill would answer, “I guess they work.”  Sometimes, while she still lived at their home, she would ask, “Who are you and why are you here?”  He said he would leave for about fifteen minutes and go to the back yard, when he came back in she would ask him where had he been for so long!  He always kept good humor with her illness and was relived to see her leave this world to be with Jesus.  She had no more ties to this world, since her loved ones were no longer recognizable and she had even forgotten how to do the simplest of tasks such as how to swallow and eat her food.

I can’t help but think, that while he was driving her around, he knew it was near the end.  He knew she was losing her mind.  He knew she would be leaving him.  He would drive her until she was ready to go home.  He said sometimes that was after just a few minutes, sometimes that was after a long time of driving.  I know that somewhere in the world, I was busy stressing about trivial things.  I was probably losing sleep over worry.  I was probably stressed in my marriage and with my children.  Somewhere in the world, I was going ninety miles an hour in life.  I needed to be a fly in that car.  I needed to see that life has so much more to it than bustling around three children all day and crying over spilt milk, finger paint all over the house, and fussy babies.  I needed to see that life comes quickly to an end, that love is more powerful than all else in life.  I needed a peek into the reality of a fallen world where spouses are separated by death and losing ones ability to even feed themselves.

Thank you, Lord, for Mr. Bill.  Thank you for the great-grandparents and grandparents that laid a foundation at Prays Mill in the days past.  Thank you that we can carry that torch to our children and future generations.  Please help me Lord to be strong in my faith and character like they were.  Thank you for Mr. Bill and how he brought back the memories of those we never knew or barely got to know before they died.  Thank you for reminding me once again, that eternity is coming fast, love is important, and rides in the car can be all we need sometimes.

Home  Sweet Home

To the outside world this is just a new house for us, but to our family this is a new beginning, to us this is a fresh start.  We have moved our family across state lines three times and moved about nine times in nine years. The last year we lived in Tennessee was spent in transition, not knowing whether or not we would be moving back to Georgia, and the past sixteen months we have lived in temporary housing.  So for almost 2 years we have been in transition.

We sold our house in Tennessee and we lost twenty thousand dollars- you read that right- 20,000 dollars.  We literally lost everything we had saved plus some.  I will never forget that day at the closing of the sale.  We handed the lady a check for twenty thousand two hundred forty eight dollars and fifty cents.  It was like a boulder fell on me that moment.  She took the check, stapled it to the paperwork, then told us to have a nice day.  I wanted to scream.  She actually said to have a nice day, really?  We didn’t foreclose, we didn’t short sale, we just wrote a check for all our savings, and a small loan from a family member we are paying back.  I walked outside that day and made it to the car, then the tears fell. I have never done anything that hard before.  I am a coupon clipping, money saving, penny pinching fool.  For me, it was the hardest thing I have EVER done.

We found the house we just bought and I was not immediately sold.  The house was in disarray and needed a lot of TLC.  We offered the bank 80,000 dollars below list price and the offer was accepted.  I could not believe it!  I remember I was vacuuming out my car at the carwash, I had phone in hand waiting to hear about a counter offer from the bank.  Our agent called and I immediately stopped the cleaning and answered.  I stood in shock as she explained that they accepted our offer, and agreed to pay closing.  God has richly blessed us and now we have recouped our loss and then some.  God has been so good to us.  We moved in one week ago and all week we have been telling one another how good God is to let us buy this house for such a good price. I never could have imagined such a great house for our family.  We have put lots of TLC into it and lots of elbow grease.  I have spent every waking moment un-packing boxes, hanging pictures, arranging furniture, hanging curtains, and much more.  I would say now we are settled in, and all boxes are officially un-packed.

Our new home is nestled back in a quiet street.  Well, it was quiet until the Buice’s moved in.  Our children are only quiet while sleeping!  It is a great little spot with lots of peace and quiet.

In case you are wondering why I share such personal things about our finances, it is because I want you to know how God blesses His children that are so undeserving. So many times I acted like a child about doing what God wanted me to do.  He had a plan, but I thought I knew better.  That day at the closing table He wanted me to give her that check.  He was pleased with that.  He knew that He had better plans for me than that money.  He had plans for me down the road.

You are welcome to come visit, we love company and now we have the freedom to share our home with those we love and are getting to know. We would love to be able to sit over coffee and share with you how big our God is. As Glenda Miller, David Miller’s wife, always ends her letters each month to all their supporters, “We will leave the porch light on for you!” You might find us playing the game of Headbandz, Hi-Ho Cherrio, or the 100^th game of Candyland.  You might find us with beds unmade and dishes in the sink.  And so the light will be on, we are finally Home Sweet Home!

I usually do a New Years post and make all these great attempts at New Years Resolutions, but the sad reality is that I am really no different than most Americans, I rarely keep them past February.  This year I have made some wonderful accomplishments, I ran a marathon, went on an incredible mission trip, sent my baby to school for the very first time, sold a home and bought a new home.

This year I want to dig into Scripture more than ever.  I want to taste and see that the Lord is good.  I want to write them on the doorpost, I want to teach them to my children more, I want to read, study, memorize, exposite, and digest God’s Word.  I went to more funerals this past year than all other years of my life combined.  We had about nine deaths at the church, we had a few family deaths, and a young man I grew up with committed  suicide a few months ago.  I planned my own funeral- yes I did, before I left for Ecuador, along with a Living Will.  That was great and necessary thing to do, although a little weird.  While planning out my funeral I decided that when I do go, I want my children to know how much their mommy loved God and His Word.  I want them to know that when all else was important, when life was busy, and when there was a long list of things to-do, that mommy never neglected the Word.  That mommy always put down life to pick up God’s Word.  I want them to see me so dependent on God and His Word that they themselves have no where else to run.

So 2012 is all about that.  This is the year for me to mature, this is the year for me to take off, this is the year for God to finally break though my schedule, my busy life, my excuses.  This is the year that I say no to un-important things, and focus on what is the most important thing in life.  So another year of my life has gone, and another year has arrived.  Happy New Year to you and may you and I use every minute to bring Him glory in 2012.

Here is a re-cap of our busy year in 2011.

Disney World, March 2011

Spring 2011

Arizona, June 2011

Arizona, June 2011

Wrightsville Beach, NC July 2011

I turned the big 3-0

Kalli’s 1st Birthday, October 2011

Josh and kids

Karis’ first day of school-ever- 1st grade!

26.2 Mile Marathon, November 2011

Ecuador, South America, December 2011

Our new home, December 2011

The service had to be outside under the amphitheater for several reasons.  Reason number one, the church building was not complete yet, there was still no floor.  The second reason, there were over two hundred people that showed up and we would have never fit inside that small church building.  Every Christian from many villages around joined in the celebration service of Zhud.  Pastor Lucas sang songs in the Quiechua language.  He was singing loud and tears streaming down his face in his worship.  I do not know a word he was singing, but my heart was singing along.  The tears were streaming down my face and I was worshipping.  It was an amazing time of worship, followed by a great message from Josh.  A couple came down and received God (that’s how they phrase it!)  After the service they rushed us over to the tables they had set up in the back of the amphitheater.  The people of the church started serving us food.  We were the only ones sitting at a table under lights.  All eyes and cameras were focused on us.  We were the guests of honor and no one else could be served until we were served.  The people of the church sacrificed greatly to feed us, and all the people that came.  Yes, there was Qi on our plate- Guinea Pig!! We had watched them preparing them earlier, and now we had little feet and some had heads on our plates.  I started eating mine and actually liked the taste.  I mentally blocked what it actually was and ignored the little legs and feet protruding from the meat and I ate the meat all gone.  It was a great day, it was a great service, it was a great trip.  I will be counting down the days until we return.  I will pray for Zhud every day.  I will share with my children about these precious people and the work God is doing in Zhud.  I have missed my children very bad, but God has really used this time away to use and me and teach me.  I will never be the same.  I am so thankful to God that through a long series of events, He led us to this remote village.  Those of us who have traveled there know how remote it is, but it is not remote to God.  He knows where it is, He knows these people, He knows their names, and He loves them.

Josh preaching, Dr. Manuel translating.

Pastor Lucas playing.

If you have not read part 1&2, scroll down and read those first!

The Day the Walls Fell Down

While the men were working on the part of the roof that the women could not help with, we went sight seeing.  We walked to the house of the President where the women were preparing all of our food.  We took pictures of all the animals, the ladies preparing our huge feast, and fellowshipped with the ladies of the church.  It was sweet time, even though none of us could communicate very well, it was nice to visit and observe these sweet servants of Christ.  Dr. Manuel took us women to the Presidents oldest daughter.  He told us that we needed to make the Gospel plain to her.  We sat down with her and through Dr. Manuel’s interpretation, I was able to explain the Gospel to her.  She said that she had been saved two years ago.  Her daddy was the President of Zhud and he was a new Christian man.  Dr. Manuel took us onto their home and we sat down with the younger daughter.  Dr. Manuel shared with us that she was pregnant and still in high school.  She had been locking her self in her room, too ashamed to face her family, and very scared.  We sat down with her.  I shared the Gospel and she replied that she was saved a year ago.  We asked her about her pregnancy and she started to weep.  We explained, through translation that Christ can heal and forgive.  We told her that God can turn bad things into the good and use her for His glory.  We explained that she can raise this baby up teaching him or her the Scriptures.  Some of the women in our group shared very personal testimonies with her and she was weeping.  She told us that she wanted to tell her sister, mother and father that she was sorry before she told God she was sorry.  Dr. Manuel called in her mother.  Her mother was very busy preparing the food.  I had passed her earlier carrying a bag of live chicken to the outdoor kitchen!

As her mother came into the living room Dr. Manuel explained to her that Patrice was wanting to tell her something.  She sat beside her on the sofa in that tiny living room and Patrice told her, in their language, that she was sorry.  Her mother grabbed her weeping and they hugged tightly for several minutes.  After that he called her sister in the room and it was the same scene.  Next he called in her daddy, the President, and he came in smiling.  He is such a sweet, kind man and he always has a huge smile on his face.  He had been working on the church building when he was called in to the small living room where we were all crowded in.  Dr. Manuel explained that we had shared with her and she was ready to apologize.  As he came to the center of the living room she stood up and told him she was sorry.  He grabbed her and squeezed her and immediately he started weeping.  The family was hugging in the center of that tiny home.  That day the walls of shame came down.  As I sat there on that little sofa in that tiny room, love was bursting out of the windows.  I saw a beautiful picture of my salvation.  I saw a loving father forgive his little girl for her sin, and embrace her in love and compassion.  I saw a little girl run to the arms of her daddy that she had been hiding from for nearly five months.  I saw her run to him and apologize and fall into his arms.

We circled around and Dr. Manuel asked us to pray.  It was beautiful, it was real, it was genuine.  I will never look at my salvation the same.  I will always remember the Presidents face at the repentance of his little girl.

After getting settled in our rooms and eating a hot meal together, we all shared our concern for the project, and we knew we had our work cut out for us.  We all woke up for breakfast and had our working clothes and gloves on.  We headed to Zhud on the bus.  As soon as we arrived at the church building site we quickly started following Dr. Manuel’s instruction.  We had about eighty huge concrete composite roofing tiles, about 7 feet long and 3 feet wide.  We had to un-stack them, spread them out, sand each one of them with steel wool, and paint them green.  As we started un-stacking them, the rain began to pour.  The work was being done under a huge community center amphitheater.  We had almost all of the huge tiles spread out so we could start sanding, when a truck pulled up under the amphitheater.  Some Spanish speaking teenagers jumped out and started saying things to us, acting like they were not very happy about our “mess”.  We quickly called Dr. Manuel and he came to translate.  His countenance dropped as he turned to us and told us that they were having soccer games all day under this amphitheater and we needed to re-stack all these roofing times once again.  We got to work re-stacking feeling very defeated.  All that hard work- for nothing!  With good attitudes we tried other options of getting these spread out, but with the rain, we didn’t have any where to work. We had to retreat and go back to the mission building, unable to get any work done.  In the late afternoon Dr. Manuel showed up to get us and we returned to the site where the soccer games were finally finished.  We worked hard for three hours and we got every roof tile separated, sanded, and painted!!  The neat thing while painting was the young fourteen year old girl that helped us paint. She and I carried, sanded and painted nearly every tile together.  We could not speak to one another but we would communicate through smiles and gestures.  I enjoyed working along side my sister in Christ and one day we will get to have a great conversation with no language barrier!

All the men of the church were on the roof welding the rafters that the roofing tiles would be bolted too.  The welding was tedious and very time consuming.  When the rain started to pour, the men came down.  Pastor Lucas came over to them with heavy duty poncho suits and instructed them in their language to get back up there and continue work.  It was funny watching the young men laugh as they put the suits on, all speaking Spanish, and they all marched back on the roof to get back to work under Pastor Lucas’ strict orders.

Over dinner we were all exhausted and ready to work again the next day.  When we arrived in the site we had to stack the dry roofing tiles to start doing some more.  We knocked them out pretty quickly and the men started carrying the heavy tiles up to the men on the roof.  The men worked all day along with our men to put the roofing tiles on.  This continued for two more days.  Thanks to our men and the hard-working men of Zhud, the tiles went up, the windows went in, and the people were happy.  The roof took all the time, the spreading the tiles, sanding, painting, carrying them up, and bolting them all in.  We realized on Saturday that the church building would not be ready.  We knew then that we had not come to see a finished product, but that God wanted us to work on the roof.  The roof was what God wanted finished, and the roof is what we did.

The Road to Tambo

We hopped on the big bus to drive to the mountain village of Tambo.  The first two hours were pretty normal roads.  We stopped at a fruit stand on the side of the fields where all the fruit trees were growing.  The smell of bananas was radiating throughout the bus.  Windows were down and the breeze was welcomed in the sweltering heat.  We did stop at a fruit stand for fruit for the week, and several of us had some coconut milk!

As we approached the mountains the temperature started dropping.  The view was amazing, but the rain started and the clouds covered the view.  The bus driver, a local from the mountain villages, was speeding up the mountain road, passing every truck and bus.  The bus was constantly swerving and flying around corners and the road was on the very edge of cliffs as the bus climbed the mountains.

It was not until the next morning, when we were walking out of the mission house to go see the new church building, that we were awe struck.  The mountain view was absolutely indescribable.   As the bus driver drove us to the church in Zhud we were amazed on this clear morning at the creation we were witnessing.  It was mountains like I had never seen before.  I have seen the bushes of Africa, the seas of the Caribbean, the Islands of Hawaii, the mountains of Romania and Transylvania, but never have I been taken back by the beauty of God’s creation than seeing the view of the mountains here in Ecuador.

We stopped a few miles short of Tambo to see the church building in the village of Zhud.  I think all of our mouths dropped when we realized that the building we were to have service in in just three days, had no floor, no roof, no door, and no windows.  Dr. Manuel, the overseer of the project and the dreamer of this church for twenty years, assured us the workers would put us to work to have it ready.  We met many of the sweet people working on the building and the ladies that were helping the men.  There were little children jumping on the mounds of dirt and playing on all the equipment of the workers.  We jumped back on the bus and headed to Tambo.