We wanted to keep you up to date on what the rest of our summer looks like, so here are the events between now and the end of August:

July 22-29: Church youth camp. A team from North Point Community Church arrives on the 20th to help with this. It is not an english camp as it has been in years past, but the youth are really excited - they have planned the entire thing, and invited their friends. The camp was full over a month ago!

Aug 5-12: Josiah Venture kids camp. Gavin will be helping with camp again this year, held here in Slovakia about 15 minutes away. He will be working with the 12-13 year olds, and doing some fun stuff like rock climbing and rapelling with them.

During that week Jackson and I are heading down to Slovenia to help out a friend who is due to have a baby any day now. Gavin will come down after camp and we’ll have about 3 days there together before coming back to Slovakia.

Aug 24-30: Church and family camp. The end of August always holds 3 days of church camp, then 3 days of church family camp. It’s a time of talking through the future of the church and spending time with the other members (about 50 of us).

We had an absolutely amazing vacation to Switzerland! The week went by slowly, and we were able to really enjoy every day. The first half we stayed in a little Alpine town called Engelberg, about an hour in the mountains from Lucerne. We went up on a glacier, snow tubed, went into Lucerne, cruised on the lake, and did an excursion up to a nearby peak. The second half of our trip we were in Lauterbrunnen, another Alpine village outside of Interlaken. We stayed in a little cabin at a campsite that was surrounded by waterfalls. We had some rain, so that only made even more waterfalls - it was beautiful. While there, we did a day of hiking, saw an amazing waterfall inside a mountain, and did an excursion to the “top of Europe”, the highest railway station in Europe. It was an incredible week in one of the most beautiful places in the world. By the end though, we sure were ready to see our little boy again!

Here I am at 13 weeks… standing in an Alpine valley. I’m just starting to show, but it’s not that visible to most people yet, just me as I try to find some of my clothes that still fit!

“Comments” are now a functioning part of the blog! It works like this: if you want to comment, you have to register. I know that’s kind of a pain, but isn’t it better than having to weed through all kinds of comments about getting a graduate degree in 10 days, or any of 1,000 other (off-)topics! We’ll then have to approve your first comment… after than you’re free to comment to your heart’s content.  And we hope that you’ll do just that.

For a first “journal” entry, it only seems appropriate to muse over our future and where we’ll be as a family a year from now. In a strange case of deja vu, we just returned from a place where we were almost exactly three years ago. We weren’t in the exact physical place; we weren’t even in the same town. But just a few minutes ago we got back from a vision/dreaming trip with our director to a plot of land a few miles outside Zilina that he noticed a few days ago and thinks would be an amazing place for a camping/training facility. Almost exactly three years ago was the last time we went on such a trip.

There are a lot of differences between this time and last, all of which I won’t even begin to list. One of which, however, is that this time the entire Kompas organization is moving in that direction, so there’s quite a lot of momentum to see a new training center realized. Another difference, that I’m still processing, is my own feelings about what our involvement in such a project would or should look like. Three years ago my heart and soul was in it, but the resources weren’t there and the timing wasn’t right. Now that the timing seems perfect and the resources seem to be lining up, I’m feeling a lot of reservations about throwing myself into it. Some of it, I’m sure, is fear of stepping into continued changes and redirections in job and focus; a fear that, in truth, will be met with the grace of the Lord, but because of it my practical reasoning is screaming “run away!” I also know that some of it is that we’re just different than we were three years ago. All fear and skepticism to the side, there’s a part of both of us that is saying that God has called us here for a time and that time is coming to a close, regardless of what we’ll be missing. If that is the case, I know that becoming ok with seeing the original dream come to fruition without my direct involvement will be a process in itself. Both Moses and David, surely, went through that process, although probably to a much greater degree…

Going back would feel like we’re running from the fear, and with it would come a lot of personal dissapointment.  Staying would honestly feel like simply maintaining the status quo for the purpose of personal pride.  Niether are pleasant options.  But it sure would be nice to step into one of them with confidence.

Our little Jackson isn’t so little any more! We comment all the time how he looks so much like a little boy now, rather than a baby. In the past couple months he has become an expert walker (almost running at times). He also finally picked up on the sign language we had been teaching him, and can say ‘please’, ‘more’, ‘hungry’, and ‘all done’. He loves swimming, grapes, hammers, balls, and rocks (but not necessarily in that order). Pictures in the images section.

We’ve been having some time to relax and enjoy family over the past 1.5 weeks. It began with Gavin’s parents arriving on June 20th to spend 8 days with us. They left on the 28th, and that same day my mom flew in for 2 weeks. She will be here to watch Jackson while Gavin and I take a much needed solo vacation to one of our dream locations… Switzerland! We leave on the 3rd, and return on the 10th. 4.5 hours until departure… I should probably get some sleep!!

We are officially no longer a family of 3!! Yes, we are expecting again, with a due date of Jan 9,2006. But considering Jackson was born 2 weeks early, we are thinking we’ll have ourselves a little Christmas present. I am currently almost 13 weeks along, and thankfully have had absolutely none of the symptoms that I had with Jackson, so the pregnancy has been wonderful so far. In fact, most days I don’t even remember I’m pregnant, except that I’m starting to not fit comfortably into some of my clothes. We’ll be posting the Amanda-watch pictures as I grow.

Probably 10 months ago, Mel (the guru of Josiah Venture English camps. Yes, I used to the word “guru.”) asked me what I thought it would take to do an “Amazing Race” from Prague to Malenovice for the Josiah Venture interns that come for the summer to help run English camps around central and eastern Europe. Of course, my eyes lit up and my ears perked at the thought of helping to plan something like that. I thought, “how cool would it be to put together a 2-3 day problem-solving, team-building, clue-finding adventure?!” And then I thought, “what an incredible way to help the intern teams to get to know each other, learn each others’ personalities, and be more effective for the Kingdom during the summer!” The more spiritual thought, in all honesty, actually did come second, but it was just as exciting as the first! Over the next 7 months or so, the thought laid basically dorment, but in April the planning began and by the time the interns arrived on May 30th, the Amazing Race was ready. Actually, the whole thing wasn’t ready, but at least enough that we could say one step ahead of the interns.

So, from May 30th to June 1st, the Josiah Venture version of the Amazing Race went from Prague to Olomouc to Malenovice. Ten dedicated volunteers and staff worked behind the scenes to make it happen while 10 intern teams of 4-10 people raced around some of the most beautiful places in Czech solving problems and finding clues. The end result: the teams had an incredible experience to begin their summer that moved them miles ahead towards becoming a unified team that will surely be effective for the Kingdom this summer. And it was a whole lot of fun planning.