Line Drying 101

Emily Jo "Expert Line Dryer"

Lesson in preparation for Bolivian living part 2!
I love hanging my clothes out to dry. In fact for a birthday gift a few years back the only thing I wanted was a sturdy clothes line. Rudi inlisted Cousin Erwin to weld the metal parts and drill the holes for the lines to go through. It is very deluxe and every summer I dry the majority of my clothes on it! It is a real luxury! However, having the option of a dryer on overcast or cold or rainy days is also a luxury...
When we designed our home we did not forsee the problem of having our dryer on an inside wall. The venting takes all kinds of twists and turns to go under and out of the house. There is at least fifteen feet of pipe before it hits the outside. It is a real labarynth of lint collecting possibilities! When our loads began to take three hours to dry we started looking into a possible remodel to put the dryer on the outside wall. When we asked Paul Williams to do the remodel for us he suggested something called a booster fan. It is designed for apartment buildings, hotels, etc, where having a dryer on an outside wall is not an option. We decided that this would be the best idea rather than a costly remodel  and it has been. The fan comes on when the dryer starts and pushes the air and lint out. Our drying times went back down to normal and Mama was happy again! Wellll, about the time we started to consider going to Bolivia our dryer fan has started acting up. It now acts as a giant plug to the "labaryth" and drying times have sky rocketed again. My amazing-in-everyway-husband, but not a "fix-it" guy, began to try to get the thing fixed.... Well, come the beginning of June we decided that for the sake of our electric bill and not wanting to burn the house down with a dryer fire, we should go to ALL line drying.  Line drying in Western Oregon is wonderful in the dead of summer but the other months can be rainy and cold, which is how June was!  You could find me outside between rain showers either putting up or taking down in a hurry the clothes... I have thought numerous times "this is what it could be like in Bolivia". What a great opportunity God has given me to get me ready for a place where I might not have the luxury of a dryer. Forced clothesline drying 101 is going great and the word is that a booster fan part is on the way.... My drying situation might get fixed before we leave, but maybe God has other plans!
P.S. The vent fan did get fixed thanks to my TRULY amazing-husband-in-every-way, but now it seems that the dryer itself is having revenge on me for the million loads I have put it through and will not dry a load faster than 3 hours....eeeks.... Bolivia here we come!

Lessons in Preparation

Lessons in preparation for Bolivia living....
 Who would have ever thought that I would be thanking the Lord for Head Lice, but back in May I was (and still am). As we prepare to launch off into unknown territory, it was a very small lesson in what third world living might be like. Being homeschooled Rudi and I have never had head lice (still haven't) and
neither have any of our siblings...that we know of! So you can imagine my dismay when one of the little girls (names withheld for privacy!) had these funny bug things crawling around on her head while I was combing it after her bath. I had noticed one the week before, but I was in a big hurry and thought it just was a "micro-moth". Well this time it was multiple "micro-moths"! I yelled into Rudi, who was in the kitchen, "I think Snuggle Bug here has lice"... Since neither of us had ever even seen lice, I decided to "google" it down at Rudi's parents house. Well, several UTube videos of head lice later, (bless you folks for filming such ODD things) I confirmed that YES we had a case of head lice... eeks. This discovery was made the night before we headed over to Central Oregon for my father's 75th birthday party bash. The stress especially mounted because twenty plus Head Rubbing Lice Sharing Grandchildren were going to be present at the event! (Did any of you ever get any lice? Now you know where you got it!) I called Mother and she and I conferred that it would be best to keep it quiet, so as to keep paranoiah and sympathetic scalp scratching to a minimum. I also purchased an e-book on how to eradicate head lice. That little book was a blessing from the Lord, as it took the "scary" out of the problem and gave me a plan for conquering the small beasts.
After inspecting heads with my now expert UTube Lice Education I discovered that all three of the little girls had lice, with Snuggle Bug having the most... probably the parents of the whole group of small beasts! We all went to bed with a plan to attack the next day... We would pick the nits and live ones and try to get as many of them gone as possible in the morning and then wash their hair with a special shampoo made w/ essential oils once we got to Grandpa and Grams house, after the washing would come combing with a fine tooth comb! The great thing about us going over to Central Oregon was that Mother could supply me with some of the more obscure essential oils I  would need to create the  special  shampoo described by my e-book.  Morning came and we had a million things to do to get ready to go. I was at my wits end and had not even begun to pick nitswhen my sister-in-law, (One of my favorites. I have 10!) Lisa, called and offered to pick through the girls hair for me! Yet another blessing! Lisa came prepared with gum for the girls to chew while she "nit picked" and all of the special combs required for serious nit pickers. THREE hours later she was finally done with the two worst (one of the three only had one egg)! See why she is one of my favorites? Seriously, she totally blessed me! She did such a thorough job that that session combined with the hair washing totally eradicated them and it  was the end of the whole thing! However, as simple as it sounds I learned a lot through this minor trial. 1.) Relax you are bigger than the bugs! 2.) When gross things happen just keep moving on. 3.) Lisa how would you feel about coming to Bolivia with us?

Affirmations from God

We sent in our finished applications at the beginning of April and began to wait and pray
that the Lord's will would be done in regards to us going to serve there... While we were waiting to hear back from them, the Lord continued to affirm that this is what HE had for us. One Sunday afternoon
we found a small red envelope with a WAD of cash in it. On the envelope were the words
"BOOHER MISSION FUND".  An anonymous person had left this for us. (We have tried to guess
who this was, but do not have any solid evidence yet... :) The Lord provided Ericka, our niece,
who is currently our employee to manage our coffee shop while we are gone. (For those of
you who do not know a lot about us or are meeting us for the -first time, please check out our
coffee website, www.mainstespresso.com to read our business story!) Another "fleece"
we had put before the Lord in regards to us going, was someone to live in our home.
 Our first choice of a family to stay in our home were our friends Paul and Kamerin Williams.
They are currently between homes so it seemed like it might be a possibility, but we also knew
that they would have to sacrifice two more years of not having their own place. When we asked
them if they would consider living at our place, they said that they would pray about it for two
weeks and then give us an answer! They came to us at the end of two weeks and said that they
would be happy to do it for us! Could it be that this IS what God has for us....Every door has
swung wide open at every turn. 

Enter Casa de Amor

Meanwhile the feeling that God had us to go to Bolivia continued to grow stronger. The other
website that stood out to us was Casa de Amor's. Casa de Amor was begun by Jennifer Thompson
(along with her family) in 2003. They mainly focus on infants and toddlers with a mindset to
prepare them for their forever families through adoption or back to relatives
that are a good option for the children. There is so much to tell about them that we suggest
visiting their website www.casadeamor.org , along with Jennifer's blog to get an idea of what
they are all about.  One of the reasons we were so drawn to Casa de Amor was that we could
have what we would call a "foster home"  here in the U.S. We would be able to all work as
a family and all have a part together in ministering to these children. 
When we e-mailed that we would like to apply to work with them they responded that
we would need to commit to two years minimum. When Rudi originally talked to me about going
somewhere he said that he was thinking of a three month to one year time frame for being gone.
"Wow", I thought, "that is a long time!"  One of the first confirmations that this is what God has
for us was that when we recieved the e-mail that we would need to commit to TWO years I instantly
had peace about it, somehow it just felt right!

The Bolivian Adventure Begins

Around the beginning of the year (2012) Rudi expressed to me that he felt that our
family was ready to get out of our box and go and serve in Central or South America.
That began a chain of events that has already broadened our horizons, hearts, and
vision...  When Rudi was researching where we should go and serve he knew that it
would involve children. While looking on orphanages.org two ministries stood out to him.
One was Bolivian Youth Ministries that Jonathan and Linda Baker started. We were surprised
to see that the Baker's address in the U.S. was in Sweet Home, Oregon on the very same
road as our friends the Darlings. We called the Darlings and asked if they knew the Bakers.
They replied that they knew them and they lived on the same shared driveway! They also
told us that Jonathan was in the U.S. for a short furlough and gave us his phone number.
We were very blessed to have Jonathan down for a short time one morning in February.
He told us about his and Linda's ministry to girls that originally began when the Bolivian
Government decided to not allow mothers that were imprisoned to take or keep their
children with them in the prison. Through him we began to learn about the great need that
Bolivia has for its youth. 40 % of Bolivians are 15 and under with an estimated 72,000 children 
on the streets. The pictures he showed us of the beautiful girls in their care, pricked our hearts,
and we began to picture how we might be able to be a part of helping these children at risk.
While we loved meeting Jonathan and would have loved to work with them they really did not
see a place for us to serve with them....