September ’21 Family News

Ministry

Anja

Band

Since we were not sure, when exactly the baby would come or how I would feel by the end of the pregnancy, I asked to be scheduled in the beginning of the month and so I served the first two Wednesday evenings. As expected, I was scheduled with the usual band leader and this month, he gave me two songs to sing lead voice. To me, this was a sign that he started to trust me. I also remembered that the worship ministry leader told me that I should try to be more creative when singing a song, i.e. being more creative. I had an idea how to do it, but I ended up just taking one little step, but that is still progress, isn’t it?

Marriage Fellowship Band

I was singing in the marriage fellowship band the entire month, to the surprise of my fellow band members. They were like, I don’t know how you are doing it! I thought by now, you would be at home, resting. Although I was never able to join them for their band practice because we always coming after they were done because of Chris’ work schedule, it always worked out well. I was grateful that I didn’t have to translate a lot between each song. I am not sure what happened, but I assume that the leadership told them to keep it short.

Livestream

This month, the team leader only scheduled me for sound mixing. The challenge was that it was at the same time as Chris had to be there to make sure everything was fine with the lights so neither of us had actually time to watch Ziva. However, I tried to just take her with me into the studio. I let her play with her phone (she has an interactive Bible app on there as well as a lot of pictures had I had taken when it was still my phone) and in between, she would sit on my lap while I was optimizing the volume of each instrument and singer. I was amazed how well she was doing with that. As long as she was allowed to be with me, she was fine. It was still a bit more challenging to mix the sound on Sundays due to the short band practice before the service, but my team made sure that everything was ready so I could just sit down and start mixing. Apparently, it turned out well. Both, my team leader and, always a huge compliment, Pastor Mike said that the mix was good. Praise the Lord!

Fit2Serve

Although there was a roadshow each weekend, we haven’t had any new members and people that used to come stopped coming for different reasons, e.g. injuries that were not caused during Fit2Serve, work, having to take care of sick family members, etc. That has been a bit frustrating, to be honest. However, at least I know that everything is taken care of when I am on maternity leave and that is nice.

Something that I didn’t expect was that they would organize a baby shower for me! They brought cakes, sandwiches, tamales, drinks, etc. so we could have that baby shower after the workout! Some people who had not shown up in a while joined that day, some even came just for the baby shower. It was really nice and I did not see it coming at all! Is there’s one thing I can say about Mexican people is that they are very loving and caring.

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The biggest surprise however came at the end of the month. The leader that quit due to personal reasons asked me if he could join again! Funny enough, I had been thinking about him coming back, too, so I agreed. He will be a great help for the lady that is taking over during my maternity leave.

Chris

Concert

Halfway through the month, we were hosting a concert from another church in Ensenada, who went on tour. I just knew that they would be bringing their own light master and that we would work together. So I didn’t really know what to expect. I definitely didn’t expect them to bring their own lights and their own light controller. For a short preparation time of half a day, that was a bit much.

First, I offered them to connect their lights to our system and use our controller (which is more than capable to handle all of it). But after finding out that they already prepared everything and just had to test the programming, I supported them as well as I could. The event went well and we drove the light system to the maximum of its capability. We had so much fun!

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New LED Moving Heads

Just at the same time as the concert, our new 200W LED moving heads arrived. I waited two painful month for them and so I enjoyed to put them up and use the “sunburn effect” to roast our band from behind. No, just kidding, but the light is much better now and more flexible. Although I got a little setback, as one of them would not shut the white LEDs off completely after about a week. Since it was just a minor defect, I decided to not just run to the customer service, but to wait and see how they would perform after some time. So far, a lot of fun.

New Trainee

One day, I was connecting to new people and started talking to someone on our patio. During the talk I found out that he is not serving yet, but that he has just finished the pillars class, which is a requirement for being able to serve at Calvary Chapel. So I took the chance to ask if he would like to check out the lights ministry and just a little later, I hear from another person that he was excited to start serving in the lights ministry. He’s not exactly a geek, but that’s not needed to do the lights (It’s enough that I’m twice the geek :-)). From experience I knew that someone just needs to be willing to learn something new. So here’s my next challenge.

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Family

8th Wedding Anniversary

Because we did not have time on the 31st of August, we celebrated our 8th anniversary on the 2nd of September by going to a VIP cinema in Tijuana to watch Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The last time we had been to any cinema was two years ago, after Ziva was born. For those of you who do not know what a VIP cinema is, it is a cinema where you sit close to one other person, each one with a comfortable, reclinable chair and you can order your food from a menu. I had a quesadilla and a large beverage and Chris had BBQ boneless chicken drumsticks with a large beverage. We did not expect too much from the food, but it was very good! The funny thing was that the beginning of the movie was in Chinese (at least that’s what we were thinking) with Spanish subtitles, so Anja was translating during the entire back story, which was quite lengthy.

Unfortunately, Chris had lost his glasses a couple of days earlier, so instead of doing something romantic, we went to a place where we knew we could get some the same day. You really do not want to drive to Tijuana unless you have to, which is why we went for it. Once Chris had chosen his frame and they had checked his eye sight, the glasses were ready within less than half an hour, that was amazing!

Wedding of Anja’s Team Mates

Ziva

Ziva has become a lot more clingy and cuddly, but only towards mommy. You could even say she is avoiding Chris, which is not easy for him. She wants to be with mommy at all times, the problem is more that mommy doesn’t have the energy to do a lot of things. However, we have received a late birthday present, a toy kitchen with pots, pans, food as well as utensils. She LOVES the red fruits and the pot that has a battery operated mixer in the bottom part. So Anja is sitting there, operating the pot and eating the red fruit that Ziva is bringing her. The most surprising thing was that Anja was giving Ziva some rice stars, which she had earned by going on the potty, and Ziva chose to pick them up with tongs! And she did such a good job at it, too!

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One day, Chris came home from church with a bag full of children’s clothes and shoes, most of them about Ziva’s size or smaller. We could keep some of the shoes, a couple of clothing items for Ziva as well as some items for our baby, as she will be able to grow into them. The nice thing was that we could pass the rest on to our neighbors, who are also going to Calvary Chapel. They have a daughter that is a couple of months older than Ziva, but a lot smaller and slimmer. One of the items that we kept were Paw Patrol house slippers. Ziva likes the show and immediately went for the slippers as soon as she saw them.

Another thing that we have started to do again, is to switch on Ziva’s night light. We haven’t used it in a while, but she had been waking up in the night crying a lot, so we thought this could help and it has. She loves it and every time, we switch it on, she says “stars” and is all excited about it.

Pregnancy

Anja spent a lot of time getting everything ready and organized for the stay in the hospital as well as for the baby. She sorted through all the baby clothes and washed whatever 0-3 months we already had or were given. She washed the bedding, the rockers and the car seat and made sure that Chris put them back together. She packed the hospital bag and made sure that all the necessary documents for the hospital were copied and ready to be handed out during our stay there. So about a month before the due date the doctor gave us, which was 6-9th of October, everything was ready and we were waiting for the baby.

The leader of the livestream team is a passionate photographer and he had asked us if we would like to do a pregnancy shooting at the beach, which we wanted, of course. What proved to be a bit of a challenge was keeping an eye on Ziva and our stuff while being in the pictures at the same time. Also, Ziva was more interested in playing in the ocean than the photo shoot, which added to the problem. We would have brought a babysitter, but thought that the fiancé of the team leader would be there too. Unfortunately, she had to cancel due to wedding preparations. However, the light was beautiful, the ocean was a nice color and as far as we saw, the pictures turned out nice. Well, Anja has seen maybe two or three on that day on camera and then two as a sneak peak because the team leader wanted to know which style we liked best.

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Spoiler Alert: The Baby is Here!

On the 14th of October 2021, at 5:32pm our second daughter Yuna Samara was born. She weighed 3.25 kg and was 51cm long. Everything went well and Anja and Yuna are both healthy. More about the birth in our next newsletter.

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Prayer requests

• Health for the entire family
• Finding a new family dynamic
• Quick recovery for Anja from the birth
• Finances to start the process for permanent residency in Mexico and favor to obtain it