March ’22 Family News

Ministry

Anja

Band

Our church’s worship ministry has been hosting a school of worship that will last until April. Some of the singers were assigned to our band practices. On the one hand it was exciting and I really liked introducing the female singer to how we do things. On the other hand, it was quite distracting since they were not always able to sing the harmony. So there were the three of us regulars, trying to make it all sound nice since not all songs had a given harmony and then there were the two newbies, trying to sing along, but being completely out of tune. I found it super challenging to stick to my harmony and I was not always sure if I was able to maintain it. At a certain point, I had to put my earphones in so I could actually focus on what I was singing. Well, they are still learning and I am sure they will get better with time, but that sure was an interesting experience 🙂

Marriage Fellowship Band

The one time we were actually able to play together, I was not able to sing because I had a cold and my voice was not good. However, they asked me to play the intros and interludes since the electric guitar player was not able to attend. I am sad to say that I messed the intros up every.single.time. To be fair, it was my first time playing these little melodies and I am happy I was at least able to get the interludes right.

Kids Ministry

I started March with assisting in Chris’ first lesson as a teacher and found out that I would be teaching every other Sunday, so no sitting in for me. We had a couple of new students and one of them, a girl, came over to me and motioned me to lower my head. I did and she whispered in my ear, I am here for the first time and I am really nervous. I took her to a free seat next to some girls and gave her a welcome gift. Just a little bit later, she asked me if she could go to her mommy. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to do that, so I asked her if she wanted me to sit next to her, and she nodded. Half way into the class, they called me because Yuna was hungry and I had to go feed her. When I came back, said girl was happily munching on her chocolate. When I asked her after class how she like it, she said it was fun. Yay!

The second class was a bit more stressful for me. Chris was sick and Ziva had a cold, so I stayed home to take care of everything and everyone until I had to leave and took Yuna with me. I arrived at church, dropped her off at child care and wanted to get everything ready, only to notice that our usual classroom was under construction… I then had to find out where to go and get everything ready there. Just when I wanted to start the class I noticed that the Bibles where not on the tables anymore. The teacher that usually was in the room had come in earlier and taken them…. Fortunately there were more Bibles in the cupboard, but it was quite stressful.

I was teaching in Spanish and I was never sure if the kids actually liked my class. I shared a testimony of how I was bullied when I was in 3rd grade and one girl just said, why didn’t you just play alone. I was a bit like, what?! I continued, making my point that it brought me closer to God. I gave an altar call and when I asked if anyone would like to be born again (yes, I explained what that meant), one girl raised her hand, so I asked, you want to be born again? And she replied, can I go to the bathroom? …yeah… I also gave the opportunity to share a prayer request and 3 kids did.

The third time, I was assisting Chris again and that meant mostly to support the kids in his origami project, which was a box. He showed all the steps on the screen, but some kids had trouble applying them. To be honest, I had trouble with the last step too. It took me a while to figure out how to do it properly, but in the end, everybody had their box.

Fit 2 Serve

I really enjoy serving together with my new coach! It’s just so nice having someone to do things with and we are now even doing a Monday evening coaches workout. Sometimes, I am so busy helping our participants to do the exercises correctly, that I am missing at least half of the workout time. The intern that said he would like to come actually came to the workout with two other interns, which is great!

Unfortunately, other people that used to attend faithfully have not returned. And in our last workout of the month, we were only three, two coaches and one intern, due to mission trips and men’s retreat. Let’s see what April brings. We are going to have a special event and that will also help to promote Fit 2 Serve in our church, and hopefully beyond.

Chris

Lights

Pastor Mike reached out to me one day with the request to have one of our interns trained on the lights. I thought that would be a good idea and so I reached out to Pastor Jesus with the question which one of the interns would be the best for that job. And so it happened, that I started training the newest of our interns who had only been there for about two weeks. He showed a lot of initiative and interest and already got his feet wet. As an extra challenge and to get him fully involved, I asked him to be there for the Easter special, specifically the practices and to help them with the lights. I basically throw him into the cold water and see how he’s doing in a safe environment.

Kids Ministry

The first Sunday in March came and I hadn’t heared anything specific from our Kids Ministry leader. I only had in the back of my mind that he said something along the lines of that he would like me to start teaching in March. I knew Anja and I were scheduled for a new teacher’s training and so I thought they would not put me out there yet… I was wrong. Said day I showed up in the morning and checked in with the one in charge and was told that I would be teaching. Okaaaay, just a little challenge. I found myself preparing the lesson during the first service so I could be there for the kids during the second service.

It went well and the kids engaged in the game we were playing. Just as in church planting class, the biggest challenge for me is to find a structure that works, how to spend the time wisely and what you can and cannot do with the kids. The second Sunday I was scheduled, I wanted to do a little crafting project, nothing fancy, just a little paper box, but at the end we ran out of time and couldn’t even finish it properly. It’s again a learning by doing process…

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Family

Problems Mexican Paperwork Ziva

We wish we could tell you that we have Ziva’s permanent residency card, but unfortunately that is not the case yet. We did what they told us and made sure Chris was the one signing all the documents and added Anja as an authorized person, and that was all okay. However, the lady at the register noticed that a page of Ziva’s apostilled birth certificate had not been translated… We are pretty sure we used the exact same documents we used when we applied for her temporary residency card and that was not an issue.

Anyway, we went and had everything translated again because we could not find the translator who translated her birth certificate the first time and we didn’t want to create any additional problems. It took Anja about two hours of standing and sitting in line until she could finally show the new documents. They were approved, but it seems that they changed the process again… What does that mean? We are not sure, to be honest. Apparently, Anja is going to receive an email that states what else we need to do, so I guess we will wait and see. We know that we need to do a second payment which is around USD 250 and that Ziva needs to have her picture and fingerprints taken, but how to get there is another question.

Ziva

Ziva’s vocabulary is getting bigger and bigger. One day, she surprised Anja by knowing all of the names of the Paw Patrol dogs, except for Everest, but that is a difficult one. Anja then asked, what is the name of the green one and Ziva replied, Rocky! Wow! She now knows that we eat breakfast and dinner. One time, Anja told her we were having pasta with tomato sauce and Ziva said, pasta menopause :D. Another time, Anja was asking Ziva were Daddy was and she replied, sleeping. She also got the concept of more. Anja was putting her to bed and wanted to see if Ziva could sleep better when her room was brighter and she explained to Ziva that she was putting on more light. Since then, Ziva keeps asking for “more light”, “more chocolate”, “more apple juice”, etc. She also learned to say, Quieres agua? (Spanish for, do you want water?) We let her watch her learning videos again 😉

One of the ladies that is serving in childcare told us that Ziva is usually not playing with the other kids. To be fair, the age is from 0-2 and she is rather advanced for her age. She likes playing with the older kids though, like running after them or having them running after her. What is important to us is that she has interaction with other kids since Yuna is not old enough to play with her yet. Ziva is doing a great job as an older sister though. A lot of times, when she sees her, she says, hi Yuna! Hi-i! She goes over to her, pets her heat, brings her toys or pushes her around in her walker. When Yuna spits up, she says, o-o!

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After some weeks of making Ziva go potty every half an hour, we stopped potty training again. She just doesn’t want to go and she doesn’t care enough about stars or underwear. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if we had bigger diapers available. The biggest diapers we saw in Mexico are 16kg+ and Ziva is already 17kg… we are running out of options here. Anja read that some parents used “there are no more diapers at the store” as an excuse. I am not sure that it would work with Ziva, but we might have to say it, just because it’s the truth. If we can’t get Ziva to use the potty, we have to find someone who is willing to import diapers from the US for us.

Ziva’s skin is still itchy and one of the rashes she has is not going away… We tried a lot of different creams and it has gotten better, but it’s not going away. One day, she had a severe reaction on her skin as in huge round bumps and severe itchiness. We gave her anti-histamine and it went down in no time. We believe that it was because of the tomato she ate. The juice had been running down her arms and she had been complaining about itchiness during lunch already and it had gotten so bad during the time she had been napping. I told the allergist about it and recommended we go see a dermatologist and do a further allergy test to confirm our suspicion about the tomato.

Yuna

Yuna is not crawling yet, but she is moving around a lot on her belly. She has definitely grown because we were able to raise her walker to a higher setting, which has also helped her to move around better. That was also the reason why we decided to finally start putting regular clothes on her during the day instead of pajamas – her pajamas aren’t anti-slip. Yuna is doing a very good job in childcare on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings. She sometimes even slept for as long as 40 minutes.

The biggest development right now is her wanting to eat. We noticed that she was paying close attention when we were eating and that she wanted to sit with us during meal times. One day, Anja gave her a spoon and she immediately started to put it in her mouth and suck on it. We did that a couple of times and she got frustrated after a couple of minutes, so we decided to try and see if she wanted to eat. She almost ate an entire banana the first time we let her have it! And she hasn’t stopped eating ever since. She LOVES plain, unsweetened yoghurt and fruit purees, i.e. banana, apple, pear, mango and papaya. She also ate the vegetable purees (sweet potato, green beans, beet root, broccoli, carrot, peas), but she seems to have problems digesting them. Carrot was especially bad, she cried every evening after she ate them.

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Prayer requests

• health (Chris’ and Anja’s backs, Yuna’s spit ups, Ziva’s skin and allergies)
• appointment opening for Yuna’s Mexican passport
• Finances and favor for Ziva’s permanent residency