The title says it all…  I’m in a happy state of shock, very happy state of shock!  For most of the pregnancy, we’ve thought “Angel Baby” was a girl!  Well, he’s not!  So…I think I’m gonna nix the nickname “angel baby” because it just doesn’t seem appropriate for this little “Fwamster.”  If you don’t know what that means, the fact that the little guy is measuring a full month ahead by the ultrasound measurements should clue you in to what it means.  He’s big!  Hooray!  He’ll probaby join us in just about 7 weeks or so!  Praise God for good news!

We had the pleasure of working with two of the most fantastic people on earth for most of this Euro-tour 2008, as we like to call it (actually, I just made that up).  Their names are Peter Mahoney and Erin O’Hagen.  You would think from the names that we stooped down in Dublin on our way in and picked them up at ye local pub, but they are Pacific Northwesterners, born and raised.  When we left Germany, we said goodbye to both of them and sent them back to the States.  We really could not have had a better team, and I’ve been considering the best way to honor them.  Here’s what I’ve come up with…

“Where’s Pete an’ Erin? ”

This was Judah’s constant question.  Pete and Erin became like uncle and aunt to Ariel and Judah, and so I thought the most appropriate “Ode to P&E” would be in the form of memories of the kids and all the bad habits they picked up from these rapscallion role models. 

“He rips the eyes!  Cauliflowers to the ears!”  This was a hand-me-down wrestling demonstration from Pete’s dad that he passed on to Judah with mock moves like a gentle swipe across the eyes and ear rub.  Judah picked it up and this is one of his favorite phrases…”Rips a eyes…fowers a ears!” 

“Rebuke chop!”  This is an OJ original, that has no pertinence to anything except an excuse to karate chop someone and use the word “rebuke” simultaneously.  He put Ariel up to it, and one morning Ariel motioned to Pete to bend over so she could tell him something, and then took the opportunity to chop him between the eyes and say “Rebuke chop!”  He continued to fall for that the whole trip.  Erin got her share, too.  The team took a break on an overnight trip to Edinburgh a few weeks ago, and Judah ended up in the “girls’” hotel room with Erin, me, and Ariel.  He was sleeping in the queen bed with Erin, or so she thought, when he rolled over and whacked her between the eyes, declaring, “Rebuke chop!” 

Ariel and Judah one night were having a classic sibling twilight moment as they drifted off to sleep, and OJ and I heard them going back and forth.  We cannot explain the conversation, because it makes no sense, but Judah was saying the word “clock” and Ariel would yell back, “No!”  Over and over again.  For 5-7 minutes.  We told Pete and Erin about it, and it became a classic team quote.  On the final day in Germany, Pete caught Judah on video by himself, replaying it.  “Clock!  No!  Clock!  NO!”  and so on and so forth, until he saw the camera focused on him, and said, “CHEESE!” 

“Don’t get me, Erin!” was Judah’s constant invitation to Erin to tickle him.  There are so many stories, but I’ll finish up with these fond memories.  Both Pete and Erin were amazing, putting in a bunch of hours of babysitting in moments when OJ and I were needed for ministry.  Particularly, the kids seemed to save the worst of their diaper issues for poor, under-experienced Pete, and it seemed like he could not babysit without Judah filling a doozy of a diaper.  I love to recall Pete reenacting for us when we returned home stifling his gag reflex over one particular masterpiece.  Sorry, Pete! 

We loved being with Pete and Erin for so many reasons.  We were so privileged to travel, live and work with two of the finest people we know.  We heard them preach and teach and, of course, pray their guts out, but this was the topper…the way they loved our kids.  There were several times that we just had to pray as a team for the kids’ freedom when spiritual attacks were strong, and they fought like they were parents.  Pete and Erin, WE LOVE YOU GUYS!

After a short stay in Scotland to recuperate and repack, we set off to…you thought I was going to say Holland, but no!  The natives set us right with kind consistency.  It’s not Holland, folks, it’s The Netherlands.  Turns out North Holland and South Holland are provinces in The Netherlands that include the major cities of trade, so calling The Netherlands “Holland” is a bit like calling the USA “New England.”  Anyway, we set off for The Netherlands and were again in for a huge surprise and blessing.  I am afraid I’ll sound repetitive if I tell you how warm the people were, how hungry, how wonderful the community is…all those things are true, and yet the base is so unique and unlike anything we had yet experienced. 

First of all, Dutch people are delightful!  They are warm and generous.  They have definitively Dutch ways, which they will unabashedly describe to you, but without any sense of imposing them on you.  You feel free to be different.  The base we went to is called Heidebeek, and it’s remote, if anything can be remote in a country that small.  It was a couple hours from Amsterdam, created as a place where the young people getting saved in masses in the 70’s could be discipled away from the temptations of the city.  As we drove through the country from the airport, I kept having flashbacks of driving through Michigan and parts of Indiana.  Large Dutch populations settled around Chicago (where I grew up) and around Lake Michigan, and now I know why.  Flat farmland giving way to friendly, leafy, green forests, and expanses between homes.  But not too big!  Nobody seems to need too much space, just enough. 

There wasn’t room for us to stay on the base itself, so we stayed a couple minutes down the road at some base housing, an old stables with thatched roof, restored into housing.  The next day, the base gave us our transportation for the week, three sturdy bicycles, two bearing little seats for the kids.  The first time we road “home” from a day of ministry on our bikes, I rode behind Pete and OJ.  Judah was in a seat nestled on Pete’s handlebars, and Ariel was behind OJ’s seat.  The weather was perfect, the kids were squealing, and the surrounding was gorgeous.  Our base liason brought us a road map…for bike paths.  There are more bike racks than parking spaces, and it is how everybody gets around, even (or maybe especially) the older folks. 

Our schedule was intense, especially since Erin had gone back to Tacoma.  We were down to one prayer team for the week, and trying to pray for everyone on the base at least once.  We had a few chances to teach the staff in the mornings and one evening, and the rest of the days were spent in prayer, rotating OJ, Pete and me through as the team.  The hardest part for me to relinquish to the Lord is always the kids, as I have so little control in these weeks over their experience.  I have had to trust Him that He’s going before us to prepare good things for them, over which I have no say.   And He’s blown my mind with His faithfulness to them.  This week in the Netherlands was so filled with sweet experiences and gifts from God to the kids, it overwhelmed me.  Heidebeek is nestled on some fields with a centre, a dining hall, and some bungalows for the base’s families.  Across from the family bungalows is a playground, big sandbox, and pigpen with two furry fat pigs in it.  In the bungalows are a whole community of toddlers and preschoolers who are free to play in the sunshine in front of their homes in total safety.  The base also has a preschool with ladies who love kids taking care of them for a few hours every morning.  They welcomed Ariel and Judah and allowed them to join the other kids for excursions to the playground, stories, games, etc.  By Wednesday Ariel was singing a little song in Dutch.  In the afternoons, Judah could nap in the crib in the empty preschool room.  I know I’m writing as a Mom right now, but as we have watched the Lord do miracles for person after person in the prayer room, these are the miracles He’s done for me, filling my heart. 

Ariel, Judah, and I walked down the lane for a walk one day (walks with a one year old and three year old are best when there’s no destination and you’re willing to lose a race with a snail), when a little buggy behind a dwarf horse came clopping up the road.  The kids were thrilled just to see it, when the driver pulled to a stop in front of us and asked, “Are you from the Tacoma team?”  I had no idea who she was, but affirmed that we were, and she immediately offered to pull the kids up for ride, right behind the little horse’s rump.  It was a huge treat for them, one that we could never have planned for.  Their days were filled with things like this, and all my ability to plan out good things for my kids were thoroughly trumped by God’s design for the week.  I’ll never forget riding a bicycle with Judah on the handlebars between my elbows, shouting, “Good morning, birdies!  Good morning, chickens!  Whoa…dat’s a big one, mama!  Big one!  Whoa, mama…we go fast!” 

I’ll put the stories of ministry in another blog, as this is getting so long.  One final story of Judah and his interactions with the animals…OJ took him over to look at the pigs in the pen one day, and after glaring at them for a moment, he began to address them with authority.  “You go over there, pig!  Get away, pig!  You go away, pig, right now!”  We had a good laugh over that.  That Judah…he’s one biblical baby.

The Wee Ones

Scots are so kind to kids.  We noticed as soon as we got there that instead of receiving annoyed glares, the kids were smiled at and enjoyed.  A friend here told me that they have a custom of putting money into the prams of strangers as they stroll their babies around.  I think Judah is a little too manly with his broad vocabulary, massive volume, and tendency to announce that he is in charge (literally—“I in charge!”) to attract any funds this way, but I try to use the stroller just in case.  

We have had personal experience of the pro-child climate, though.  For instance, we stopped at a gas station, and I ran a sleepy Ariel in for a potty stop.  I could tell from the moment I asked the question that there was no public bathroom at this station, but the ladies just looked at each other and said, “Is it for the wee one?  Oh, well, let me get the key…” and then led me back through a bunch of doors and storage.  And of course, we exited with several sweet comments and verbal caresses for my little redhead, most of which I couldn’t quite catch. You can drive ten miles down the road and suddenly find the accents totally incomprehensible.  I don’t know why the differences arise so suddenly.

Another time, Judah was losing it after a “day off” in the city of Ayr.  We were trying to take a fun day with the team, but it turns out the Ayr is for shoppers and café goers, which Judah and Ariel are not, and so Judah was in a high chair causing a ruckus at a coffee shop.  A lovely lady just walked right over to him from her nearby seat, and began to talk to him her sweet Scottish talk, mixing some general pleasantries with nonsense with gentle scolding, and utterly holding his attention.  “Tha’s right,” she said.  “Sometimes et just takes a defferent voice, and ma funny accent, and so you must be good, wee lad…” She smiled at us once he was calm and went back to her seat.  I sometimes think that even if for no other reason, God’s got a special blessing for Scotland.

Shortly after arriving in England, we took a couple days to visit my dear roommate from college and meet her dashing new husband, David. We toured a bit around Nottingham, laughed a lot, totally took to the new hubby, and remembered why we love Eb. Oh, and, of course, we prayed. The kids got to see a real, old castle (from the outside), and we ate at a pub that claims to be the oldest inn in England. It was a fabulous visit. Here’s pic of the kiddos, with the real Robin Hood, whom they recognize thanks to classic Disney. “I thought Robin Hood was a fox, not a man!”

The Kids in Nottingham

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It has taken us a while to get this site up and running.  You may have noticed the mismatching of the dates with the events.  Sorry about that, but we’re hoping to catch up to current news pretty quick here before we send out the link.  So, unfortunately, we’ll probably move quickly through a lot to get to now.

We arrived at the missions base at Harpenden, England, in a happy haze of jetlag and excitement.  OJ began his secondary mission of scouring the streets for Starbucks as soon as we hit the road from the airport to Harpenden.  Unfortunately, this mission is not going as well as the primary one; I think he’s only found one so far.  The wonderful folks at Harpenden treated us like royalty, giving our family a whole flat to spread out in.  Good thing, as we brought enough luggage to clothe the base.  I realized as soon as I opened the first bag that during the flight my mind had mysteriously been healed from the trauma called ‘moving,’ and I was awakened to a new reality of ‘packing.’  If the healing had happened a day earlier, we would probably have 100 lbs. less of luggage.

So we spent a few days connecting with the team already on the ground, meeting new friends, and recognizing faces from our trip to Harpenden 2 years ago.  We saw so many people whom we had met only when praying for them an hour during those ten hour days of intensive prayer on our previous trip.  It’s fun to get to know people you only know from prophetic prayer the normal way.  I was thrilled to find a bunch of them with new babies in their arms!  One of them was an amazing lady who had two older children and was for all intents and purposes “done.”  I clearly remember praying for her and her husband, and was blown away to see her a couple years later filled with joy and showing off her beautiful daughter.  “This was my surprise fortieth birthday present!” she said.  So it’s not just Tacoma where prayer and babies go together!  Praise God!

Initially we tried to let nature take its course in helping the kids with their jet lag, but when on our third night there Ariel didn’t fall asleep until sunup, we put them on a creative schedule to slowly move them by means of exhaustion closer to a normal schedule.  It involved many painful wakings of sleeping children (forgive me, Dr. Weissbluth), but it worked.  After a few days, they were much more on track, much more themselves.

We got a few chances to pray for the folks we came across over the next few days.  We experienced the kindest hospitality and warmth from so many there at Harpenden, and were so glad to be there as we got our feet underneath us.  We prayed mainly to encourage the teams that are trying to birth prayer team ministry there on the base, and lift them up in the battle to do so.  It is so easy to forget how opposed this ministry is, and so unveiling stuff coming against these mighty men and women was a huge treat.  Just to remind them how great they’re doing and why their job can be hard!  Since then, where we are in Scotland, we’ve come across folks who have been profoundly impacted by these new prayer teams born right here in the UK.  It’s the most exciting thing to come across–multiplication of initial investment made by our pastor and many other teams than us.  People being released in who they are being trained to do the prayer ministry, not merely receive it.

During our time at Harpenden the details for the first leg of the trip (destination Seamill, Scotland) were finalized, as well as the makeup of the team.  We sent off some amazing, beloved members who had travelled around England lighting people up before we arrived to their next adventures or some rest, and picked up Erin at Heathrow.  We jumped in a rental minivan to drive the seven hours up to Seamill.  The van crew was Pete, Erin, Ariel, Judah, OJ & me.  In a miraculous stuffing of our much downsized luggage (we stored a bunch at Harpenden), we all fit, most of us lodged in with various items around our feet and heads.  OJ drove, still searching the fields of sheep and sleepy towns we passed in vain for a Starbucks.  At the end of a long day, we made it to Seamill, Scotland, a missions base on the west coast of Scotland, home for the next little bit.