Mary

Those crazy, screaming kids you hear outside laughing and thoroughly enjoying the snow, are probably mine!  Emma prayed and prayed last night for snow, and this morning was blown over at God’s answer!  So after they snarfed down their breakfast they bundled up and ran outside.  Emma says to me, “Mom, do the snow pants go on over your clothes or what?”  Wouldn’t do much good under your clothes, now would it?  They are having so much fun!

We are getting ready to have a Christmas here today with about 29 or 30 coming over.  We love being able to host and there are some coming that we haven’t seen yet since we came back.  So we are excited.

I just wanted to share about something I was reading about the other day.  I was reading in Luke 1 verses 29-38 where the angel came to Mary to tell her that she would be pregnant with the Son of God.  Now, that would be amazing!  One minute you are scrubbing floors and the next there is an angel standing in your kitchen.  Mary wants to know how this can be?  The angel talks about how the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and how nothing is impossible with God.  I would imagine that news like that would take some time to sink in.  But just like that the Bible says Mary replied, “I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”  And then the angel left her.

That would be a quiet moment.  Sitting there pondering what had just happened all alone.  Thinking things like:  Who is going to believe what kind of a morning I had?  How is the Holy Spirit going to come upon me?  When?   Will I feel different?  Oh, my!  What is Joseph going to think?  Me?  Carry the Son of God? 

Who do you think she told first?  If it was her Mother, I could imagine the Mother feeling her forehead to make sure she was well.  Or Joseph secretly thinking in the back of his head that maybe Mary was lying.  Or her Father thinking that he needed to protect her from getting stoned or ridiculed by others once she starts to show that she is pregnant.  Mary was an amazing girl to have such a heart for God.  It was not an easy task that she took.  But look how God blessed her. I want to be a woman with a heart like Mary.

You have to take a look at this clip:

http://youtu.be/kWq60oyrHVQ

Going to the Mall

Saturday we took the kids to see a family in Milwaukee that has a ministry to missionaries.  They help with debriefing, and transition.  Garth and I have met with them twice, and thought it would be wonderful for the kids to talk with them as well.  It turned out to be quite helpful.  The kids loved having someone to tell their stories to.  Everything they are going through is a normal part of transition, and culture shock.  I am glad that we went.

After that we decided to all go to Southridge Mall to see the Christmas decorations and do some shopping.  It was Christmas of 2006 the last time we went to a mall at Christmas as a family.  It was a bit crazy, and crowded, but we still had a good time.  We got our picture taken with Santana Dotson, and Leroy Butler of the Green Bay Packers, took the kids to the Disney store, Cale rode in the train, and we found a funny, glow in the dark mini-golf place.

Sunday we went to my parents for a nice meal and them decorated our own gingerbread houses.  They were very unique and creative.  It was a lot of fun! 

I put some pictures below.

Hope you are enjoying the season!

Love

Rachel

A Not-So-Normal Night

One of the traditions we had as a family before we went to Indonesia was to take a trip to Chicago each year at Christmas time.  Well, yesterday the kids had a half-day of school, and since Cale was feeling so much better we decided to start the tradition back up.
We love to see the store front windows of Marshall Field’s (now Macy’s), walk around Millennium Park, go to Christkindlmarket and look at all the booths, get a hot pretzels etc.  Well, it was busy like always.  Lots of people walking quickly with arms full of bags, people bumping into us, and we were bumping into them.  But then we came around a corner, and there was a Nativity set up with the Hallelujah chorus playing.  And people were stopping to stare.  It was beautiful!  It is amazing how the sight of Jesus can make you stop in awe.  The sign by the Nativity said “Keeping Christ in Christmas.” 
That is what we need to do.  Find the time to stop, and be in awe of what really happened that night so long ago.  That is what Christmas is truly about.  Not the hustle and bustle, the perfect tree, and the pile of presents.  But a quiet birth, a son that came while so many were asleep.  A normal night turned extraordinary!
Merry Christmas!
Rachel

Just a glass a day

So the other day I was talking to a German chemist.  He was telling me about the best anti-malaria, anti-dengue, anti-mosquito bite medicine known to man…Jack Daniels.  He said that if I would have drank a glass or two of that diluted every day I would never had gotten a mosquito bite the entire time in Indonesia.  Funny, huh?  That was one thing I never tried!  Boy, missions in our area would have been quite different if all the missionaries had taken that advice.

Our systems here in America are trying hard not to get every cough, cold and virus that is going around, but so far we haven’t been that successful.  Wyatt stayed home from school on Friday, and now Cale is sick with a fever.  It is up to 104-not sure why.  All these new germs that we haven’t seen for four years.  You don’t see that many colds in Indo, or chicken pox for that matter.

I read an interesting quote today.  It is written from the stand point of a child.  This is what it said:  “I wouldn't mind being grownup if I didn't have to get up & be grumpy right away every morning.”  It is funny, but for many, it is exactly true.  What about me?  How do I come across to my kids.  How do I come across to their teachers?  And the other people that I bump into when I am tired, or feeling grumpy?  I feel like I am always in the process of finding new things that I need to work on.  But it is a good practice, because I don’t want to be the kind of person that sits in the audience listening to the preacher thinking that the message is for those around me and not for me.

Your humor for the day:  I have to share this picture of Garth that we came across.  Guess which one is him?

Love you

Rachel

Holiday Week

Hope your Holiday week was wonderful.  Ours was.

We had our niece Rachel stay with us for awhile.  She is going to school in Madison.  We also had Cale’s 6^th birthday party, Thanksgiving at our house, ringing the Salvation Army bell, chopping down our Christmas tree, and celebrating Garth’s birthday.  (I won’t tell you how old he is.)

It was great fun for us to have Thanksgiving with family.  We had sweet potatoes that weren’t purple.  And real American turkey.  Garth cooked the bird and it was super yummy!  There was my Mom’s famous pear jell-o and my sister’s famous raspberry jell-o, (We didn’t have Jell-o in Indo.  There was this stuff called agar-agar and it was made from seaweed…not the same.)  And real cranberries!  I love cranberries!  But even better than the food, was the family time.  It is always precious!

Speaking of Indo - Please continue to pray for Sentani.  Due to some problems that were going on, the dorm we left has now been shut down, and the  kids have been shuttled off to people’s homes.  The dorm parents are going back to the States, and all of the Indonesian helpers are without work.  There is unrest, and unknowns regarding what will happen in the future.  They are in desperate need for some good, committed people to minister there as dorm parents.  Please pray for that need.  And for us, as it is so sad to see all of this happening to people we care so deeply for.

Here are some pictures of our week:

Bananas

Imagine being the first person to discover bananas.  You pull the fruit down from a tree and take a bite of the peel.  Such a bitter, awful flavor.  What if you didn’t know that there was something wonderful underneath that skin, and you threw that banana onto the ground?  You would be missing out on such a sweet, delicious taste.

I think we do that sometimes with people.  We see the outside and decide what the inside must be like.  Or we give someone one chance, and it doesn’t have great results, so we “throw them away”.  We don’t realize that there is something beautiful underneath, if we just take the time to find it.

The Kite

So the crazy Erickson kids woke up on Saturday and asked if they could go out and wash the cars.  It was a beautiful day and they had a blast doing that.  Later we went to the park to fly Cale’s kite and have a picnic.  It was starting to get cold out at that point so we were pretty much a table full of icicles eating sandwiches.  Haha.  (By the way, did you see the wonderful rainbow in the sky?  Don’t know if I have ever seen one quite like that.)

When we first got to the park we had a hard time getting the kite up.  I couldn’t figure out what Cale and I were doing wrong.  The kite just would not fly right.  It kept twisting around and around and falling to the ground.  For awhile Cale had fun pretending it was his puppy by letting it drag behind him as he ran around. But I knew that he would have so much more fun with the kite if we could get it up in the air.  So I took a look at it, and realized that it was hooked up wrong.  I moved the hook to the other side and told him to try one more time.  It went up right away.  He was amazed.  Then the fun began.  He flew that kite for the longest time laughing with glee and amusement.  It made me think about how God created each of us for a purpose.  Sure we can go through life, doing what we want, trying to make ourselves happy, living for the world.  We will be like a kite being pulled behind a 5 year old.  Or we can use our gifts and talents, seek God’s will in our lives, do things for His glory, and be like a kite soaring through the sky-living out the purpose for our creation.

Unlikely for Cale, our story has a “sad” ending.  The wind blew the kite in a tree and it could not be recovered.  If you happen to drive by the Field House you just may see it in one of the trees.  It will most likely be there until spring.  Bummer!

Love

Rachel

SNOW!

My kids are crazy!  They were so excited to see the snow.  They were out playing in it this morning before school.  Yes, they were absolutely freezing but loving every minute of it.  At one point the snow stopped and Emma raised up her hands in prayer to God for it to start up again.  If any of you are praying against the snow, I just want you to know that you will probably not win.  If the number of prayers have anything to do with the outcome, Emma, Sophie and Cale are offering up non-stop prayers for more snow.  It has been four years since most of them have seen snow.  Cale and I saw 3 weeks of it in 2009, but the rest of them haven’t.

Sophie was five when we went to Indo.  She said today that the snowflakes are not as she thought they would be.  She thought they would be bigger and like you see in the books.  When she woke up and saw the snow, she exclaimed, “Mom, it is like a miracle!”  Cale said, “Snow is like floating water.”  Emma said, “I am loving snow already.”  Not exactly sure what Wyatt thinks.  He is greatly missing Indo, so the snow is an intrusion, and the cold is annoying.

I love it!  Love, love, love it!  I can’t wait to wake up and see everything covered in white!  I agree with Sophie.  It is a miracle!

Love you

Rachel

Yahoo!

I had a really cool God experience today, and I couldn’t wait to tell you about it.  On Saturday I misplaced my wallet.  I wasn’t sure exactly where or when I had lost it so we have been retracing my steps:  the library, the Laundromat…all around the house.  Well, we couldn’t find it.  As a family we just kept praying about it and looking. 

Today, Monday, Garth said he was going to call and cancel my credit card, and we talked about how I would need to get a new license.  But I asked him to wait another day, and he agreed.  Tonight, I was reading a magazine on the couch when the doorbell rang.  It was a police officer.  He said that a lady at the gas station found my wallet and saw inside that it had my name, Rachel Erickson, in it.  The police officer “happened” to be at the gas station as well and she asked him if he knew me since his name was also Erickson.  He said he didn’t know me but would use the address on my card to find me and return the wallet!

How cool is that?  Coincidence?  No way!!  That whole incident was God-driven.  I am so very thankful!  What a fantastic picture of how God cares about the little things as well as the big.  I told the police officer that he was an answer to my prayers.

Yahoo!  God is good!!

Love you

Rachel

Whoever

I was thinking about the verse John 3:16 yesterday.  What if it didn’t say “God so loved the world?”  What if He only loved Africa?  Or just Utah?  And what if it didn’t say “Whoever believes in Him?”  What if instead of “whoever” it had a list?  Those who have no track record of breaking any laws, were respectful to their parents, went to college, no owed debts, and on and on.  My goodness!  The line of people that could get into Heaven would be quite small.  I am so thankful for the “whoever” being in there!

That made me think of something else.  If I really believe that salvation is available to “whoever”, then that means the lady at the checkout of Piggly-Wiggly that is having a bad day.  It means the teacher at school that is sick and could use some soup, or the kid that calls my son “gay” because he is a Christian.

The “whoevers” are all around me.  What am I doing about it?

Rachel

The Girls

Today was a rough day for some in our family.  Garth left at 1 to drive to Wausau for a visitation service. He will be home late tonight. The girls came home from school, each with their own “sadness”.  From reading Culture Shock books and talking to people that have gone through what we are going through I recognize it as part of their adjustment period.  It comes in waves of ups and downs.  The raw emotions of transition don’t hit you all at once.  It comes upon you at different times.  I thought it was interesting that they both picked today.  I was with each of them separately, one took the bus, one rode with me.  They didn’t influence each other’s mood. However, they were both really missing Indo and their friends today.  I know they don’t try to but they compare this world we are coming to know with the world full of all the familiar, and they miss it.

Pray for me to have wisdom in knowing how to help them.

Thanks.

Love you

Rachel

Our Miracle!

This is our miracle!!  Last week we couldn’t fit all the kids that wanted to go to church and this week we can.  Last week we couldn’t drive anywhere all together as a family and now we can!!

Some friends of ours bought us a van!!!  Can you believe it?  Our friend Robb bid on it at the Inspiration Ministries auction and got this 1999 Plymouth Voyager for us.  What a blessing!  We are thrilled!  God is so good, isn’t He?  We can’t even believe it sometimes how He cares for us in such a sweet, tender way.

On a completely different note, check out the size of the grape we got this week!  The big kids went online to see if it could go in the Guinness World record book.  Cale just wanted to eat it.  Sophie wanted to bring it to school and show it off.  It’s huge isn’t it?

Well, I couldn’t wait to share with you about the van.  We are so excited about it!

Thanks for praying.

Rachel

The Presentation

We had a great time today doing a presentation for both sixth grades at the Bay school.  We had an hour and a half and taught the kids how to count, looked at what the culture was like, and the money along with many of the fun things we were able to do and the cool wildlife we were able to see.

When we got home one of the teachers called and asked if we could come back sometime and speak about the food and the different games the kids learned while they were there.  Sophie came home from school saying that her teacher wants us to do the same presentation for the fourth graders.

What great opportunities to talk about missionaries and open the kid’s eyes to a world beyond what they know.

We will also be doing a program for the first through fourth graders at church this weekend.  It will be exciting to see how God uses what we are sharing to impact the lives of those hearing it.

Tonight for Awana and Youth Group we had some kids in our driveway asking if they could go with us.  However, we only have a vehicle that fits 5 right now.  Emma and I stayed home because she was sick, so one of the girls was able to go, but the other two couldn’t fit, and their Mom couldn’t take them.  Keep praying that we find a vehicle that will fit all six of us or more so we can pile the neighbor kids in on Wednesdays.  We don’t have money to spend on it, so we are praying for a miracle.  God is good at miracles isn’t He?

Pray for Wyatt as well.  He is really missing Indo.  I found these two signs that he made the other day.

Love you

Rachel

Weekend News

Friday

We had the Homecoming parade for the Bay today.  Wyatt is in Band so he marched holding the Band sign.

Saturday

I was such a proud Momma today.  Wyatt is on a club team for soccer and they had a game today.  I don’t know exactly what happened, but one of the players on the other team went down and didn’t get up right away.  While the players all stood around looking at him, Wyatt went up and offered the kid his hand and helped him up.  I told him later that I saw Jesus today in him when he did that.

I have a new theme verse for myself.  It is in John chapter 4 verse 39.  This Bible section is talking about the woman at the well that has had five husbands.  Jesus starts talking to her about her life, she gets all excited and runs to tell the town about this man she met.  The townspeople come to see Jesus and the verse says, “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony…”  I want that to be me.  I want people to see Jesus, I want people to believe, I want lives to be changed because I am reflecting Christ.

Sunday

The Missions conference is over.  Garth and I had quite a bit to do for that, along with two soccer games of Wyatt’s.  We had a great time sharing with the kids about Indonesia, and talking to everyone that stopped by our booth. 

I had a lady stop me the other day and say that her daughter was in our presentation at the Bay school.  She said her daughter came home and spoke for 45 minutes about what we had shared!  Cool Beans!

Here is a picture of us freezing at one of Wyatt’s games.  Cale was warm because he was rolling down the hill.  (That’s what I should have done.)  Haha.

Love you

Rachel