New Life Blog

After a few days of figuring out the language & the people & all the tasks, today we REALLY found our sweet spot! The worker bees up at the Kinder (old “kindergarten” building now a community center) have finished scraping & repairing the outside wall & repainting the...

Tuesday arrived & both teams got straight to work- half grabbed their ladders & drills & tools & headed down the hill and the other half grabbed referee shirts, stacks of nametags, plastic beads & fruit snacks for our first day of VBS!  The community center wall is...

After a fairly light entrance into our trip, Monday came with a vengeance as we began our preparations for a 3-day VBS as well as a gargantuan concrete project in a former school now used as a community center. After a yummy breakfast in our hotel and Ed’s devotional from Matthew about our...

Mama Cindy again- hugs from Anonos! We woke up to a cloudy morning followed by rain then bright sun all during breakfast The weather has been very weird, but without snow or ice or freezing temps, we’ll take it! After passing out in our beds, exhausted from an 18-hour-travel-day, we woke...

With a 4 am arrival time, 9 people, and 37 bags, our team left cold snowy Ohio for sunny Costa Rica! Despite a few grouchy airport workers we had 2 quick easy flights, followed by looooong lines in Immigration & baggage claim! We quickly got to work meeting with David & Angie to be...

Hello Friends! Our trip is winding down but we still have plenty going on! The men-folk are holding soccer (futbol) camps with the older boys then the younger ones. Others are still working on the church and visiting with sponsored children. We had an impromptu reading time with some kids who...

Oliotye- that's HELLO in Luganda, the tribal language spoken in Uganda. Teammate Laura Sheppard has made it her mission to speak Luganda as much as she can - she gets lots of laughs & applause for her efforts! Most people speak English but we often translate into Luganda for activities! Our...

  Huh?? This is a thing?? I guess all over the world people (men?? kids? other women?) take March 8 to honor women. I googled and saw that the “holiday’ grew from the labor movement at the turn of the century. (That makes me think of Fantine from Les Miserables when she worked...

It was early Sunday morning & I found myself here- at the Gahanna Campus - for both Celebrations a few weeks back. I was wandering through the back hallway and as I peeked in a classroom I saw a table full of physically & mentally challenged adults studying the Bible and praising...

Normal Mom Text: “Hey mom, let’s have lunch on Tuesday! Oh, and can I borrow your cupcake pan?” My Text Today: “Eeeek – Mommy – we just had a really big earthquake and I was home alone and David ran up from the church to protect me!!!!” Way to get...