My Bubbling Teapot

The weekend went way too fast and now that it's all history, I can hardly believe it ever happened. I couldn't have been happier when we decided to take the whole family back to Pennsylvania for weekend Youth Conference where John was one of the guest speakers. And the bonus was it was the church where Austin attends while he is teaching. Conrad decided to join us also and he flew in from WA. I hope we didn't traumatize anyone by descending upon their community, but they were very gracious hosts. They gave us a guesthouse with enough room for us all. That was a tremendous gift. It allowed us time together with Austin after all the scheduled Menno meals and snacks. :) I chose to treasure the moments we had as a family. Nothing big and earthshaking, but a feeling of settled contentment of being together. It was a pleasure to see where Austin churches and teaches and lives, and watching him in his world. And I discovered this wasn't my little boy anymore, but some

Is it a sign of old age? Or is it the fact that change has been constant in our lives this past five years? Our life has catapulted from one drama to the next in the few short years of leaving the ministry of our dreams--Poland. We brought our family of six home from the mission field in Dec 2011, one of the hardest moves we ever made. So many questions in our minds. Was it the right time? How will our teens integrate American/Mennonite culture? Did we make a mistake?  Two months after returning, I got pregnant. My baby was thirteen. What a roller coaster of emotion for us! But now our nearly four-year-old is an integral part of our home. She will never remember our adventures in Europe but she will make different memories with our family. One reason we moved back was to be near my mom who was fighting cancer. I will never regret that decision. We had over three years with her, a time for my children to learn to know their grandma, before she passed away now almost eighteen