Ahh, surprise! I wanted to blog daily, and I haven't been on since July. Sad, but true.
Good thing no one reads this blog. Of course, if anyone did I might actually feel pressure to post!
It's been a busy few months, mostly cooking baby, but a few road trips, a renaissance festival as vikings, a few parades, and more cooking baby.
Big news is we've applied for (and looks like we'll be receiving a call) to be Missionaries for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. What does this have to do with anything Malaysian? Well, originally we thought they might send us to SE Asia, since we do have much more Asian experience. We are, it looks like, however, going to Nairobi Kenya.
I am terribly excited about this. My AFS connections extend to Nairobi and I'm looking forward to learning much about Africa! And, Africa is closer to Malaysia than here! Also closer to India.
Right now, with baby coming any day, I'm nesting a lot, and I find myself constantly trying to decide what to toss, what to save in storage for some day in the distant future and what to bring with, possibly, and what to bring with, definitely!
I found out today that our weight allowance will be 5,600lbs. I knew we weren't taking furniture with us. But we're definitely NOT taking furniture with us at that weight limit. Now the real test becomes how many books can we bring for that weight limit. Clothes are easy. Toys are easy. But books and kitchen stuff... That will be a test!
And the big thing is we have no idea how long we'll be in Kenya, or overseas. We've applied for Career missionary and we are perfectly willing to be there long term. But what stuff do you store for 20 years? 30 years? What's the point in storing it for that long? Will we even come back?
A friend of mine said, when I told her we were going, that she didn't think we'd ever come back permanently. She might just be right. Who knows.
In order to get the kids excited about Africa (I had them excited about SE Asia because Nenek lives there), we watched Out of Africa (they are SO excited about the animals). I keep thinking of Karen Blixen and her limoges. Of course I don't bring my Wedgewood. But what if we end up retiring in Africa at the end? Why keep it? Sigh....
A friend said I shouldn't bring anything of value to me in case we have to leave quickly sometime and leave it behind. But, what's the point of having things, I don't have actually valuable anything, just some pretties (ok, a LOT), if you just keep them in storage. I think there are some that will end up getting packed and brought with me.
Now I am extremely thankful that I bought a scale that goes to 550lbs because I can easily weigh boxes and piles to know how much things will weigh! I can get a really really good idea of how much things weigh.
To do this, Mr Top Gun will, of course, be retiring from the Air Force next summer. I wonder if they'd do our final move to Africa? Probably not... But hey, the US military will pay to move our stuff one last time, and they'll move 18,000lbs.... Maybe I'll look into that! Definitely wouldn't have 18,000 lbs of stuff to move, but then we wouldn't have to decide about quite so much! ;) Of course, where to store it in the interim would be tricky.... But right now it's just conjecture because we have to be offered the call first.
In the meantime, I'm looking at recipes for Kenyan food, and starting to expose everyone to Swahili and thinking about what clothes we absolutely won't need there.
Packing up after Christmas will be extremely interesting! So much to throw away!
