Leaving St. Lucia

Its official, we are leaving St. Lucia. On the 20th of Sep, it will be 8 months of living in missions. We are so excited to be going home, we have not been to our home town for almost 2 years! There will be so many new babies in the family, so many people we have not seen in so long! Our life here in missions has been so blessed, I know this is God's will for out family. While we are home we will be praying about our new mission post. That is also exciting, when you are abandoned to God's will you realize that the whole world is open to you. Two years ago I had never heard of St. Lucia, and even if I had I would never have dreamed that some day I would be leaving here. God is so good!

These last weeks are going to be very busy, we have so much to do. I'll try to post more this month. :)

Blessings,

Abi

Friends and Goodbyes.

This week has been busy, well the past FEW weeks have been busy. One of our friends, a young girl Jessica is going to be leaving St. Lucia at the end of this month. She wants to give her entire life to God by becoming a sister. She will be going to Jamaica to join Fr. Ho Lung's Missionaries of the Poor sisters. Needless to say I'm going to miss her. She has been such a blessing in the whole family. My little sisters adore her and scream her name when ever she comes over, covering her with hugs. She has also been a good witness to my sisters and I, especially the three of my sisters who are praying about Religious Life. Jessica has been trying to raise money to go, but its going to cost a lot. She told us a beautiful story that happened while she was at mass. She felt like God was asking her to do a special devotion to him, God says that when you say this devotion many graces and blessing will be poured out open the person. She agreed to say and did it, after mass a lady she did not know came up to her and told her that she had heard Jessica wanted to go to Jamaica. Then the lady asked her how much it would cost. Jessica told her and the lady then said she would pay for the entire ticket! We all praised God to hear about how he cares for the people he loves.

One of the other things that we are doing to help Jessica is with our Youth Group. We are putting on a production with little skits and music, we are going to ask people to donate money.

The other reason why this week has been busy is that my brother Peter was complaining of stomach pains. We soon guessed that it was his appendix. One of the sisters here, Sister Rosemary is studying to be a doctor. We asked her to come look at him and she confirmed our guess. My parents took him to the hospital where his appendix was removed. He spent two and a half days there before he was able to come home. He is now on the mend. We praise God that nothing bad happened and that the surgery went well.

God blesses his children in so many ways, He is so good to us.

Blessings,

Abi

People of St. Lucia

In one of my posts I shared some things we do here in St. Lucia. Today I'm going to talk about some people we know.

At this point in our life we have three boys that come over at night, sometimes up to five. Their ages range from 12 to 17. They come and spend some time, eat supper and then say our night prayers with us. Its a lot of fun having them over, they play with the little kids, do some school and just kind of hang out.

We also have some girls that come over on Sundays and others days durring the week. Their names are Jessica and Ericka, and are 21 and 23. Jessica is praying about being a nun in Italy, we are all very excited about that. Ericka is the older sister, right now she is in the hospital because she has sickle cell. Please pray for her! They are both a lot of fun, and I know that I am very glad for their friendship as I know very few girls my age. :D

On Sundays we have something of a Sunday School in which over 50 kids come. One boy, age 9 is the son of Jessica and Erick's friend. He is very funny and has an adorable smile. When I went to a Karaoke night at our parish I learned that he can't raise his eyebrows one at a time. So now when ever I see him I'll raise one eyebrow and smile, he will grin back and try to raise his eyebrow too. When he finally gives up we will burst into a fit of laughter.

Here at our house we live underneath 5 nuns. All of them are wonderful women of God, but my favorite has to be Sister Rosemary. She is training to be a doctor and has come to St. Lucia from Tanzania. She loves Issac!! Its so cute to see her playing with him. Now that he is walking she bought him some shoes. :D

These are just a few of the friends we have here. God has blessed us so much!

Some stories and pics!

Some cuties from the preschool. :)

Ocean view

The Cathedral

Issac being cute on the front porch

This is the basketball court we have in our back yard.

View from the court

(I'm not sure where this is.)

This past week has been busy! Our missionary friend James left us, to the sorrow of all. My little sisters even suggested that he ''give up going to Big Woods for lent." :) I can't remember if I told y'all yet, but one of the many things that happens over here is two young boys come over and we help them with school. At ages 15 and 14 they are a mixture of fun and trouble. The little kids like having two more older siblings, and Peter is enjoying more boys.

Another thing that we do here is give away food. The parish priest has been very generous and has helped us out with food. Giving us huge bags of rice, boxes of beans and such stuff. Seeing so much food, and so much need around us we came to the conclusion that God must want us to share! Right now we are preparing a couple for marriage, and the woman is about 8 1/2 months pregnant with a old year old. (Stuff like this happens a lot) She often stands all day in line at a government program to get some extra food, and often returns home empty handed. We have been overjoyed to help her out.

On Mondays, Wendsay and Fridays we go to the Parish Office to offer counseling, from 9:00 to 12:00. A lot of the times no one comes until the last hour. It is sometimes frustrating, to have people come within the last hour and not being able to spend more time with them. But God is calling us to be faithful not always successful. Something that has been on the hearts of my parents is to help start a Crisis Pregnancy Center. So many young women are left with little children with no help at all! It really is sad.

We are so blessed to have a chaple right on premise. One of the things we prayed for durring out Intake was for a chaple or church to be near by. God has blessed us SO much, and we get to have mass every morning. Life could not be better here.

Life.

Today I went to the home for the elderly right across from us, I was surprised there to find that my little sister, age 9 (almost 10! yikes!) was quite a favorite. A lot of the old ladies asked,

"Where is Esther?" "When is Esther coming to see me?"

On questioning her further I found out she goes there nearly every day! I so surprised and blessed by this.

Another surprise was meeting some Sisters of Charity (the order founded by Mother Theresa) they looked so beautiful and happy as they walked in to talk to some of the ladies. They where happy to meet us, telling us that the bishop told them about the family with 10 kids. :)

The San Lucians have been so welcoming, our new parish, the Church of the Sacred Heart, have been very glad to have us. Every day we seem to have a visitor. Just today we meet a lady who is a relative of one of our old ladies. She hugged all of us kids and kept saying
"Such beautiful kids!" She wants us all to come to her house.

So far I have been blessed beyond anything that I could imagine. God is so good!

This is it.

We are here. I am sitting in our great dinning room in San Lucia! The plane trip was smooth and littles where amazing. :) Last night we had dinner with our Archbishop (the food was really good!) and then came back home to get to bed. We arrived at 4 ish (if I remember correctly) and got to our home around 6 (?) As you can tell the lack of sleep is still affecting me.

Last night as I got into bed I really started missing everyone, so I talked to my mother and prayed. The frogs here making a lot of noise, so that and the sound of cars driving by sung me to sleep.

This morning we got more of a look around. The sisters thought of everything and our pantry and fridge is well stocked for the moment.

So that's all for the moment. Pics will be coming soon!

Only 10 days left!

Wow, only 10 days left till my family leaves for our first mission post. I think its finally sinking in that we are leaving! Slowly but steadily we are getting rid of extra clothing and toys, (we will each have one backpacks each) Anywho tonight is Desert night, every Sunday we have the missionaries over for desserts. :) Tonight we are having home popped pop-corn!

Blessings Lizzy.