Family Sledding

Because we are without a car up here in the north, we have had to rely on our family to transport us from Reinholds to Adlers and back to Reinholds. The last transport took place yesterday when almost all the Reinholds (except Caleb) drove over to VT for an afternoon of sledding and to bring us back to NH. They were enticed by our sweet video that we posted a few days ago.

After eating a yummy lunch prepared by our moms, we trekked up to the hill behind our VT cabin fully equipped with 3 large snow tubes and 3 sleds. We were anticipating frozen trails after all our hard work of cutting through the two feet of snow on Monday. Our work did indeed pay off and we had a blast heading down the hill in ones, twos, and sometimes threes on our winter crafts.

Eric was determined to make a video that looked back up the hill and followed someone coming down in a tube behind him. This meant he had to sit backwards in a sled while Ben drove it and try to keep the camera steady enough to capture the person in the tube behind him. We tried this several times but the tube always went a different direction so we settled for whatever footage we could get and made a few attempts to all go down the hill together in different sleds and tubes. This ended when my dad got slammed in the elbow and we decided it was time to pack up and head for NH.

At the end of the day, only one out of the three tubes was still intact and could hold air. They just don't make them like they used to! We finished our adventure with some yummy pie (made by my mom) and hot chocolate. You can see from the pictures that after many white washes, you can get a lot of snow caked on your face and hat. It was a cold and fun day!

P.S. We reccommend for your entertainment that you type in the phrase "squirrel launcher" into YouTube and watch what comes up.

Christmas Sledding

Bethany and I are at her parent's house. It is a nice Vermont home settled on the top of a mountain - but it can be hard to get to in a 2 wheel drive car. We are here to celebrate an early Christmas, say "Hi" to the Adler family, and to do some sledding!

About two feet of powdery snow has fallen in the last couple of days. This snow does not accumulate on the ground near our new home in Tucson, so it must be taken advantage of while we are here in New England! So Bethany, her sister, two friends (who are twins) and myself grabbed sleds and began a short hike to an open patch of mountain slope.

It took us several tries down the slope and a good bit of effort to create some trails in all that fresh powder. Once we had created a nice trail a pair of snowmobils showed up driven by Bethany's neighbors to help make trails! By the end of the afternoon we had created some pretty good trails to go down and we are excited to go again tomorrow! (Please see the video of one of our sled runs.)

The First Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our beloved family and friends! We are enjoying a warm cozy night, in from the rain, letting our tummies digest all of the food we stuffed in earlier this evening. It has been a lot of fun to have Dan here from Houston celebrating with us and helping to prepare our Thanksgiving feast.

Dan arrived yesterday evening while I was at ladies small group so he was able to go shopping with Eric for my birthday, which we delayed celebrating because we were at a house on Friday. They bought a yummy turtle ice cream cake and sang to me before we chatted around the table and then headed for bed. Because of the ice cream cake, we didn't make any pies for our Thanksgiving meal.

This morning we mapped out a plan of how we should accomplish the food preparation so we could eat around 4:00. Our turkey was actually just a turkey breast so we expected it to cook in 2 hours. At the same time, however, we were popping other casseroles in and out of the oven so when it was time for us to eat, the mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing and onions were all ready and the turkey had barely begun to cook. Alas, our eating time was pushed back to 6:00 but everything was still quite yummy. We were satisfied with the outcome of our first Thanksgiving meal, especially because we worked well together as a team to get it all done.

There are so many reasons to be thankful this year and we continue to give glory to God for the way He has provided for us. The church we have been attending has reminded us to be especially thankful for the gift of salvation because that is our greatest need and because of grace, we have no reason to fear. Eric and I are also so thankful for the gift of each other as we venture through life together now and attempt to love and take care of children here in Tucson.

Prayers: For energy for this next respite. That God would encourage us and let us know this is where He wants us and our gifts or guide us to whatever else He would have.

Praises: That Dan came and encouraged us this Thanksgiving by visiting! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

All in a Day's Hike

After living in Tucson for 3 whole months, we finally ventured out to the local recreational attractions which, as you can imagine, include cactus and desert. We packed a lunch this morning and drove to Sabino Canyon which is on the North East side of Tucson at the border of the Coronado National Forest. I still haven't seen much reason to call it a forest but it's a huge area so maybe we will get a chance to find the trees sometime. Sabino Canyon was recommended to us as a great place to start our adventures around here so we took the advice and drove over to the park. After paying for parking and getting a little direction from the visiting center we headed down the long paved road that goes into the canyon. The road is a very popular spot for walking, hiking, and riding bicycles and the only other traffic on it are the little trams that give guided tours of the canyon. The road follows the small brook that winds down through the canyon and along the way there are rest areas with bathrooms and places to sit and eat lunch. We started out right around noon, with 3.7 miles of paved road in front of us.

Our first exciting discovery was that the brook had water flowing in it and there were trees along the river bed turning nice shades of golden from the autumn weather.


This picture reminds me of verses in the Bible that talk about the man who is like a tree planted by streams. (see Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17:7-8 for starters). Living in the desert gives you a lot of great pictures for images that are described in the Bible.

We stopped about half way up the paved road to eat our lunch and then kept trekking. The canyon walls got increasingly higher as we went further along and the rock formations and layers in the canyon walls were fascinating to see. We took lots and lots of pictures and then weeded through the ones that give a good representation of what we saw.

Finally, we reached the end of the paved road but our adventure was only half way over.

Our map showed us a trail that went back down towards the parking area but this path was half way up the canyon wall! Instead of turning around, we headed up the narrow trail and found ourselves overlooking the paved road from quite a ways up. By this time, my legs and feet were tired and it was starting to get hot from the sun. This part of the hike was lots of fun though because we saw some super tall catci up close and there was no one on the trail so it was quiet with lots of interesting things to look at and take pictures of.

All in all, we hiked close to 9 miles by the time we reached the car at 6 p.m. I was reminded of my days on STEP when I would hike 9 miles and then sleep on the ground and eat over a fire. Once in the car, I announced to Eric that I would be taking a bath and soaking my feet after dinner and enjoying our nice mattress in a climate controlled environment. A bath felt great! Our adventure today whetted our appetite for more exploring to come. Next time we might tackle one of the mountains that surrounded the city of Tucson.

A note for prayer: A couple weeks after we arrived in Tucson and did our first respite we shared that a family of four siblings was going home again to live with their dad and his girlfriend. This sibling group included the 3 year old boy that we loved to have fun with. Unforuntately, their dad made an unwise choice and the four children are back in GAP with little to no hope of going home again. They are living in the house that they lived in while they were here for 2 and a half years and now there are 15 children at Splash 4! Yikes! Please keep everyone involved in the situation in your prayers (including us because we are doing respite there right before we come home for Christmas!).

Newsboys Concert

Romans 12:21 says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This phrase is taken out of a passage about love and living at peace with others. It also talks about not repaying evil for evil. I have been thinking about this passage a lot because of all the dark influences tearing away at the kids who are in GAP. Rejection from family, abuse, neglect, and a sense of hopelessness is heavy upon these kids. Many of them immerse themselves in music, MTV, and other forms of digital entertainment that they can identify with or succeed in. I bring the kids to church and they will say to my face, "I love Satan" or "Jesus is gay". In this environment it is easy for me to believe that Christ is not as enticing and wonderful as He needs to be to break into their lives. I am tempted to believe Jesus is a better way of life instead of remembering He is a risen King with a growing kingdom! The foolishness of the gospel can feel like it is nothing more then foolishness on some days. The kids certainly seem to want me to believe that.

But God reminds me that He can break into this darkness with His irresistible light. I took four of the kids to a Newsboys concert who originally did not want to go because it was a Christian band. These were the same kids who had told me those nasty things about Jesus I mentioned earlier. However as the songs continued to play and thousands of individuals sang out their praise to God I could see these kids wrestling with the truth. Nothing these kids knew of was worth singing and dancing for and yet they were surrounded by people dancing with joy. I had a kid on my shoulders who was raising his hands and praising Jesus as we danced. (It was a high point of the night)

At the end of the concert a brief gospel message was presented and every kid I brought to the concert wanted to accept Christ. These kids need hope so badly. They need something worth singing and dancing about. Even though I have not the foggiest idea of how God spoke to their hearts that night or how they will be next time Bethany and I come to take care of them. God reminded me of something. He reminded me that He is glorious, He is light, He is irresistible, He is worth singing to, He is worth dancing for, and He can break into hopeless situations and give hope even to children who think their lives are so pointless that they should end.

God also has revealed to me that I do not fully trust Him to take care of these kids. I catch myself believing I need to do everything to train these kids to be successful in life and that burdensome responsibility I put on myself weighs me down. I need to do my part and then trust God, moment by moment, to do the rest.

Prayers: For Bethany and I to be able to trust God with these kids so much that discouragement does not hinder us and peace remains with us, even in dark situations.

Praises: God is bigger than me! He calls men to Himself with His love and glory. It is not my job to make God attractive or cool. He is holy, powerful, and majestic. He is entirely capable of revealing Himself as such. He did it for Paul and He did it for these kids. God cares for the lowly and has reminded me that His light and redemption outshines the darkness of hopelessness and sin! Praise God for that!

The New HP

Once there was an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Shang Hai, China with an address for Tucson, Arizona. Before the journey of this laptop reached its end, it traveled from China to Alaska and from Alaska to Tennessee. From Tennessee it went to Tucson and landed at the door of Casa Madera apartment 11201--The Reinholds!!


You can imagine our excitement as we opened up the box and began setting up our new computer. Fortunately for us, Hewlett Packard sent us a nice set of directions to get us going in the right direction.


The first thing Eric did after we registered it, was to make sure we could have it run as fast as possible! It does go pretty fast although we have a slow wireless Internet connection that hinders it a bit. We can't complain about free wireless though. Now we are slowly adding things and figuring out how to customize it and make it our own. My own version of customizing it was to put a picture of our wedding ceremony as the background. Eric wanted a picture of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings but I got to pick in the end.

Fall is back again in Tucson after a long hot spell. Today I turned on the heat because I was so cold in our apartment and it feels colder outside although all of you New Englanders would say it feels nice and warm. It got down to 60 in our apartment last night and wasn't getting past 65 with no heat on so that's when I decided to make it warm again in here. Tomorrow is pay day which means go shopping for pants and sweaters. Tomorrow night we start our next 5 day respite and that begins a period of hard work before we fly home on the 13th of December! We are certainly looking forward to that.

Operation Friendship

One of the reasons it has been great for us to be on break (besides healing up Eric's body) has been the chance to socialize and make friends with our co-workers and people in our small group.

Our first chance to meet up and hang out was actually not with our fellow Arizonians but our fellow Houghton grads. On Tuesday night we went to a restaurant here in town called P.F. Chang's and arranged to meet up with a couple that we knew at Houghton who just barely got married and were visiting relatives down here after their honeymoon. We thought we were the crazy ones moving 3,000 miles away right after tying the knot but they are also taking on quite an endeavor. Jesse is already a pastor in Australia and after coming home to marry Jessica, they went on their honeymoon to Yosemite, visited Jesse's grandmother in Tucson, then headed to Kansas to have a wedding reception near Jesse's family. From Kansas they head back to Australia to start their lives together. Phew! We had a wonderful time chatting with them about life after college in the "real world" and all the new things you learn when you enter that stage of life. We also got to share many fun stories and it was great to laugh and talk with them about the ins and outs of relationships, working with kids, moving long distances and being in ministry.

On Wednesday night I was able to go to the birthday party of a girl in our small group and we had a fun time eating out and then bowling afterwards. It is somewhat intimidating to enter into an already established network of friends but these girls are very sweet. I'm excited about the chance to hang out with them more and build friendships with other married girls that are my age.

Tonight Bethany and I celebrated Halloween. We decided to dress up as William and Marion Wallace. You can see some of our nice Halloween pictures when the blogger lets us upload pictures again. Halloween is definitely more fun when you live in a safe neighborhood full of other people who want to celebrate. Each house probably gives out candy to around 300 children during the course of the night. Bethany and I went to a "haunted house" where a big spider lay in wait for us. Upon approaching, the hairy eight-legged beast charged at us and Bethany gasped while Eric's heart and body jumped. Luckily it was just a motion activated robot and it returned to its web.

I, Eric, have to make up two days of GAP work that I missed while I had mono. Instead of making up 16 hours of work I have to make up 28 hours of work. Three and a half normal work days. I am somewhat frustrated about this scenario and unsure if I should bring it up or not. Next time I will just work with mono! I may be making up some of my hours doing marketing and IT work for GAP though, which would be nice.

Prayers: That God will continue to keep mono from Bethany. That will be a miracle if she does not get the disease and that is what we are praying for! Also pray for us as we still strive to make spiritual disciplines a regular part of our life again. This has been a struggle for us since college. And pray for us to find some great friends!

Praises: Halloween was fun! We are beginning to see the potential for some friendships down here. Praise God that I might be able to use some of my marketing experience and creativity to help GAP and make up hours.

More Tough News

Alas, I was hoping to be able to post pictures of our adventures over the next two weeks since we have time off and the weather is now a decent temperature to go exploring. Instead, we received the deflating news today that Eric has mono. Our hopes were high that it was just going to be strep throat and he would receive a good treatment and be recovered in no time. The doctors, rather, said "Sorry guys" and sent us on our way. The only treatment is fluid and sleep. We immediately composed a shopping list which included more fluids, more throat losanges, more Vitamin C for me and a DVD player so that he can watch movies. Now we just have to work on the TV part but we may be able to borrow one from a friend.

I'd have to say that both of our spirits are somewhat low from this news. We are fortunate that we don't have work scheduled for two weeks because it may take that long for him to be feeling up to work again. Our supervisor is trying to figure out coverage for the house we were supposed to go to this weekend and I may have to do it with another person for the two days. Fortunately, it is close by so I would be able to make frequent checks on him.

For now, his resting place is on our futon which folds out into a nice full size bed. Pray for him to be able to sleep as much as possible so that he can recover soon and pray for my protection against the virus. No kissing for a while! =(

Prayers and Praises

Tonight there are many things on my brain and I'm starting to enjoy using this blog as a way to get my thoughts out and maybe provoke some thought and prayers in your own life. Eric is currently asleep in bed with a temperature of 101.2. He's had a terrible sore throat for the past three days. I wasn't worried about it until I took his temperature and when I saw that he had a fever, I got a little nervous. Right now we are in between health insurance until our previous insurance companies send proof that we were covered prior to this job. I'm a little worried about the cost of taking him to the doctor if he should need antibiotics or something. It's possibly strep but we are not sure. So send up a little prayer for him especially because the sore throat keeps him awake. And pray that our certificates of insurance come in the mail tomorrow.

Today we ended the third respite of the month and we will be back to the same house on Friday night to cover while the couple attends a relatives wedding. Yesterday I essentially had to run the show by myself because Eric was feeling so wretched. It was somewhat satisfying to feel like I could feed and keep track of 7 children but I was also entirely wiped out when I tried to get up at 5:30 again this morning so Eric took a turn and let me catch up on some sleep despite his illness.

This respite was pretty smooth and quiet but I had to do more medical visits than on any other stay. I realized that when we have our own children, Eric might have to go to the appointments when they get shots because I will probably pass out. On Friday I took one girl to her physical and she got two shots. I had to put a magazine up in front of my face and read it so I couldn't see the needles. Then on Saturday, I took the oldest boy to Urgent Care because he had a big bubble of something on the back of his ear lobe. The doctor had to open it up and drain it. Now I know why they put magazines in doctor's offices. They are for whimpy parents like me who can't handle blood, needles, knives, pain, etc.

The last medical visit was a medicine review for a boy that is new to the house. He is ten years old and he has been on my heart ever since hearing his story and taking him to see the doctor. I'll call him "Luke" for now. Luke has a twin sister at another foster home outside of GAP and he misses her a lot. He and his sister were taken from their mom because of abuse. Today I learned that at one point his mom held him over the bathtub with a gun to his head and told him that she would blow his brains out. Luke is on medication for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he's pretty reserved and quiet. During the med review I listened to the doctor explain that neurologically Luke's brain has actually formed differently because of neglect and abuse and it takes years of good therapy and love and care to ever build trust and attachment again. Fortunately, he is doing very well at the GAP house and he especially has a great relationship with Don who is the dad there. His story is an example to me of a child that needs a miracle. Pray for him and his twin sister. Right now Luke doesn't sleep very well and part of it is due to fear. He also gets fearful when he is outside of a safe home because he's afraid that his mom will find him. His mother is in jail and she also needs a miracle. His story breaks my heart and I am looking forward to seeing how the love of Jesus can somehow transform his life.

On a more cheerful note, we bought plane tickets today to come home to New England on December 13th and we will be able to stay for two weeks! Eric talked to our supervisor and he is willing to let us keep our schedule through December and then if we are not willing to work 18 days a month, we would have to take a pay cut. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it but I am thankful that he was understanding and that there seems to be a way we could work things out. I have seen pictures of the fall in New England this year on facebook and my friend's blog and I am jealous that I am not there to enjoy it. I think I will love the warmth in February but right now I miss the changing of seasons.

Yes, I am sad about the Red Sox.

Well, I'm almost done with The Return of the King from Lord of the Rings so I think I will enjoy that and go to sleep. Hopefully we can post pictures soon of some of our wanderings in the area.

Thanks for listening! Good night!

Tough Situation

Yesterday was a tough day for us. We met with our supervisor who gave us encouraging words about our work here and how we are doing. The house parents like us, we are growing in the ways we work with kids, and we are appreciated for the work we are doing. He then informed us that our hours were being increased to 18, 24-hour shifts a month rather than the 15 we had when we started the job. Both of our hearts sank when we heard this news because we already see the ways that this job puts strain on several important areas of our lives. We are a newly married couple who are not only trying to communicate about how to live together and make decisions about finances, recreation, spirituality, friends, and other decisions but we also have to communicate and agree on how to raise and parent children all at the same time! This, my friends, is no small task for a newly wed couple when we have 10 troubled kids. Most importantly, we work in a job that requires consistant fellowship and communion with the Lord in order to love those who are often quite unloveable. All of these areas of our lives have been challenged because of the schedule of this job. Eric is feeling sick again right now.

Initially, we agreed to come down here because we were told the ministry would be flexible and work with our new marriage. They said possibly we would only work two respites and provide some nights out. Then upon arrival it was changed to 15 days on and 15 days off. Eric fought to ensure that this is how the schedule would stay, even asking for it to be in our contract. Eric was already feeling the busyness of the job. We then found out that we would not be given the privilege of weekends and thus regular church attendance would be around once a month at best. We believe the 15 days off could work if we are given time to settle in and work on cultivating the areas of our lives that are feeling under attack: our relationship with the Lord, our marriage and our fellowship with other believers. But right now 18 days seems overwhelming. For those of you who think this is easy because you work 5 days a week 9 hours a day with only weekends and evenings off...let me show you a comparison: 5 days a week at 9 hours a day is around 180 hours a month. Our job is hard work at least 16 hours a day if not 24. 16 hours times 18 days a month is 288 hours. Imagine asking your spouse if you could work an extra 100 hours each month. Essentially we are asking ourselves, "Can we work in a ministry and still have boundaries on our time? Is this job helping our marriage, our community and our relationship with each other?"

Part of the reason for this blog is to ask you to pray for us as we try to wrestle with what to do. (The other reason is to figure out how to communicate exactly what we are thinking right now). We are planning on meeting with our supervisor again to ask that the 18 days not take effect until January even though he would like it to start next month. We then feel it would be a good idea to put ourselves on a 3 month trial of the 18-day plan and in March we will evaluate how things are going in those three areas that are listed above. Please be praying for us as we plan to have the meeting and also that we would be open to the Lord's direction for us. Perhaps this job is not what is best for us right now especially if our schedule continues to change without much warning. We like what we are doing but it seems that this job may not be as ideal as we thought when we first heard about the hours and time off and their flexibility towards us instead of our flexibility towards them.

Prasies: That we have gotten good feedback and seem to be picking up the job fairly quickly.

Prayers: God would send His wisdom about how much work is healthy. That we would be able to find a comprimise with the ministry and ultimately that God would direct us where He wants us to work for His kingdom.

Mid-October Report

Autumn has officially rolled into Tucson although it is not quite the same without the changing of colors. Everything is still green and brown and the sun still shines but the temperatures are significantly cooler. I, Bethany, have actually been cold outside and it was only 66 degrees in our apartment when we came home yesterday and that was without the air on.

Anyway, it's hard to believe that it is already mid-October and we have been here for about 2 months. We are almost done with our second round of respites and looking forward to the break that we will have at the end of the month. We continue to face various challenges as we work with these kids but nothing has caused us to resign yet! When we returned to Splash 4 at the beginning of the month, we were faced with quite an array of attitudes that, at times, took the wind out of our sails but God was faithful to help keep us going.

Yesterday we finished up at Splash 3 with two 6 years olds and two 8 year olds who keep us on our toes all the time: throwing cereal, punching each other and spraying chemicals on Eric's breakfast! We tried the strategy of letting them stay up late so they would sleep in but one of them got up at 7:00 a.m. without fail so that didn't work in our favor. Despite the bountiful harvest of consequences we had to dish out during the respite, we also got to do some fun things with the kids and the nice thing about this group is the positive responses we got from the activities. They have vacation from school for the whole week so we had lots of free time to fill up. There is a movie theater around here that has $2 tickets so we got to see WALL-E and Kung Fu Panda this weekend. We also went to a roller skating rink and the kids had a blast learning to roller skate with us. Another bonus was having a blow up jumping castle at the house that was left over from a party. Just plug it in and it inflates and provides entertainment for hours while the kids jump around on the inside just like at a carnival. They loved all the stuff that we did with them so it was rewarding to hear their thanks even for the food that we made them! Bethany even convinced the kids to wash our car!

Let me take this time to warn you all about the importance of backing up the data that is on your computer. Eric's hard drive failed on us without any warning so all of the files on his computer that aren't backed up will cost us a lot if we want to retrieve them. Sadly, we have lost the pictures from our honeymoon. So, learn from our mistake and find a place to continually back up your data in case of hard drive failure.

We can and often do walk to Wal-Mart to get groceries we have forgotten to get from the GAP pantry. This beautiful map, courtesy of Google, shows the exact path we walk to get to the mall and Wal-Mart.

We continue to learn lots about marriage, love, serving and other Christ-like qualities as we work in this job. It is definitely not a picnic and my weaknesses and failures show up quickly in an environment that demands all of me without much time for rejuvenation. Eric has been very patient and he does a great job with the kids, especially when they are somewhat out of control and not listening very well. I am learning not to take it so personally if they have a bad attitude or if they aren't listening and although progress seems slow right now, I hope to keep persevering so that I can grow in learning to love.

"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance; godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Peter 1:7-8

We are continually thankful for the ways God has provided for us, including our nice little home with a hot-tub that we enjoyed last night in the cold, autumn air.

Praises: We are continuing to build relationships with the kids and their parents and are learning a lot from this experience.

Prayers: Strength and endurance for each respite. At the end of the month we hope to purchase a new laptop. Cheap plane tickets to come home for Christmas. For our marriage to be strengthened as we work together.

All Moved In

It is time for the new apartment game show ... Guess that Price! At the top of this blog entry we have displayed pictures of everything Bethany and I have used to furnish our apartment. The game works like this. Make a guess at the cost of each piece of furniture, add up the total, and then send us the final amount in an email or if you have a Google account then post your guess to the blog. After you have made your guess check your answers at the bottom of the blog.

The items are:

• Coffee Table
• Futon/couch
• Entertainment center
• Table and 3 chairs
• Queen size mattress and box spring
  
• Computer Desk
  
• Bureau and 2 matching night stands

The Costs: (highlight the text below to see answers)

• Coffee table = $15
• Futon couch = $60
• Entertainment center = $25
• Table and 3 chairs = $75
• Queen size mattress and box spring = $120
• Desk = $50
• Bureau and matching night stands = $150

Total Furniture Costs: $495

3 Months after marrying Bethany, Eric is finally able to offer her a comfortable place of rest and the security of a job. Thank you God for providing nice furniture at such a nice cost. The moral of this story is God seems to care about even getting furniture, so ask Him for help!