Blog Update & Maternity Photos

One of our primary communication goals since moving to Austria has always been to communicate regularly with our partners, supporters, family and friends in America. When we were first raising support and preparing, this was pretty easy - we had no kids and our full-time job was getting ready to move to Austria. Then during language learning, we were still able to regularly set aside plenty of time for this task. But as family life and ministry have intensified over the years, it's become more and more difficult to maintain all of the lines of communication. I'm sure this is no surprise to those of you who have been through these transitions before or who have also gone from couple with no kids to a family life that involves children. The demands placed on us have increased, and we have had to get by with less communication. 

We have continued our monthly email newsletters and in all our 10 years in Austria, have only missed one month. This has always been really important to me, and I see it as our primary method of communication with our key contacts and supporters in the US. Writing these monthly emails takes priority over lots of other tasks. What's been more difficult, however, is maintaining our blog and Facebook page - aspects of our communication that are helpful but perhaps the impact is less concrete. 

Another challenge, however, has been about maintaining privacy. As we go further in ministry, many of our key stories and things we might blog about involve specific people with personal lives of their own. We see God working, but we also want to respect the privacy of the friends and neighbors we interact with and, as such, we are often hesitant to share personal stories or post photos of people on the internet. When we draw this line, it means that we have less stories to share publicly, and this limits what we can put on the blog.

All this to say, we will continue to post on the blog here and there, and we see it as an especially practical place to post personal/family photos. However, the blog will include less ministry-specific posts and more family-related or WorldVenture-related posts. Occasionally, you'll also get to read posts from us about something we are learning or mulling over. We apologize for the change, and if you are disappointed (I doubt anyone reading this has strong feelings on the matter, but you never know...), please be sure to subscribe to our monthly emails where we share more in-depth updates and prayer requests about our work in Austria.

So...in keeping with this new reality, here are some recent photos of a maternity photo shoot we did to capture the upcoming arrival of our third little girl in December. We are thrilled to be welcoming her into our family after nearly 4 years of secondary infertility. (If you want to hear more about this journey, feel free to message us personally). God is a miracle worker and we are so thankful!

Seeing Change

The above is a simple time lapse video of my pregnancy from start to finish. As you can see from the first half, it took me awhile to really start showing and to look like I was pregnant! (And I got lots of comments about it throughout the pregnancy. I knew I was smaller than most people were expecting me to be!) But by the end, there was no mistaking it - there was a baby in there that needed to come out.

Watching this video gets me thinking about the concept of change and growth. In pregnancy, it's hard to really notice a change in a woman's body from day to day, because the baby's growth is so subtle and slow. But when you compare the beginning to the end, the growth is major! All of those little changes over time add up to a major change, and the contrast is evident.

This is also true for our spiritual life. Not every day is a huge turning point or an extreme jump in one direction. Most of the time, walking with God is about small steps that we take every day to draw closer to Him. We may not be able to notice the growth every day, but there are times when we can look back and see the major change God's been working in our life and how different we are today than we were weeks, months or years earlier.

Sometimes change goes in a negative direction, too. We may not notice the small steps we are taking away from God each day, but then we look at our life and see how far we've slipped over time. This kind of slow change can be insidious and dangerous.

May we make small choices and take small steps each day toward God, so that we allow Him to work the BIG changes in our life!

Baby Update and Prayer Request

We've been on an interesting journey over the last 6 weeks and I thought it would be helpful to share the full story here on the blog. At least with this platform, I may not have to explain and repeat myself quite as much!

At about 29 weeks into the pregnancy, we found out that my amniotic fluid level was very low. Sometimes this happens randomly and sometimes there are more serious reasons for this problem. When we saw this on the ultrasound, my doctor had me go right away to the hospital for a high resolution ultrasound and a test to check the baby's heartrate, in an effort to make sure the baby was still doing well and growing appropriately. Thankfully, everything looked great. Since that time, I've gone regularly for more screenings to make sure she's still doing well.

The only downside to the low fluid level is that it's very hard for her to move around in there! Ever since my appointment at 29 weeks, she's been head up and hasn't turned around. We've tried several homeopathic/natural ways to encourage her to turn, but it looks like she's just not able to turn to face the right direction for a natural birth (especially now that she's bigger).

So, we've scheduled a c-section date for January 6th, which is earlier than we thought she would be coming! But our doctor has advised us that a little earlier is better in this case, because the risk of the umbilical cord being compressed in those final weeks goes up as the fluid levels go down. And she doesn't want me to go into labor and have to have an emergency c-section. Planned is much better. She'll be nearly 38 weeks at that point, so she'll be fully developed and able to live outside of the womb.

I'm writing all this to say that it's been an interesting journey and a learning process for us over these last few weeks. The pregnancy was very uneventful for a long time and perhaps we took that for granted. Now I have a much greater appreciation for the fact that our little girl is healthy and for the miracle that she is. Every baby is a true wonder and now I think I understand that more. It's also been a blessing for me to have time to let the idea of a c-section sink in. I am thankful for that gift, because an emergency c-section would have been much more difficult for me to handle. With weeks to think and pray about it, I've been able to come to peace and to prepare and inform myself about what is to come.

Please pray for us on January 6th and in the weeks leading up to her birth date. Please pray for peace for me, since this is my first time having surgery of any kind and I'm a bit nervous. Please pray for the baby's health, my health and for our recovery. And of course, for God's blessing over us as we adjust to being a family of three!

Church Announcement (Hear us speak German!)

At the end of every church service at our church here, there is a time where people get up and share prayer requests, praises or thoughts on what God is teaching them. So on the 14th of July, we got up in front of the church and shared our exciting news about being pregnant. It was the first time for both of us speaking German in front of such a large group (probably about 75 people), so we were a bit nervous and our German wasn't perfect. But it was a great accomplishment and it was fun to share the news with our church community.

Here is the video of our announcement, with English subtitles. Enjoy!

Big Announcement!

Watch this month's update video to find out about 
a big development in our life!