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Tuesday, August 9, 2016

When you have old bananas-make banana bread

So, today in South Africa is Women's Day. It's to commemorate the some 20,000 women who stood up against apartheid in 1956. There were lots of gatherings of women today at state buildings and such, but this woman, she slept til 10am. Oh, I woke up several times and kept rolling over to go back to sleep. Most days, school days, we are up at 5:30 and out the door at 6:30am...did you catch that...AM. And my people, we don't do mornings very well. No one really speaks unless it's in grunts or nods.

So today, we had about 5-6 old bananas and Grace and I decided we would make banana almond bread. My husband loves any fruit bread with nuts in it. So we did the womanly thing and baked. I know, I know, Matthew and many many can cook and bake, but today we, the women of the house, baked. We used our tried and true Betty Crocker cookbook from like 1950. In any move, it will be in my suitcase. It has served us well.

Lately, life seems to be serving me old bananas, and I am trying to make banana bread. I am depending on the Lord more and more in these days, just like I depend on Betty Crocker to help me with the recipe. The Lord has opened up one door with a blogging group called Daughters of the Deep. It is going to launch in October, but we are already writing. I wrote my first one this week. It is to encourage and inspire women into a deeper walk with Christ. And in writing, it's doing that for me also. There will be more details as launch date approaches. Humbled to be chosen and humbled as I study and write about what God lays on my heart.

Labels: africa, baking, banana bread, betty crocker, blog, Daughters of the Deep, family, homemade, ministry, school, South Africa, Women's day

Friday, July 22, 2016

With a broken heart

Two weeks ago on Thursday, the kids and I got to go to a feeding program that is run by a friend of ours. We often go to the one on Wednesday, but this was the first time we went on Thursday. It is a smaller group and meets in a hall. The program is run by a pastor. Three of our J-Life six week interns spoke and gave their story. Then I was asked to explain about what J-Life did and what we were about. For those that don’t know, we are about make disciples through the local church by training the pastor or mainly youth worker in the church. We train them in how to do ministry like Jesus. We work on relationships, growing and multiplying.

We then got up and made a line of the food that had been donated. It is all fresh food like carrots, potatoes, lettuce, etc…As I watched these beautiful people that I had been worshipping with go through the line, my heart broke. There by the grace go I. I want to be found faithful in what I spend, what I give away and what LOVE and COMPASSION I show to further the kingdom.

Pics aren’t for our glory, just to show you what it’s like.

Labels: compassion, family, feeding, heart, jlife, Love, ministry

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Mother's Day

Well, I couldn't let Mother's Day go by without a post. I am just having a hard time starting...I don't know why exactly. My thoughts are everywhere. From my mom, me becoming a mom, what a mom looks like...so maybe these are some of the things for today's blog.

Some things I have learned from my mom:
1. Love the Lord first

2. Be a lifelong learner
3. Hunt for a bargain
4. Enjoy the moment
5. Family is important
6. Love a good roller coaster
7. Diet Coke is the best
8. Work Hard
9. Expect excellence
10. Help others
11. Serve
12. Sleep is valued

These are just a few of the things I could think of off the top of my head. There is so much about my mom that I love. I hate being far away from her, but we know the Lord has a plan and being far away doesn't change love.

Becoming a mom:
Some of you may or may not know that I became a mom to Andrew when David and I got married almost 20 years ago. Andrew was 12 and I had no idea what to do. I loved him and that was what guided me. You see, I have all sisters, no brothers. There were no boys in our house growing up. We even had girl dogs. Now, yes Andrew has his real mom, Tracy and I love her and am so thankful that she shared Andrew with me.I am grateful to Andrew for the grace he gave to me in me learning. Then along came Matthew and Grace. I love being a mom to all of them. Now, I have Elizabeth, my daughter in law. I've learned a lot in the last 20 years. Not every kid is the same. They all are made differently and you have to find ways to connect with each one. I love being a mom. That's what I always wanted to be. Yes, I have other titles in life, but mom is my favorite.

Labels: family, mother's day

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Mozambique Part One

Typical village "town"

Google maps says it should take 12 hours from Johannesburg (the white star) to Tofo, Mozambique (the middle town labeled in Moz), but it took 15 hours going and 16 hours coming back. Lucky for us we love road trips. Especially adventures across any border. Just getting our visas for Moz (short for Mozambique) was quite a task. Three hours at the Moz consulate and there might have been tears. Without realizing it, I didn't have 3 empty visa pages left in my passport. In fact, I had only one empty page period. Thus the appointment this Thursday to get my passport renewed. But the consulate had compassion and granted grace for this mama traveling. He said kids couldn't go without their mama. Which I thought was interesting that it wasn't ok to just go with dad...but that's another subject and blog.

So, the main point of this vacay was to rest. And we went from the beach to lunch to the beach to dinner and some afternoons swam in a local pool. We went with our friends, the Stoniers, who now work in Zambia. So, they flew from Zambia to South Africa and then we all drove together in a van. David slept most of the way there because of his encephalitis. He rested a lot during the week. The kids and I were in the water so much. It was super clear and you could see your feet from shoulder level.

We loved our time away together. Lots and Lots of family time. Our drive home was eventful in that we had a blow out of one tire which makes 4 flat tires in the last 30 days for me. I was driving, but grateful I was not going too fast and could get to the side of the road quickly. We then had to find a spare tire in one of these villages we went through and to find one that wasn't 10 times the price because they saw an American and an Englishman get out of the van. Three stops and 3 villages later we had a spare tire. One thing for sure is that you don't want to be caught in the middle of Moz with no spare tire. There is lots of open space and very small villages in between "towns".

Next installment coming soon....

Part 2: the water
Part \3: the food

Labels: africa, family, friends, Mozambique, texas girl, travel, villages

Monday, March 21, 2016

Missionary Monday 3

This week Missionary Monday is about Florence and Leo Fokoua. Florence is the country leader of Cameroon. They have been with J-Life since 2008. Cameroon was one of our first northern French speaking African countries to come to J-Life. Florence and I became fast friends at summit in 2009. She is joy to be around. She exudes the love of the Lord. I affectionately refer to her as the queen and Leo the king. I don't know where it came from, but as you can maybe see from their picture, they are royal members of Christ's family. Florence and Leo have 3 daughters, Gladys (20), Ariel (14) and Jodie (10). Gladys is an adopted member of their family. If you are in youth work long, you know that eventually you have adopted sons and daughters. We have many from over the years. Florence has a vibrant ministry that reaches beyond the borders of Cameroon. She is a champion for J-Life and our French speaking countries.

Pray for Florence and Leo and the girls
Pray for the new ministry center being built
Pray that Florence would continue to reach the youth of Cameroon and beyond

Labels: adopted, africa, blog, disciple, discipleship, family, French Africa, J-Life, jesus

Monday, March 14, 2016

Missionary Monday 2

This week I am going to feature Zoe and Adam Zogar. Zoe is the country leader of Liberia. They just celebrated their 1st year marriage anniversary. They had to put off their marriage because of the ebola epidemic in 2014/2015. We are blessed to have such a young vibrate couple in Liberia.Despite the ebola epidemic, ministry continued to happen, just on a smaller scale. Liberia was one of the worst hit countries and many things shut down during this time. There was very limited travel, even between towns and villages. Adam is on Zoe's team and helps a lot with the financial side of things because he is an accountant. We look forward to see what the Lord has planned in 2016 now that ministry can be back into "full swing".

Pray for opportunities to have GC2 groups (discipleship groups)
Pray for their young marriage to be blessed and not strained under ministry demands
Pray for expanded outreach and new connections

Labels: africa, disciple, discipleship, ebola, family, jlife, liberia, marriage, ministry

Monday, March 7, 2016

Missionary Monday

ok, so the new series is here and i am going to feature one of our J-Life Country leaders or a Regional director. I am going to start with a Regional Director and then the countries surrounding him and then move on to another region.

This is Mgliwe (mmm-glee-way) Simdinatome from Togo. Which is located in West Africa. You can see it's a very small country located between Ghana and Benin. It is a French speaking country.

Mgliwe's wife's name is Rhoder. His kids name's are Fidele (6), Hilaire (4) and Percee (2). Mgliwe came to know about J-Life at a Lausanne Conference held in Cape Town. Miah and Michelle Collins were working with J-Life at the time and they were in attendance. Michelle was assigned to the interpretation for the French speaking people. They needed another interpreter or something to that effect and Michelle met Mgliwe. They began to talk about what they did and Mgliwe shared his passion to to make youth disciples in French speaking Africa. This, of course, is what J-Life does. This is our mission. So the next January, Mgliwe came to be apart of our training. He then began to build a team in Togo and teach them what he had learned. Mgliwe works very hard and is passionate about the gospel being made known and making Christ-following disciples who will make disciples and so forth. Many of our team members from the French speaking countries in that region have come to work with us through Mgliwe and his influence. Mgliwe has now trained Ben, who will one day transition into being Togo Country Leader. Mgliwe is the Regional director for French speaking West Africa.

Please pray for Mgliwe to have wisdom and strength to manage his time with his work and family. As you can see, he has 3 wonderful little ones who need his attention.
Pray for his ministry and his leadership in the ministry.
Pray for his wife as she helps with the ministry.
Pray for continued favor in the expansion of the ministry.

Labels: africa, family, French Africa, J-Life, kids, ministry, missionary, togo, west africa

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Kids Questions

Recently a friend's son had to ask a missionary kid some questions. I thought they would be great to share the answer here:

Do I travel much? We have gone one several family trips to various places. Mostly places in South Africa. We have been to Durban, Kruger National park, Pilanesburg Park, and Cape Town. In Oct of 2014 we travelled by car to Ndola, Zambia. It took three days to drive. We drove up through Botswana and across the Zambian border at Victoria Falls where Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana meet. This was an amazing trip to be able to see several countries all at once. We have also been to Swaziland twice. Swaziland is the country that borders South Africa and Mozambique. This March, my father needs to see some of our J-Life ministry guys up in Kenya and we are planning to go with. We will fly because it is too far by car.
Do I help my parents? Do I help them with ministry? Not in a direct way. We are with them a lot when they are working, but as far as day to day things, we are at school. We do lots of ministry things such as a feeding program that goes on every Wednesday. We help each holiday. There are also several church plants that our ministry and our church here help with, so we help with that when we can.
Do I have many friends? Yes. I go to a school that the high school is about 600 in number. My grade has about 120 kids in it. We are the only Americans in the school, but we don’t feel out of place. We have been in South Africa for 7 and ¾ years. We have been at this school for 5 years. My best friends are Caleb and Jesse. We have common interest such as gaming, science, art and several sports.
Where do your parents work mainly? My father works from his home office about 3 days a week and from our International Headquarters about 2 days a week which is on a farm about 25 minutes away from where we live in Heidelberg. There is a campsite at the headquarters that is used to help make money for the ministry as well as used as an outreach tool for Jesus. My dad, David, travels mainly in July, August, sept and October. J-Life is in over 20 African countries (there are 54 total). So, he travels to see the country leaders during that time. Usually only 3-4 countries each year. My mom, Liz, volunteers at our school, Waterstone College, and in trade we get full scholarships to the school. She works as the science lab assistant. Our school fees would be about $1200 a month otherwise and we could not afford to be at such an amazing school. We (my parents) raise all their own funds so her “working” at the school helps out a lot.
What are my parents’ names? David and Liz Even
My name is Matthew Even and I am in 11^th grade. My sister is named Grace and she is in the 9^th grade. We have an older brother, Andrew who works for Walmart and lives in the Bentonville area. His wife’s name is Elizabeth.

A website maybe to help you: http://test.jlife.org.za/ (still under construction)

School website: http://www.curro.co.za/schools/gauteng/waterstone-college.aspx

Labels: family, jesus, jlife, kids, missionary, school, travel

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