The Lund Life

Foundations

miranda — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:03:08 +0000

Well into December and no snow to speak of, cold but no snow. The boys and I went out yesterday and got a Christmas tree from south of the house, Miranda and kids decorated it when I went to work. Nice to have all the lights to come home to after work! In our devotions it has been going through the foundation of our faith. At first I was approaching it as redundant then a little way in to the lesson I realized if I don’t know this through and through what do I know at all. All of my faith is based on the truth of Christ, the Holy Spirit living in me, and the love of our heavenly Father. Sometimes we get into today and all the wonderful revelations God has given to “the churched” in the Bible and through other books God has inspired his children to right. Then we come to tell someone what we believe and don’t know where to start. We need to know the foundation of our faith how to share it and understand the people we meet may have no foundation at all and surly don’t know or understand ours. So my prayer this week is to praise God for all he has done for me and all he is doing, for Christ and his sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit who it with me all the time.

Rink Rats

miranda — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:20:27 +0000

I took the boys to the ice rink today for Rink Rats. It was fun. We were able to use skates, helmets and other gear from the rink, and we can use them until the end of the season! Solomon did really well, he played a game of hockey with kids at or around his skating ability. I went to check on him a few times, he was mostly talking to his friend when they were waiting their turn on the bench. Abraham on the other had wanted to go home the second his skates hit the ice. They had some walkers for ice, metal bars bent so the kids can hold on and skate around until they get the hang of it. After a few minutes of coaching telling him to use more leg muscles and to not expect the skates to stop moving (which he was the most upset about) off he went. One of the rink staff helped adjust Abrahams helmet, I never knew hockey helmets were adjustable. By the end Abraham was going it alone without the walker although he did get a lot of snow on his snow pants. Solomon had sweat running down his face and headed straight for the water fountain. After getting home Mom and Solomon turned around and went right back to town for Solomon’s Cub Scout movie at the theater. We are starting to get into the activity fun of four children and only two are in anything.

Prayer Requests: Eden is under the weather pray she will feel better soon.

Pray for me that God would keep bringing people into my mind to contact about our missions work and they would be open to my call when I make it.

Continue to pray for Miranda and I as we keep moving closer to when God sends us back to Africa.

God the Father

miranda — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:48:19 +0000

So we started the Journey to Freedom yesterday. The first lesson was about who our Heavenly Father really is. It talked about how we will relate to God like we relate to our earthly father. It asked us to go through a list of about 25 different characteristics of our fathers, kind, distant, rough, loving, etc. so for me it was a little challenging. I did it first thinking of my biological father and I only checked three things, then I went through thinking of my Grandpa and I checked about half of them. This made me think of a few things. One I am very thankful to my Heavenly Father for giving my grandfather here on earth but also that my mother had such a good relationship with him that he was part of my life. We don’t know how far excepting someone and loving them in spite of their sin will go. For me it was a loving father figure who accepted a mistake his daughter made and decided to actively involve himself in the result. It points to the power of God to bring good out of what some might think to be the beginning of the end. I am sure we can all think of someone that has gone through a similar experience with a much different result. It challenges me to see the sinner and not the sin.

Arley, take one

miranda — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 03:08:16 +0000

I am going to try and take a good poke at this blogging stuff; I have never tried it so hear it goes. Last night my wife and I were talking about all that has been going on in the last few days. We have been entertaining an idea of adding on to the house. The project we were considering was a lot of fun to think about and we were getting excited with the thought of it. Then I was driving Solomon home from Cub Scouts last night, God convicted me of my feeling of excitement for the possible project and my lack of time for it and especially the lack of time I have been spending on our missions work. Miranda and I talked about where we are with our missions fund raising and our need for a heart change back to a desire for our call to go to Africa. I truly feel we have been under a satanic attack these last few months telling us we are fine and don’t need to get to busy with raising our support. What a lie! Two things come to mind, idle hands and being a sluggard both I don’t want to be. So we are in real need of prayer in the months to come. We will be doing a Bible study called Journey to Freedom a (forty day encounter with the heart of God). It well take us more like 13-14 weeks, we have been told to do three a week. We want to restart our fundraising and our plans to go to Africa.

Prayer Requests

Our finances, right now my hours at work have dropped and we are running in the red.

Home school we are doing well, still getting the bugs worked out.

Financial goals to go to Africa:

House : $15,000 –$20,000 after talking to Wayne maternal cost has gone up so this figure is higher than before.

Vehicle : $6,000 -$10,000 we will need a vehicle to fit our family

To do our maintenance tech program we need to pay our two students and a room in town to stay. We would like this to be someone who wants to support this each month it should be right around $200 -$220 a month.

Monthly Support: $2,200 this is the monthly support goal we need to have pledged before we go. Right now all of our support, either monthly pledges or one time gifts, goes into our account with ACM helping to attain the $24,000 we need for outgoing expenses (plane tickets, insurance, building costs, etc.) before we can go.

All about the Foreign….

miranda — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:27:50 +0000

Sitting down to the computer, let alone sitting down to blog something feels so foreign to me! I hope it’s like riding a bike! I haven’t really had a good place to sit down and sort out my thoughts since having our fourth little bundle, and I have to say that I have really enjoyed being “unplugged”! But here I sit, with my almost broken laptop and a jumble of thoughts… but at least I am back for now.

Family Update: We are doing good, minus the barrage of sick that has been running through the house with four kids bringing home this and that from here and there.

Solomon is 7 and just finishing 1st grade. He has made a few friends at school and on the bus and just asked me the other morning if he could ride the bus to his friends house and have a play date or a sleep over! Pretty exciting. He also rode his bike about a mile to his friends house by himself last week. Arley raised his bed about 4.5 feet last week and he spends a lot more time in his room sitting on that bed.

Abraham is almost 5 and finished a year of 2 day a week preschool. Currently we are starting the 100 easy lessons to learning to read. We are on lesson 2 and he is actually enjoying it! It gives me great hope in the adventure that we have decided on for next year – Homeschooling! Something that we would have never done except on the mission field, but when God opened my eyes to me having a sink or swim experience or a join a coop and have friends in your backyard that also home school experience I decided that I wanted to get all the help I can from right in my backyard! And we were blessed to attend the Mn Assoc of Home Educators conferencein April and Arley and I were able to get on the same page and get valuable information that we are so grateful for. We also put up a construction boarder in his room, which he has now adorned with construction stickers and looks at while he falls into construction dreams.

Eden just turned 2 this month and is repeating everything you say or do. She is still such a delight and loves everyone. She really loves being outside and being able to get into her own bed whenever she wants. She also enjoys getting to share a room with her new little sister! Miriam is 4.5 months now and sleeps through the night in her crib upstairs. They got their room painted watermelon pink which makes it really feel like a GIRLS domain.

Miriam is holding her head up great and enjoys sitting in her jumperoo and watching everyone. She sleeps better in our bed during the day, away from the noise a bit and in her crib at night. She really tanks up for her naps by eating up near 13 ounces in a sitting! Then she sleeps for 5 hours during the day and 13 hours at night. She is super smiling and although she loves to be around people, she is really easy going.

Arley is tackling the shed this spring, trying to get the roof on. We have come up short on a machine that is big enough to lift the roof panels as high as we need them to go, so we are trying to redo the budget enough to be able to rent a job site lift to get the job done. He is also getting his motorcycle running in hopes of saving gas!

I am finishing up my finance responsibilities for MOPS and passing the job to another woman who will tackle it next year so I can focus on homeschooling next year. I am busy finding books for the boys and activities for the girls to do while I work with the boys, etc. Making schedules and re-purposing furniture and spaces to make for a more organized and relaxed school experience for all of us hopefully! Our room as become a closet with a bed in it, while we are trying to declutter and figure out what will go where. That is my project that I hope to get accomplished this summer; turning our bedroom into a bedroom again, an oasis of sorts. We will see.

Also, we are getting more serious with fundraising this summer! We hope to head out and visit with more people, hand out our newly updated prayer cards and PRAY for God to pour out his financial blessings on us and our endeavor. We need to secure funds for a home and vehicle when we get there, also funds for monthly living and funds for a laptop computer that will be strictly for ACM use. That will hold only contact information, outlook email and calendar, prayer letters and ACM information. It is VERY dusty in Africa (obviously?) and laptops have a short shelf life because this, but desktops are worthless because we do not have the power supply for them so we will need one with a very good battery and possibly a tough book or something. But being realistic, I don’t want to go overboard cost wise, that just wouldn’t be smart!

So, that is where I am. God is hard at work with His plans for us and we need to get on the same page in His book. Please pray with us that He opens the doors He needs to open and that people would be receptive of us as people, not just someone else that wants their money. That is a fear of mine, that while we want support and need support, we also want and NEED true friends that will pray for us and love us whatever we do and wherever we are. Like you, dear friends, who come and read my blog and pray for us. Unfortunatley we are not near most of you, but know that we love you and hold dear to the fact that you are indeed praying for us and lifting us up to His glory and in His plan. Thank you!!! Oh, and here is a sneak peak of our new prayer card picture. Enjoy