January 15, 2014

We started a training program this week that gets the entire family up and exercising at 6:30 a.m. for 30 minutes. It has been great so far, but we are only three days into it. This is our fourth week without any visitors; the first time in eight months. We still miss our visitors and find the house a little empty. We are constantly looking for "the rest of us" as it always feels that we are missing someone. After lunch we are reading a book about the life of Amy Carmichael. We could relate to something we read today. Amy said that before coming to the mission field she read books where people were just waiting for the missionaries to come so that they could receive Christ and how "reality is sometimes different."

These last three weeks here in Fiji have been great. The normalcy of life and less hectic pace is a welcome change. We still feel a bit smaller in size without our American visitors and would rather have them all here with us. The children have plunged into their schoolwork. I think they too realize that our time before furlough is short and the more they work, they sooner they will be finished. What a great blessing that everyone should be finished with their grade by the time we leave in April.

Lazarus is reading aloud to us while the girls play with dolls and Little People. We enjoy such a happy life and so much like days gone by in America, like days before air conditioning and television, which although a blessing, can also serve as jailors.