March was a great month in the Strange House! By far the most exciting thing to happen was for Emma to be baptized at Cedarcrest Church on March 8 by our Pastor George Wright. Emma prayed to receive Christ back in September and was so excited to share this news with our church family. What a blessing to see our sweet girl following the Lord in obedience to share about the way that the gospel has radically changed her life. Our church has the kids record a video testimony to be played before they are baptized. Emma shared that she wanted to get baptized so that she could tell people about Jesus. I pray that will always be her heart’s desire!
Our church hosted the Compassion International Experience on our campus for a few days in March and our family enjoyed the opportunity to walk through it. They have a mobile unit set up like three different third world countries to give you an idea of what kids in those countries live like. What they eat, where they live, and what they are going through. It was very well done! Clint, Emma, and I walked through and Emma noticed some of the food that was on display and she pointed out how similar it was to Eli’s orphanage in Ethiopia…and how glad that he didn’t have to worry about that anymore. Our family was excited to sponsor a sweet girl through Compassion. We chose a little girl that was the same age as Emma and that lives in Ethiopia like Eli did. We figured that was the best combo for our family. Our sweet Compassion girl is named Rute and we are excited to support her and to pray for her.
Clint has been teaching Financial Peace University on Wednesday nights at church the past several weeks. Eli has been going to church with Clint…to get a jumpstart on his financial literacy of course. The guys eat dinner together and then go to church. Emma and I have been using Wednesday evenings to have girl’s night…usually dinner and a walk around Target to talk about life and to hear what’s important to Emma these days. One Wednesday in March we headed over to swim in the indoor pool at the Y and then grabbed dinner at Waffle House. That girl’s night was extra fun!
Emma has been helping me “coach” the girl’s golf team at school and she is taking this duty very seriously. We have practice on Mondays and Fridays and Emma’s golf swing is getting pretty good. Most of all, we are having a blast spending time with the girls on the team. We took at quick trip to Memphis for my precious niece Nora’s 2nd birthday on March 13. We had so much fun catching up with my sweet sister and her family. Her twin boys are growing and really starting to be a lot of fun to play with. Eli always loves playing with Nora since they are just a few months apart in age. My prayer is that God will allow our families to always live close enough to celebrate the big milestones in life together!
The rest of March was made up of lots of playing outside and hanging out with family and friends. We celebrated Ella’s birthday, went to see Cinderella, watched lots of hairstyle movies on YouTube, enjoyed Emma’s class Easter Party, and did sidewalk chalk.
I headed to Guatemala at the last minute for a mission trip at the end of March. I was supposed to be home that week, but one of our teachers was sick and I ended up getting to take his place on the trip. As always, Clint was amazing with both kids by himself all week. He even took them skating at Sparkles and went to Emma’s class Easter Party. The week before he also went with Emma’s class to the Atlanta Zoo and they had a blast!
Eli continues to grow and become more of the precious little boy that God created him to be. Everyone that sees Eli can’t believe how tall he is getting. We are also enjoying how much he is growing in his speech. He can carry on a little conversation and he is doing his best to try to keep up with Emma. The two of them are absolutely precious together and God has done an amazing work of knitting their hearts so closely together. Clint and I are so incredibly blessed to be Emma and Eli’s parents. We are having a blast with this season of life. To be completely honest…there are a lot of hard days with a 6 year old who feels like she knows everything and a 2 year old who is still finding his place in our family…but at the end of the day, we have never been more aware of God’s grace and His amazing provision for all of us. Bring on Spring!
