We still very much love our former organization. It was quite bittersweet when we realized that to follow God’s next steps in our lives, we’d need to switch. We’ve had nothing short of a near-perfect experience with them, and we still wholeheartedly support the ministry involved there, both prayerfully and financially.

So why did we switch, you may wonder?

It was simply because of our roles. When God gave us confirmation that our next hats to wear in cross-cultural work were that of member care, and no longer “CP” work, we looked at every angle to see if we could do this sort of ministry through the organization. We prayed, we talked to people of authority in our lives, and we did lots of research. In all those possibilities, however, God closed the doors.

We swung one wide open, however, with Life Impact. Kyle bumped into Dave Grissen, the president of LI quite surprisingly this past September, when he attended PTM, a conference for those in the roles of encouraging cross-cultural workers. We stayed at his guest house a few years ago, and Kyle enjoyed catching up with him and his wife.

By the end of this conference, Dave had all but given Kyle a job offer. He encouraged Kyle to pray about taking on the role of Director of Operations and to relocate to Bend, Oregon. This was nothing we had even considered yet. Up to this point, we were searching high and low for a way to head back overseas.

He came back and we prayed together for quite awhile. Bend seemed really random and out of the way, geographically (though Kyle’s parents and one of our supporting churches would be nearby, in Eugene). But in many other ways, it seemed to be a good fit for this next season of life:

1. We could continue to get speech therapy in English for Reed. He’s not ready to move on yet.

2. We could get training as “life coaches,” learning how to debrief, encourage, and otherwise work with cross-cultural workers.

3. Kyle could learn, first-hand, how to manage and run guest houses.

4. We could get direct practice in coaching cross-cultural workers, as part of our job description would be sharing the workload of running the guest house in Bend with the other LI home base team members.

5. Our health insurance could be considerably cheaper, making that line item in our support budget smaller.

6. Staying in the States could buy us a little more time to make SLM a financially stable company. Even though the blessing of this type of online business is being able to run it from anywhere, it is, admittedly, a bit easier to do the business side of things from here in the States.

7. Life Impact’s independent-minded, flexible philosophy of doing ministry fits very well with us. For example, they are fully on-board with us running SLM as we work with them, so that it can one day fully-fund our ministry.

8. Moving on to our (hopeful) next stage of ministry — running a family-friendly guest house overseas — would be a seamless transition with LI. That’s what they do.

I could go on. But in essence, not loving our former organization never entered the list as a reason to leave. In fact, the thought of that was kinda hard.

But we knew it was the right move for us, and we’ve been really happy with our short experience with LI. It’s a smaller, younger organization, so it’s different than who we were with, that’s for sure. But it’s also fun to be on this end of an organization — helping it grow, establish itself, and figure out who she wants to be.

We’ve heard from a few of you that you want to support us as we transition to Life Impact, and that you want to start giving in April, when we’ll actually start receiving support from LI. We know, it’s confusing… if you sign up to give today, it’ll go through TODAY — a potential problem if you’re currently giving through Pioneers, and your gift already went through for March.

So. We’d be happy to send you a very short reminder email on April 1, that our support now needs to be funneled through LI. This is a great way to make sure your donation goes where it should. We know how it is — in our busyness, it’s easy to simply forget, despite our good intentions.

If you’d like this reminder email on April 1, simply enter your email address above. This is NOT a contract or a commitment, saying you know for sure, 100 percent, that you’ll be giving. We’re all about the no pressure here. We simply figured if you’re as busy as we are, you’d appreciate a little reminder email about our big switcheroo.

Learn more about how to give here.

Right now, we are in Austin, Texas, finishing our medical leave with PI and preparing our transition over to LI. We are working closely with PI leadership to make our transition as smooth as possible, and we are thankful to have their full blessing on our new ministry roles.

Since we’ve remained in a “temporary” status this past year during our sudden relocation back to the States, we’re simply morphing in to a slightly more permanent status. The tasks given to us from our overseas team have been completed, so we are now free to prepare for the near future.

Because of the craziness of the past 12 months, one of our highest priorities is to allow Tate to finish kindergarten at her school here. We are grateful LI’s leadership understands this need, and is willing to wait patiently for us.

So yes, this means we will move to Oregon this summer. Our preparation mostly involves learning all we can about member care and raising support for our new roles. A lot of our regular monthly support dropped off this past year stateside, but thankfully, our monthly need is the same amount as it was during our overseas service.

This means for the next three or so months, we are raising the remaining $1,800 monthly support we need, along with necessary one-time funds for relocating and setting up in Bend.

In case you didn’t hear from email, or Facebook, or Twitter, or Flickr, our precious little “Lentil” arrived yesterday! He was born at 7:35 a.m., weighing 7 pounds, 12 ounces, and 20 inches long. Everyone is doing wonderfully.

Lots of you have asked whether you could bring us a meal when we get home. That would be awesome — the perfect gift for us. Katie Fox is organizing the meal calendar, so if you’re interested, please email her to let her know. And thanks!

Thanks again in rejoicing with us in the expansion of our family. We are blessed!

Just a quick update, since quite a few of you have written and/or called to see how I’m doing:

My blood pressure’s still high, but nothing else seems to be the problem.  They held on to me for monitoring for a couple hours, but I don’t have any signs of preeclampsia, praise God.  They did an ultrasound, and baby’s doing great.  So…  I go back in on Tuesday, and if my blood pressure is still high, they’re moving up the delivery date to this upcoming Friday.

Kabob would love this, since it’s June 11 — his birthday is July 11, and Chick’s is February 11.  He thinks that’s cool.  I think it leaves Garbanzo and I out in the cold.

Just a quick little update…  Everything went perfectly with Garbanzo’s tubes this morning.  We started a timer from when he was taken away to anesthesia, to when the doctor came out in the waiting room to let us know everything went fine with his surgery — it was 8 minutes.

The doc said there was actually even more fluid than he originally thought, and that it was really old.  We talked about probable causes, since Garbanzo has hardly had any ear infections or even complained about ear aches.  One idea is flying.  We fly a lot (and far distances), and there could have been one occasion where his ears just never “popped,” and they’ve been building up fluid ever since.  It would have been quite awhile ago, since it seems like it’s affecting his speech — possibly back in October ’08 when we traveled to the States.  My ears are horrific when we fly, so who knows…

Either way, the little guy should already be hearing much better.  He is his normal sweet self — just a bit groggy after first waking up from anesthesia, but then hungry, happy, and ready to play.  It was really cute seeing such a tiny guy in a hospital gown, waiting on a hospital bed.

From his surgery, we went straight to my weekly OB appointment.  Everything’s fine, except that my blood pressure’s kinda high.  I’ll go in again this Friday to get my blood pressure checked, and if it’s on the high side again, he said he’ll move up the delivery date.  That would be awesome.

My blood pressure’s normally on the low side when all is normal, so even a bit on the high side is kinda unusual.  But nothing to worry or panic about.

Chickpea and I had a much-needed mother/daughter date yesterday. We joined some friends at Sweet Berry Farms for berry picking and a picnic.

The pros: Good time chatting on the road just us; a basket full of blackberries – more than we know what to do with.

The cons: 90+ degree weather while 37 weeks pregnant, in direct sun, with lots of bending down, heavy lifting, and swollen ankles.

We had a great time, but by the time we got home, I was so tired I was literally shaking. My feet were unrecognizable and I was dizzy with exhaustion.

Yeah, that’s the last time I pick blackberries at 8 months pregnant.

So awesome news…  Garbanzo failed his hearing test with flying colors.

It was a total shock to us, since he can hear us and respond accordingly (not with words, but with responses in some form).  But apparently, his eardrums aren’t moving at all, and in studying the results of his test, the audiologist looks as though his hearing is basically “Charlie Brown teacher style.”  This explains a lot of his speech delay.

The ENT said that the correlation with muffled hearing and language all has to do with his specific age and developmental stage, where his language acquisition skills are at their peak.  If Chickpea was hearing this way at her age, it wouldn’t be as big a deal, since she’s already mastered language skills (and then some, in her case).  But the combination of him being at the age where one learns to talk, plus really muffled hearing, means that he’s not mimicking because…  well, he can’t hear anything to mimic.

The other piece of good news to this is that it looks like the main plausible cause of the hearing loss is nothing more than a serious backup of fluid in his ears.  The ENT guesses by the look of things, this fluid has been there at least six months, probably closer to a year.  It’s so built up that it’s making his eardrums not move at all.

So Garbanzo is getting tubes, which will immediately show results since that will drain his ears.  His speech should improve within two weeks of this surgery, should this be the cause of his speech delay.  He will get his hearing rechecked then, and the speech therapist will do a whole new evaluation on him.  We’ll know how to proceed from then on.

So we’re really excited!  It’s great to get a specific answer to Garbanzo’s rather serious speech delay, and to have a game plan that will hopefully give us some quick results.  He’ll probably still need speech therapy, since he’s pretty far behind, but once he can hear again, things will hopefully move forward instead of stagnant, as they have been.

Of course, we feel horribly that his hearing has been this bad for this long.  He’s such a laid-back, easy-going guy, he just doesn’t complain about anything.  We had no reason to think anything was up because, well, he was acting pretty much the same as he always does.  His hearing loss just coincidentally aligned right with when he should have started speaking.

Praise God!

p.s. – I went ahead and added back comments.  Not sure if I’ll leave it, but it’s there for now, should you be so inspired.

Earlier this week Chickpea and I had this conversation…

• CHICK: What is it that Garbanzo’s called?  He’s not quite a baby but he’s not quite a kid either.
• ME: You mean a toddler?
• CHICK: Yes, a toddler.  Okay, so what is it that I’m called?  Where I’m not quite a kid but I’m not quite a grown-up either.
• ME: Um…  (thinking)  Well, Chick, I’d say you’re still a kid.
• CHICK: No no, I’m past that.  I mean when I’m older than a kid but not a grown-up.
• ME: Lots of people would say that being a five-year-old means still being a kid.
• CHICK: Well, don’t I look all grown-upish to you?  I really am growing up a lot.
• ME: (hesitating, not sure how to answer without being offensive) … Yes, you do.
• CHICK: (silence, obviously thinking)
• ME: Chick, enjoy being a kid while you’re still a kid.  It goes by really quickly.
• CHICK: Mom, how old will I be when I’m allowed to go to a store by myself?  Seven?

Lord, save me now from the pre-teen years.

We’ve now been in America for 100 days. Weird. Here’s what we’ve been up to…

• Selling furniture, appliances, and other household goods from 6,000 miles away

• Slowly doing those easily-put-off things one needs to do before a baby’s arrival

• Organizing our travel calendar for the rest of the spring through the end of summer

• Deciding Chickpea’s education method for the fall (it’s kindergarten time)

• Visiting various farmer’s markets around town

• Tending a miniscule garden in the first yard we’ve had in three years

• Watching my ankles slowly disappear daily by 6 p.m.

• Sewing

• Reading

• Organizing guest posts for my blogging maternity leave

• Watching reruns of The Office and Scrubs

• Twice-weekly speech therapy sessions

• Twice-monthly date nights (ahh… the beauty of living near grandparents)

• Holding on to the last fledgling spring days and wincing in anticipation at the too-soon arrival of summer

• Avoiding the topic of why we aren’t currently getting Chick a kitten

• Convincing Garbanzo that with tri-colored pasta, the green ones taste the same as the others

• Relishing in public libraries with English books

• Missing our friends, home, and life abroad while trying to make a temporary-yet-pseudo-permanent life here

• Exploring the wide world of reverse culture shock (the adults) and culture shock (the kids)

• Praying about what’s next