Playing hide and seek

Tania and I with our Christmas in July feast!

Kids reading messages sent by Coalwood, MT VBS

Si's training wheels are off!

Kids going on a hike with Sorin

SUPER ADDY!!!!!!

YAY but also NAY

Hey all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have reached the break. (listen carefully and you can hear me shouting for joy all the way from across the Pacific Ocean). Thank you all for praying for us this last semester. Houghton had a great semester of wisdom thrown at him and he did a fantastic job of catching a lot of it. We are STILL SO thankful for this year of school. God has grown our family through this time of stretching and we are incredibly thankful for the prayers that were lifted to the throne on our behalf: Prayers for our sanity, for our family, for Houghtons retainablity, and for our teams sustainablity!

Now for the "NAY". We have been informed that we will NOT have internet for this month. We are SUPER bummed to hear this news. We where SO hoping to catch up with you all during the break. If you would, please pray that we would get chances to get to the city and get some internet time at Maccas (or McDonalds as you so well know it as :) ).

And counting....

We have been enjoying the last few weeks of school. Well, is enjoying the right word? I suppose so. What Houghton and the rest of our teammates have been learning has been wonderful subjects and very applicable to what our future ministry may hold. SO because of THAT we can say that it has been enjoyable...but still anxious for our MONTH OFF. Only two weeks to go!!!!!!!!

Some prayer

Hey there! Just asking for some prayer for a couple things. Could you be praying with us for Houghton as he is pouring himself into his studies. The days are getting longer and longer for him to be away studying and we are just entering the end of first semester. Would you pray that God would give Houghton clarity of mind and also speed as he is writing papers, working on projects, and preparing for tests all in these next two weeks.
Also pray for me and the kids to be a support to him and to utilize the time we have together as a family when Houghton is able to come home.
God has lead us to take this training and it is a thrill to be learning all that is being taught. But as we were warned, it is very stressful on our family. Thank you for praying for us and caring for us from afar!

Gretchen for us all

Snow and Rain

I took this pic outside our backdoor!

We have been seeing a lot of moisture this week. It has been good for our thirsty ground, but a bit harder on this outdoorsy family. ;) I fear that we pushed it a bit much and Addy and Gwen are now suffering some cold/fluish symptoms. We even saw hail yesterday, which really doesn't do much for me since I am fairly used to seeing hail, but the kids LOVED it. Si was pretty amazed by it all and Gwen was a bit worried. Her worried face is adorable.
Houghton has been busy busy busy in the library. He is such a dedicated student and he is doing such an awesome job pouring himself into his studies. It does get difficult as wee miss hanging out as much as we usually get to as a whole family but God is sustaining me and the kids and also Houghton as he has to say goodbye everyday to such beautiful faces! ;)
We are certainly looking forward to our MONTH off coming up in a couple weeks! YIPPEE! Time does seem to be blazing past us. I see this most in the conversations with the kids and the clever little things that they come up with.
Houghton and I have been asked to help lead the music at our church a couple times a month and we are also able to be getting into some of the children ministries. Our church body here continues to be such a blessing to us and we pray that God would use us in their lives as well!

Recent days in the Richards residence

Houghton in class. You can also see Jim Kenner and Brad Jones in this pic.

Si walking holding Gwen's baby for her. I thought this was sweet. :)

Gwen and Addy sharing the stroller.

Kids playing outside together. Gwen, Sophi, Si, Addy and SorinSi and Gwen did my hair for me. Lovely isn't it?

It is quite a sight to see Si go after a drumstick! He is like a little lion cub. It is hilarious! His favorite is the skin. (yuck) So naturally Houghton and I give him ours. ;) Its a good deal.

Addy, Abigail, Gwen, and Si. Abigail come over to our house on Fridays while her mom and dad go to classes.

Si playing with "his man".

Good to have a home

Gwen bringing up her offering. They have 60 sec. to run around the room and collect as much money as they can from people. This money goes to an orphanage ministry.

At church.

We were able to hang out a bit with some friends from church today. It was so good to have this again. I have really been missing a church body and it is a blessing to have these wonderful people in our lives. What an incredible gift God has given us in friendships through the years! We have traveled SO much these past couple years and I have felt like I have been without a home for these years (such is the "transitions stages" of our life now days) and having a church body that is friendly, welcoming, and hospitable is just a sigh of relief in the purest sense of the phrase!

Things are going well. Houghton is busy busy busy at school as some big assignments are coming due. I am trying to survive as a stay at home mom (how do you all do it???? "survive" is the correct word it seems a lot of times) and God has placed some fun "assignments" in my lap this week. Four people different have approached me about taking voice lessons. All in one week, isn't that strange? God must have something planned. Or He just knew what I needed and I'm going to roll with that. So I gladly am starting to teach two girls on a weekly basis coming this week. And the other two will be something less formal and will happen some time later. I have been able to sing for church one Sunday with Laura. We sang a song that I wrote some years ago. It was fun to add a harmony to the song that I would otherwise sing solo. Add I am joining with Houghton and Laura in another song for this coming Sunday with three other people. So God also knew my heart in feeling like my season of singing was dry. Now to only get into the Sydney Opera!!! :) Wouldn't that be amazing. HAHA. Well, something to pray about anyway is a chance for me to use my classical singing passion.

Keep praying for us. We CANNOT do this without walking in the Spirit and we CANNOT walk in the Spirit without a lot of prayer! It (prayer) is what keeps us out here as we walk (sometimes blindly) by faith. May YOU too walk by faith. How can we pray for you?? Keep us posted in your life. We feel far away sometimes and it would help so much to hear how you are doing and how we can serve you. Thank you for loving us and working along with us.

Newsletter

Hey we have our new newsletter here on the blog under the "newsletter" tab above. Sorry to all of you who get it through e-mail and it was missing pictures. Seriously weird and we cannot figure out what would have happened. So here ya'll go! :p

Some more pics to end out the month

After a walk. Caught Addy in a yawn.

Playing with babies while "watching a movie". :) Gwen doesn't sit still for long. Hehe.

Walking down to a store for meat pies. A traditional Aussie meal.

ADDY'S WALKING! I love it. Even now that she has been walking for about a week, she still has this look on her face while she is walking that says, "Whoa, am I really doing this!"

Grandpa and Grandma Richards sent egg dying kits. Which was AWESOME. Aparently Australia doesn't have the fancy kits like we grew up with and loved! THANKS!

Naturally there must be a little bit of body painting going on when you paint with toddlers!

Jesiah's spiderman egg.

Our March/April

Hanging out with the parents! :)

It has been a joy to hang out with my mom and dad. We have been showing them around and been taking in some sights of Melbourne. Just some random pics for you to see what we have been up to.



The Melbourne Aquarium



We got some cards from friends at our sending church. It has been a joy to hear from them. Thank you so much for writing us messages!

Journal pournal

So I wanted to let you all know, well, to those of you who care to read the ramblings of me, Gretchen, (wow how many comma's can you use in a sentence? Okay this is a perfect example...if you are going insane by these ramblings...then the journal page isn't for you ;) ) Hmmm where was I???? OH RIGHT....

I am starting to use my journaling tab again. YIPEE! Cheers.

More and Less

Oh how I draw blanks when I am suppose to type a "title" for these entries...so I have to say that I just write whatever comes to mind...whether it makes sense or not. And this time...probably not. :)

RAIN

Thank you guys so much for praying! We have rain. Today we were on high fire alert and the media piped it up to be a day like the one when all the fires started 4 weeks ago. So we waiting to see what the day held.

I know that many of you have been specifically praying for rain for Kangaroo Ground. And at about 9:00 tonight it happened...it had been really yucky looking outside for hours and I thought it looked a bit dangerous outside. The clouds were very angry looking (can you call clouds angry?) and I didn't really know what to think. The sky here is so hard to read...in Montana it was pretty predictable I have always thought, but since moving overseas I am totally at a loss for sky reading. ;) When I heard rain start to fall all I could do was smile! So many of you have written telling us that you are praying for rain...and for you I send a million hugs from the kids (I would send them from me but I think you would rather them from the kids :) :) ).

What a generous God we serve huh?

Our Newsletter

Check the "Newsletter" tab for our latest newsletter.

A recap of February ... in pictures

We are working on our newsletter and hope to get it out in a couple days. But tomorrow we have a fire watch so we might just take tomorrow off from our normal "work" here at the house and head into town to get away. We will keep you updated. Keep praying as we are still on high alerts (for four weeks now) with fires burning all around us and strong winds with high tempetures!

BUT for now...enjoy these pics. :)

Thanks guys for hanging in there with us!

A breath of fresh air

In more ways than one have we been breathing some fresh air. Firstly because the smoke is finally starting to settle from all the bush fires surrounding us these past two weeks, and also because tomorrow is graduation! Graduation from Summer School anyway. We all still have a year to go...but we have next week OFF! YIPPEE. :)

I want to share with you some videos of some of the classes that we have been taking these past 6 weeks. Some might be a bit boring to you but look at it in light of learning to speak another language, write an unwritten language and teach those speakers to also read and write in their own language. What a thrill to test ourselves on the knowledge that we have crammed into our full brains in such a short time! Praise God for His provision for us these weeks and also for His grace and mercy as it has been a long 6 weeks as well. The kids are now through with child care and for that I am glad and sad. They LOVED going and doing such amazing crafts and playing with the other kids there. John and Roz were amazing with the kids and we cannot thank them enough for being creative and lively for 6 weeks straight! :)

VIDEOS:

Our phonetics class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KnZdGLWO1M

Our Language Learning class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yyp9hIjmivs
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It-9eHHmhUM

And our Anthropology class is soon to come: (gotta get from teammate :) )

MORE TO COME of the kids and all...but wanted to post as soon as possible.

Update on fire situation

Thank you to all who were praying for us and continue to pray as there are numerous fires still burning throughout Victoria. I wanted to post some pictures of the fires that we could see just from our house.

Click on the picture to view it in a large format:

This is a website that has been set up by Equip (school we are attending) just for us as students to know the status of the fires in relation to our campus so check this out and you can get current updated info just as we get it.

Copy and paste into your Internet browser:

http://kg/index.php/kg-messages.html

Click on "Current fire conditions for Kangaroo Ground"