It's hard to believe that January is already half gone. Didn't we just celebrate Christmas? While I absolutely adore the rush of the holidays and two rounds of company, I admit that I am glad to have the house to ourselves now. This is the first week since we arrived in Florida that we've had some semblance of normal routine.
I've enjoyed some gardening this week, as we have a backyard with functional flowerbeds, benches, and swings. I think I missed my college calling, and should have really studied botany or herbology. There's still time, right?
Does anyone else find it therapeutic to clean and organize things? I spent a whole day cleaning, rearranging, and reorganizing the entire kitchen. It was just lovely. A clean kitchen is one of my favorite things. It just makes me feel like I've got my life in order. Also, I'm dubbing myself an amateur kitchen florist. Fresh flowers make me feel at home.
Our first week back in Florida, we spoke at a small church nearby. They were so sweet, and it was fun to get to know a new (to us) local church. We're now at 45% of our required monthly support to go to PNG. We can go when we reach 75%, but we'd love to be 100% funded.
Josh got notified this week that he was scheduled for his citizenship interview. It should be sometime in February. Once that is finished, then he will be a (dual) citizen of the United States of America (and the Kingdom of Belgium)... not to mention we will be done dealing with the immigration offices and paperwork for.ever. It's been almost 4 years, guys, and we are so done.
If you follow me on Pinterest at all, then you know that I've been pinning things like mad. Since we're going to the field so soon, where you pay for every megabyte of internet usage, I have been searching for things that I might need or might want to do/fix/make. I've been told by other missionaries that investing the time in making your house pretty helps when homesickness and culture shock set in, so I've pinned design things using bits and pieces of easy to find things lying about. Since I have been unable to have a proper garden anywhere we've lived (either because there's no room, it's snowing basically all the time or we're there for less than 4 months), I've been pinning different garden plans and ideas.
When my mother-in-love was here last week, she told me some of the flowers that grow in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and I was thrilled that many of them are Southern classics (camillas, jasmine, and gardenias to name a few). I'm now dying to build a trellis by our bedroom window in PNG so we can enjoy the sweet smell of jasmine at night. And maybe I can move up from amateur kitchen florist to pro, with blooms I grew myself in my own backyard.
What are some things that make you feel at home?
Labels: florida, garden, home, immigration, missionary life, papua new guinea, thoughts
