Elisabeth and Max sing the Hebrew Alefbet.
When we left the United States in June neither Max nor Elisabeth were speaking Slovak. Elisabeth was able to spit out a few ideas, but hardly ever a full sentence without getting help from Jana or me. Max couldn’t say any more than a single word at a time. In fact, when we got to Slovakia I was a little worried because Max was speaking English with his cousins and friends as if everyone in the world knew English.
On June 7 my dad and I packed our boxes of belongings into his horse trailer (power washed) and dropped them off at Perfect Express by the airport in Chicago. So far, so good.
We’ve now been in Slovakia for a little more than one week. It’s been quite an adventure so far with our main adjustments coming in the area of the kids’ school, my visa arrangements, and Jana’s Music Together project. In this post I’ll stick to talking about the kids’ adjustments to Slovakia.
People are all the time asking us if Elisabeth and Max are excited about the move to Slovakia and all I usually have to say is the standard, “Uhhh, yes and no.” So I thought I’d do a short interview with them so you can hear just how they would answer themselves.
It’s hard to believe we’ve been in the States for more than five years now. We’re looking forward to going back to Slovakia, but it’s nice to look back at some of the memories we’ve made. I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I happened to have the video camera out one night when I had the kids to myself. This is a funny video buy of Elisabeth (3) and Max (2) talking about Dora and the Wiggles.
On New Year’s Eve I spent 45 minutes conducting delicate surgery on a miniDV cassette in hopes of recovering our lost video clips from our 2005 vacation in Croatia. Was it worth it? From all of us to all of you with heartfelt thanks for your friendship: I hope you enjoy our video rendition of the annual family Christmas letter. At our house, we have our time of family Scripture reading and prayer before bedtime. One Sunday Max decided he wanted to read the Bible during our family worship time. Then Elisabeth decided she wanted to join in. What followed was a mix of liturgical church service and family devotions. It was actually pretty impressive.
I’ve talked with people whose parents would often invite missionaries to stay with their family whenever they passed through on deputation. Some have told me what an impression it left on them to hear those missionary stories while growing up. They were amazed and even inspired at the sacrifice and faith they saw in missionary families who visited them. |   |
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