Basketball??

Well I have entered the HIS team into a tournament which happens in Jayapura every year. Now we are like north american schools in that usually basketball starts later in the year but this tournament is one of the biggest ones around and so we enter it at the start of the school year. This years tournament is not occuring at a great time, as Janna is leaving and the tourney involves late nights. I am so thankful that we have such great friends out here who have already said that they are willing to help in any way possible. Without the friends it would be way more difficult to try and survive without Janna here.

In order to get into the tournament you need to have all kinds of paperwork and of course pay to get in, so yesterday I drove my motorbike to try and find office where I was supposed to submit the paperwork. Like everything in Indonesia things just take longer than you would think. I ended up driving around for an hour and a half and asking multiple people where the place was. Finally I found it and so I started talking to them and showing them all the paperwork I had. They then told me that this was not the right paperwork and that I needed all these other things. These are the little things that we call cultural stresses!!

Lately I have been reading "The Cost of Discipleship" by Bonhoffer and I am currently in a section on the sermon on the mount. Dying to self. Dying to self. Dying to self. What an easy thing to say but an extremely difficult thing to do. What are my motives for the things that I do? Are they to receive some type of praise? Is it so that people will like me? Tough questions that take some true heart searching to come up with the answers. One thing that I am realizing more and more is that I am nothing, God is everything, I can do nothing without Him. I pray that this can be true in my life, that my motives are to honor and glorify God in every little action that I do.

Update

Update:
Knee - seems to be doing fine. Not as painful and not really walking with a limp anymore. Praise the Lord.

Kids - started grades 3 and 1. Still figuring out the best routine for homework and everything that they need to be doing. Both in school the whole day.

Janna - Janna will be traveling back to Canada to see her family. She will be leaving here on Sept 7th and returning Oct 7th. Please pray for me and the kids as we go through this month. We know that this is going to be extremely difficult. But we feel at peace with Janna returning for this time.

So many things going on in our lives right now. Please pray that we will remain focused on HIM! The beginning of the new school year has been a little hard on me as we have had so many things going on in our families back home. There are times when you just wish you could be close to family and now is one of those times, with the death of my grandmother and Janna's dad being diagnosed with cancer. Times like this are when we rely on the assurance we have that we are where God wants us to be. May God bless you all!

Tribute to my Grandma

Always there to love never to judge
Making perogies and sausage, ham and potatos
Watching our games even when she did not know the rules
Always welcome never shunned
Gave what they could living on little
Tree forts in the yard cousins standing guard
Christmas time a blast when Schroeders were the cast
Supporting in all we did
Praying Praying Praying
Our lives will never be the same
She is gone she does not want to come back
She sits at Jesus feet
Lord we rejoice in the life of my grandmother
thankyou for all the years I got to know her
May we live our lives to glorify and honor God!
Grandma I love you