Month: June 2011

The kids did a VBS last week and had a blast! Ok, well maybe Ellison had a blast everyday but Jude eventually got in the groove once we invited our neighbor to come with us. Here is a video of them doing their dance from the week. My favorite part is Jude walking off in the middle.

Somethings have changed around here….

There is a renewed interest in everything German around here! German is ringing in our halls, over our speakers and out of our mouths!! The most common question of course is “Wie sage ich _______ auf Deutch?” (how do I say _______ in German). Sometimes I find I’m getting kopfweh (a headache) after trying so hard, but it is soooo cool to have a living dictionary right under our roof! And a helpful, sweet dictionary at that.

Meet our new friend Brittany!

Brittany is visiting us from Germany. Her dad is a pastor in Germany and we met both he and her mom at the “Drive” conference a few years ago. This past April we reconnected with them at the same conference and had dinner together. They mentioned that their daughter wanted to learn more about children’s ministry at North Point and wanted to volunteer there for the summer. Our ears perked up and we said we would be willing to house her knowing that she could be a HUGE help to our language learning. She arrived on the same day that Ian came home and has been here about a week. She works at North Point 3 days a week and then hangs out with us for the other days. Here’s a little bit more about her.

1. Where are you from? The southwestern part of Germany called the Black Forest. It’s very close to the Swiss and French borders. My mom is Canadian, however, and I was born there and lived there for 9 months. (She speaks English beautifully)

2. Tell us about your family at home? I live with my parents and my brother. My parents pastor a church and they were sent out from Canada as missionaries 18 years ago. My dad is a very fun person to be around and we spend lots of time together in the outdoors doing sports. My mom is more of a musician and so we spend lots of time doing things centered around music. She enjoys teaching piano and doing choir. As a result I’m a mix of those and I love to do sports and music. It’s the best of both worlds.

3. What do you really enjoy? I love reading and writing and I’ve spent a lot of time babysitting and taking care of kids and going out with my friends. I really have a great interest in design and art.

4. What does the perfect day look like for you? I would spend a day on the beach in Spain or France running and reading design magazines. I love to read through the magazines and imagine the possibilities or what rooms could look like.

5. Now that you’ve graduated high school, what’s next? I’m looking forward to studying Psychology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Since Basel is only 40 minutes away from my home I’ll still be able to help my parents with church since I’m involved with the kids ministry and the middle school small groups.

6. What has been most surprising about Atlanta? The culture is similar to Canada so nothing has really been a shocking surprise because of the similarities. I’ve been a little surprised about how much people depend on technology and their devices. Where I’m from most people still have a house phone and we can carry on business without the use of cell phones. We do a lot more face to face interactions when it comes to work issues or even personal issues. I would say that we live at slower pace.

Anything else? One thing that I really want to do is to learn to cook this summer. I’m working hard to be chef number one in the Ehemann kitchen!

We are really thankful for Brittany coming and are looking forward to having her till August. So if you see her with us give her a big warm southern welcome y’all.

“You are never going to move if you wait for fear to disappear.”
(Brent Shoemaker, NPCC)

Confession, I have never jumped in at the deep end of the pool. I don’t mean this summer but like never in my life. It’s not that I don’t know how to swim (although I only learned after Ellison was born), I’m just afraid of being completely submerged and out of control. Every summer I hang out in the shallow end and watch people jumping off confidently into the deep end. I keep thinking this is going to be my year and then the moment passes. If I sit and think of it rationally it doesn’t make any sense to be afraid of jumping into 6 or 7 feet of water when I have the ability to jump in and swim to the side but the truth is…I am. I want this to be my summer and I want you to join me by “Taking the Plunge.”

Here’s the skinny folks, we really need to get to 70% of our monthly support by mid-July the end of summer. That equals 1425 845 dollars more per month. Once we are there, we can start preparing for the final stages of getting us to Austria. Now, here’s where you come in. We don’t personally know anyone who has 1000+ spare dollars per month to give to our efforts. We, however, have found that a few things at Target can quickly add up to 40 or 50 bucks. I mean who can resist those red tags!?! That 40 or 50 dollars to a missionary is golden. Maybe you’re like me, you’ve been hanging out near the deep end and watching others jump in but you’re a bit unsure if you’re ready to take the dive and stretch yourself financially. If you’ve heard our story and have been meaning to call us back, email us or start your giving just let us know here. Once we’ve reached 70% you can come right on back over to Chadwicksinaustria.org and see a video of me taking my first jump. So come on….. take the plunge and join our team and then watch me overcome my fear of the deep end……YIKES.

Just this morning, my mom and I went on walk with my 3 kids. Sounds simple enough, right…wrong! Well I decided we’d try out this neat little part of Big Creek right near my house and we’d take the jogging stroller and the kid’s bikes as well. So, I’m loading it all in and then I notice that the tires are really low on the stroller. Actually they’ve been low, but I really wanted to fix it before our walk because….. they’ve been bothering me. First I tried to use our pump here at home only to accidentally flatten the tire completely. Dang it! So I said… “I know what I’ll do. I’ll go to the gas station and get some air.” We pull up to the BP as my children yell from the back seat “are we ever gonna get there,” and I notice that air costs one dollar. Ooops I have no cash. So I ask my mom if she has any change. Turns out she had left her purse at home because we were “going for a walk”…right. So off to the ATM I go to get some cash to come back to the gas station only to figure out that I’ve never done this before. Instead of asking for help, I somehow figured it out on my own and immediately I felt a sense of AHHHHHHHH. I’d done it. All by myself.

Ian is still out of town and normally I think of jobs like these are the “man” jobs but I couldn’t wait I wanted to do it on my own. The truth is, over the past 2 weeks since he’s been gone there have been lots of moments like these. And then it hit me…There it is again. This thing I long to have but struggle with maintaining. Being independent.

It’s this thing that makes where we are so difficult. When I look at raising money to go to live overseas I feel the exact opposite of independent and that would be because we are totally dependent. And vulnerable. And exposed. We want so badly to make this transition overseas but we are indeed dependent. We are dependent on people linking arms with us and saying “I’ll take a piece of the burden.” People willing to share the load and who believe in us and believe in what God has called us to do. It is not an easy task. Not easy at all.

When we lived in Austria as newlyweds we were employed by a basketball club. In my mind it was ideal. I think I’ve always hoped that this could happen again. But the reality is that basketball at this level is not stable enough to completely sustain our family. But who knows…perhaps one day it will be our reality again. But not today. Today God has us here. He has us totally dependent on him. On his timing, his will, his plans, his story for our family. Not mine.

I think this is a struggle that will be with me until I meet Him face to face. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that independence is a bad thing. In fact, I hope I never lose that AHHHHH feeling when I accomplish something that seems so difficult. I just want to get to the point of having an even greater AHHHHH when I fully depend on God and and he accomplishes something through me that I never imagined possible.