Recognizing God's Providence

Great insight from our 16 year-old daughter Caitie, recognizing God's providence in our move to Rhome, TX:

As some of y'all know, we have only lived on our farm for three months. Y'all might be thinking that it was a waste of time for us to even move here since now we are planning to move to Kenya. It seriously wasn't! When we lived in Mansfield, we were totally miserable. The house was tiny, we were having a hard time making friends, and we could not find a church that felt like home. For a while we had been dreaming about living on a farm with animals and lots of land in the country. Then we had an opportunity to live that dream sooner than expected. So we jumped on it! Our move to Kenya includes a seven acre farm with more animals than we have here. In order to accomplish that, we have to learn many more skills to make our life in Kenya work. We feel that God placed us here to learn many of those skills.

 We have already learned several of the skills that will be useful in Kenya. In the 3 short months we have lived here, we have learned how to take care of our animals efficiently, how to help our goats during labor, how to milk goats, and how to butcher chickens, pigs, and ducks. I know that may sound harsh but we do eat meat and when we butcher our own meat we know it was done in a humane way. We also know they were allowed freedom to roam and exactly what they were fed.

 Of course, we still have a lot to learn, being farmers for 3 months means we are still rookies! We hope over the next few months to learn how to can, dehydrate different foods, cook a meal over an open fire, and garden. We attempted a garden already; Daddy plowed it, we planted it, but now when you look at it, you can't tell if it is a garden or a jungle. We still have lots of learning to do there. We also need to do research on and learn about water filtration, solar power, solar showers, DIY composting toilets, etc. It is a good thing we have a while before we leave!

 It is very important for us to learn all of this now while we have people here who know about these things instead of going there and being overwhelmed. We feel like God has blessed us with amazing friends who are willing to help us and we are trying to be willing students and make good use of our time. For us (the kids), this isn't about our parents going to be missionaries, but our whole family. We want to be as involved as possible.

Let no one look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in your speech, conduct, love, faithfulness, and purity. 1 Timothy

4:12

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