A Day in the Life – of the Boys

After an initial “How’s it going?” the question we most often get is “How are the boys doing?” Thankfully, despite the first answer sometimes being dire, the second is always “They’re doing great!” The boys love it here on the mountain and with good reason – most weeks include multiple four-wheeler rides and random excursions or adventures. Their response to seeing another mouse in our traps, a new type of bug in the house or strange object wrapped in multiple layers of a spider web (or was it some sort of cocoon? – our latest find) is far different than their mother’s…

The training at The Master’s Mission (TMM) is designed to equip your whole family, as a family, for the mission field. So the boys are right with us in our classes or activities. They are sometimes a huge help with our tasks, but help or not, they are always definitely involved. While they have learned to sit quietly for morning devotions and play in another room or quietly with us during Bible class, if you asked them about the training, they wouldn’t mention either of those things. This is what they did mention when I asked them what they liked about TMM:

Micah – the lake and Scott and Brittany (another candidate couple who often play with the boys), knife throwing, the fort we found, eating apples off the tree, Tink (one of the dogs here)

Josiah – riding on a front loader, doing backflips on Scott, visiting peoples’ houses, hiking down the hill, riding on the 4-wheeler, having people over, going to men’s class with Daddy, going to Jiu Jitsu with Momma, knife throwing, going to workout

Alex – dip my hand in the water at the lake, dipping my hand in again, forts in the woods, knife throwing, riding the 4-wheeler

Quick Update:
We made it home to Pennsylvania and back to TMM after a week of spring break without our car breaking down! Hurray! It definitely had something to do with the rental car our church blessed us with so we could make it home. We did have to drive 2.5 hours to the closest rental location in our car. We continue to pray for another vehicle and praise God that ours keeps running for now. We had a wonderful time visiting with our families, church family and meeting new friends.

Uncle Luke riding with us back to our cabin when he visited last fall. The roads are mostly a series of switchbacks.

In case you’re wondering about the knife throwing activity they each mentioned – Lance owns some throwing knives and the boys love throwing them with Daddy in the evenings. In the top picture, Micah and Alex cheer Josiah on while he takes his turn. The pictures on the side are Josiah, Micah, and Alex each taking a turn.

One thing they definitely don’t like are the incessant gnats that have returned with the warmer weather and swarm unendingly around our heads whenever we’re outside. I told them they have to get used to them since they’ll be worse in the summer. With that they happily went back outside to play, nodding their heads sagely. I guess they were paying attention when Lance and I talk about getting used to the mice/mold/sketchy internet/fill-in-the-blank since that’s what it’ll be like on the mission field.

I asked them to tell me a story about something that they’ve done at TMM and they all wanted to tell about the bee story. With good reason, being stung by bees the first week here is still a vivid memory. Lance had gone the pump house where we have our chest freezer and the boys thought it was so cool that they could go on top of him while he was inside, since it is housed in a hill underground.

Micah (5): One time when I went up the hill I stepped on the beehive and we all three got stung even Daddy a little but not Momma because Momma wasn’t there. So we went to Paul and Betty Lou’s house and once we got a little better we went back to our house. The end.

Alex (3): ‘Siah went up on the bee’s house first and then Alex and Micah went on the bee’s house and then Daddy said run to him and the bee’s stinged Alex and ‘Siah and Micah and we run fast to Daddy and then we went to Paul and Betty Lou’s house and then we got ice and then we put ice on it and then it feel better and then we went home.

Josiah (7): One day we were going to our freezer in the door underground, sort of, and I wanted to go over top of Daddy over top of the ground so I went over there and when I got over there I stepped or maybe bumped a beehive so they all got mad at me and the brothers came too so they all got stung and I got stung too and we all ran down the hill. Daddy yelled, “Boys! Come here!” And Daddy got stung twice and we took off our shirts so they didn’t get stuck in our shirts and sting us. So we got in the car and went to Mr. Paul’s house and we watched some TV at their house to distract us from the stinging and then we went back home to Momma and we might’ve put something on the stings then and then after a long time they healed.

I though it noteworthy that they never thought to mention what us adults quickly see. They live in a cabin with only a wood burning stove for heat, a tiny propane fridge, minimal toys and no visible neighbors, electricity, internet, phones, carpet, cell service, TV, or any other kids their age to play with on the mountain.

While they are definitely living a different life than what is typical of their U.S. peers, we (Lance and I) are starting to be comfortable with the concept that different doesn’t have to mean good or bad, it’s just different. As the saying goes with most things around here, it’s all part of the training.

– Ruth, for our family