Christmas Crafts part 2

A few more of the fun things I enjoyed making this Christmas season...
Katie, Kimmie, Joy and I swap ornaments every year and this year I had Katie. So I made 2 ornaments to celebrate the arrival of baby boy Compton!


One had his initials, name, Due in January 2012, and "for this child I have prayed" on it. The white linen ornament had the words to "Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus" because I have been singing that for them this year as they have had quite the roller coaster concerning infertility. I certainly can't wait to meet him!!

Next, I made my brother, Will, a warm fleece blanket:
Here he is proudly displaying it on Christmas morning...
I made my grandparents this cute moss "G" for their house. It wasn't too hard thanks to the instructions I found here. I only managed to burn myself once with the glue gun!


And last, but not least, I made Andy & Richelle this cute canvas to hang on their exposed brick wall in their new house. This isn't the best picture, but I'll upload a better one later...

I got the idea from this website

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Crafts

I've had fun making a few crafts this Christmas season. Some are presents yet to be given, so I will share them later.
First, I followed a friend of mine's blog to make this great ornament wreath!

It wasn't too hard once I got my glue gun working properly.

Before I could make the wreath, I had to make some linen ornaments, that she also describes on the DIY blog. I loved how these turned out and made some burlap ornaments to go with them in a bowl for decor.


I took the linen ornaments a step further when making my friend Amy some ornaments for her Christmas wedding:

One has her invitation wrapped around the ornament and the other has her new married initials. If you want to know how I did this, I can tell you - just email me!

My sweet friend Kimberly turned 30 a few weeks ago, so I wanted to do something extra special for her. I bought some Ethiopian burlap coffee bags (they are in the process of adopting from Ethiopia) and came up with this wreath idea:

I read online about all the different ways you can make a burlap wreath and I decided to go with the small strips tied all the way around a wire-form wreath. I cut the strips to about 1 inch by 15 inches. I probably used about 60 strips. I cut a bow out of red burlap and hairsprayed it so it would not unravel as easily and be stiff enough for a bow. I figure you can mix and match bows for different seasons:

I think I am about to give in and join pintrest...enjoying using my creative side. More to come!

Church in Zambia

As I was sitting in church yesterday, I couldn't believe it has been 5 weeks since I was worshiping in Samfya at the church associated with the bible school. I remembered Dell took this video of us singing...hopefully this gives you some perspective:




They didn't have a true hymnal with the music notes included...just a book with the words of hundreds of songs. But, they amazingly know the tune and sing in multiple-part harmony. The music leader has a few songs picked out, but he allows the congregation to make suggestions during the service. As I mentioned in the earlier post about church, they asked us "americans" to come up to the front and introduce ourselves and sing a few songs for them. I don't think we were as good of musicians as they were!
Even though our services here in America are very different from theirs, the true reason we all desire to be there is the same - to worship our Lord and bring Him all glory and honor. It really was a blessing to worship with them and I hope I never take for granted the fellowship that we have here in America.

Jamie and Brother Al were in another city on that Sunday and they had a great worship experience as well.

I loved to hear about the offerings the local people brought to church they were at... again much different from the gifts we would give, but they are truly giving from their hearts and returning to the Lord a portion the things he has provided for them:

recognize this tune?

"I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies." Psalm 57:9-10

More videos

I still have so much I want to share from the trip, but I have hit the ground running now that we are back...preparing to move from Nashville this week! I was able to obtain some of Dell's videos from the boat ride. Hopefully, they will speak for themselves!

Back in America

It has been a long journey back home, but we have finished 3 of the 4 flights...one of them being 16 hours! Just 1 more short flight to Atlanta and then home to sweet home Alabama. Can't believe the trip is over!
We came home with a smaller group than we started with. Al and Kem are on their way to London right now for 3 weeks of rest and sabbatical. Dell left us a few days early to get home for work and also to meet his precious new grandson, Owen! John West left us in Lusaka yesterday and headed for Nairobi to do some set up work for another mission trip.
It has been a wonderful trip and I was blessed to work with such great people on our team and of course the Fullers! Hope to share more stories and pictures once I get home and can get them all organized. Between the 4 ladies, we have about 1,500 pictures. However, Marvin took the cake on this one as I'm sure he took over 3,000 himself!
Thanks again for your support and prayers. We definitely felt you lifting us up and could not have accomplished as much with out it.


(we all decided to wear our Auburn gear this day)

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Location:Washington, dc

Riverboat cruise

Thursday was a busy day. After the safari and Victoria falls, we went on a riverboat cruise down the Zambezi river. The boat was docked at a very, very nice hotel on the river - The David Livingstone- would definitely save up money to stay there next time!








They served us drinks and appetizers while we cruised up and down the river looking for wildlife.











We saw many crocs:


A few hippos






We had another great elephant encounter. A large group came down to the river to get water. Afterwards several males started fighting over who would continue to go in the group with the females and children.






They fight until someone gives up!





Then we experienced an awesome sunset!


The moon on the opposite side of the sky





It was a very relaxing excursion after a long week of work.






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Victoria Falls

Thursday afternoon - Victoria Falls


Breathtaking! 1.7 kilometers wide... This is just the beginning. The river/ falls is the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.





Al and Kem's dream come true!


View of the bridge from the falls


We had to rent ponchos to stay dry


The mist the falls give off is crazy


The pedestrian bridge we crossed


The river right before the falls


This made mom nervous :-)


We saw many rainbows


View of the falls from the main bridge


For the civil engineer - Andy


View of the bungee jump and zip line. I tried to do the zip line, but the workers were taking a lunch break! I was very disappointed!


Dad and I crossed over into Zimbabwe


Me in Zimbabwe


View of the river post falls and bridge. On the right is Zimbabwe and on the left is Zambia.


Market where we bought most of our souvenirs


Great experience!