Welcome to our newly “regenerated” blog. Same content with a new look and personality. If you’re on an RSS reader, you might check the actual site again. We’ve updated some of the static pages to more clearly communicate our vision as it’s developed and matured over the last two years. We’re still trying to get [...]

Well, we made it home safely and smoothly. The flights all went well and we’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with Ange’s family. The house we’re staying at in Kokomo is amazing. Jetlag hasn’t been too bad, but we do feel a bit sluggish. While we’re in good spirits most of the time, we [...]

Probably lots of you have heard from us in some other capacity about the recent news. But for any of you that haven’t, we wanted to let you know we’re temporarily coming home. We’ve had trouble getting our visa renewal sorted and because we have a baby due in 5 1/2 weeks, we’re probably going [...]

It’s been a pretty slow week actually. We spent most of the weekend painting my office, had a few friends over for dinner and watched a really interesting movie called Traitor. Since our little community is becoming more firm and established we’re also spending more time doing actually “pastoral” work too – meeting people for [...]

Well, the cookout on the 4th was a smashing success. At least, we had a good time. I think the 28 other people there would say the same thing. The weather was gorgeous, if a bit windy. We ended up eating left-overs for about 5 days after because of the abundance of food. And here [...]

You probably noticed that the blog is looking a little different these days. She’s been so neglected and mistreated lately that she just had to paint up her little face and get a haircut to try to get our attention. Hopefully it will work and you’ll hear from us a little more often. Tomorrow we’re [...]

Hi. This is Laura Swartzendruber, Ange’s mom. We’ve been back home 2 weeks since visiting Ange & Mark and I wanted to catch you up a bit on their doings.  An amazing event was attending Ange’s ultrasound and seeing Baby Beaker at 19 weeks! What a miracle!  Have you seen an ultrasound?  The technician points [...]

We were driving home Saturday night from a friend’s house. It was very late and we were surprised by the beautiful, though somewhat blinding, snowfall. Giant flakes, actually sticking to the ground. We gawked at the beauty and let it sink in on the 30 minute drive home. Snow rarely falls in Newcastle, even when [...]

Our beautiful mountains are covered with the most lovely dusting of snow today.  I took a picture from my favorite spot by the house, but it’s so covered in cloud that you can’t see the mountain at all! Oh, well. It’s still pretty, don’t you think? And while we’re on pretty mountains, here’s one not [...]

It’s been a happy, normal day here.  Have done some deep cleaning around the house, some cooking and meal planning, and not much else.  I did manage to get out and take some pictures, though.  It’s so easy to forget what a beautiful place we get to live in, so it’s fun to pay attention [...]