Friday, August 25, 2006

And Baby Makes Four

Friends,

That’s a nice round number don’t you think? We think so too! And come sometime around April 25 of next year, Lord willing, we’ll become a family of four! We are thrilled that God is going to bless us with another child even though there are days we wonder if we really want to go through “The Trying Two’s” again, after having just begun it with Jack! If we stay on top of things with him, maybe he’ll be through it before this baby arrives. We’ll pray that’s true!

On this side of the world things have been much quieter lately. No volcanoes or earthquakes to report, just some language learning going on. Tonight we crossed a bridge in culture by having our two neighbors across the street over for tea and banana bread. Both couples came while all the kids played in the yard. They were here for about an hour and a half and of course it was all in Indonesian. It was a really nice time and our hearts were delighted to hear them say… “Kami berbikir yang keluarga Pak Joel dan Ibu Bethany seperti keluarga kami” “We feel like your family is like our family now!” What a wonderful thing to hear. We have tried to build relationships with them and I guess we are succeeding! They are both wonderful couples (the husband of one family is the older brother of the wife of the other family) who work hard and are so friendly with us foreign folks who botch the language and I’m sure the culture too! They constantly help us with langauge and explain things in the culture that are foreign to us. They watch out for us and alert us to things that will help us to be safe here and they absolutely love Jack! He will go to any one of them more quickly than he’ll even come to us! We thank God for these friendships and would love some day to be able to share Christ with them.

We are almost halfway through Unit 3 of language study now and then will have a 3 day break + a weekend. It’s nice to have these breaks as our brains get tired and we need the rest. So far, all I am feeling from this pregnancy is tired so we are hopeful that maybe I’ll get through it without the morningsickness I had with Jack. Studying language is hard enough without that!

Tonight’s email will be a short one but we mainly wanted to share our good news with you. Thanks so much for your prayers and support!

Bethany for us all!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Joel & Bethany! We're excited that Jack will have a sibling. Does that mean you'll be back here next April? By the way, April 25th is my brother, Todd's birthday.

Anonymous said...

Of course Poppy and Nani are excited. God is so good. my trip there can't come soon enough, but I'll be as patient as possible for 9 months. Love to the 4 of you!

Anonymous said...

We are so happy for you guys. April is a good month. My birthday is 17 and Jon's is the 19 and Natti's is the 21. I saw your brother and he had told me that you all were thinking about having another and getting the maternity clothes mailed to you. Hope you are feeling okay?

Bek. said...

Yea for another Potter!
I love you guys!
~a proud auntie b

Anonymous said...

We're so excited for you. And we miss you so much we can't hardly stand it. It hurts sometimes -- okay, who are we kidding? -- it hurts all the time. We love you. All four of you.

Love,

Steve, Val and Jojo (who turned one today) -- Remember that day?

Loving Life said...

Hi Bethany,

Congrats on another sweet wee one!!!! Will you beable to find out the gender? or will you wait? :)
I just found your site thru Beth Everson's and wondered if it was you... so I searched and searced and found a picture :) Its Debi Carlton-Westenbarger- now Criss. (NTBI 98-00). I'll add you to my links so I can 'check' up on you more often!
So happy to see your sweet family!
chao,
~debi~