Thank yous

Here is a thank you right now to everyone who has supported us through prayer or financial donation. You will be getting a more formal one in the mail, but it might be a while. I sat down last Saturday to design thank you cards to be printed- they will have a design on front and be blank on the back-when I realized after looking at about 500 pictures (literally!) that not a single one will suffice. It is important to include at least a small picture of us for those people who may have a hard time remembering us by name, and AIM has quite a few strongly-suggested guidelines regarding any pictures in any sort of missions literature. We already made a mistake with our initial support letters, in which we included a wedding picture (rule #1 is no bare shoulders). Women should not show knees or have any sort of remotely low neckline, and men should not wear shorts, as that particular fashion is consider boyish in Africa.

I love taking pictures, but the majority of them are either landscapes, animals or other people- which doesn't really do us any good in this situation. All the rest of our shots were group pictures, of us kissing (making up for lost time), with sunglasses on, etc.

We decided to make an effort to rectify the situation by taking an appropriate picture outside. It had been snowing and we thought we'd get in, get out, be done. We asked our friend Liz (see picture) to help us out, and she graciously agreed. I later found out she had written earlier on her Facebook page that she was avoiding the nasty weather by staying inside- oops...Yes, she is an absolute doll.

Well, we decided that we should give our best effort at around 4:30. Oh, yeah, we forgot about the time change and all. So, here are the resulting pictures- fine, but probably not going to make the thank you cards. There is just something about missionaries being surrounded by a cloud of black that I think gives the wrong impression...