Hot and Humid

Our temps have been in the 90's this week, and it's also been humid. When I mowed this week, I made sure to do it at 9:00 in the morning, and even then I was a sweaty mess by the time I finished. Although I'm not a fan of cold weather, I have to say 90's and humid isn't exactly my favorite either but thanks to air conditioning and the swimming pool, it's fine. The upside to this heat wave is that the water temperature in the swimming pool is a very comfortable 82 degrees! I took Oliver and Westyn swimming on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Oliver and I swam on Tuesday afternoon, and Paul and Oliver swam on Sunday afternoon. Nadia and Ian each swam once at camp, but they hadn't been to our swimming pool this week until today. We didn't carpool this afternoon because there was a program for parents from 2-3pm so we both drove. Since VBS ended last night, we didn't need to hurry home. The kids and I stopped at the library, had dinner at Taco Bell, and then swam until 6:30pm. Nadia asked me several times if she can return next summer. This year's Bible lessons focused on Esther, and the missions lessons were taught by a woman from Voice of the Martyrs. They raised over $1,200 this week to give to VOM. The kids picked to have half of the money go towards smuggling Bibles into countries like North Korea and China and the other half toward helping women and children whose Dad/husband has been imprisoned or killed for his faith. The VBS they attended this week was raising funds for a school in Jordan that helps Syrian refugees. The kids were telling me about ISIS and such. The missionary today showed us two really neat Bibles. One is totally waterproof, and they dump them in the water in a place where they will wash up onto the shore in North Korea. The other was a blanket that had a fabric New Testament inside, which are used in China. Both of my kids memorized the five verses, and Nadia also memorized three extra ones (Romans 12:1-3), which is why she had two fathers in her headdress. Next year I'll help Ian learn the extra verses also so he can earn his second feather. My favorite part of the program was listening to the kids sing.  Of course my eyes welled up with tears. I'm hoping that next year all three kids will be able to attend! There were 68 kids in the camp this week. We knew some of them from our church and some from our homeschooling group.